In These Times: Practical vs. Follow Your Heart

<p>Nothing wrong with choosing IE, just that I thought he would be bored in Engineering courses.</p>

<p>I read Mom2three's post of the traits of engineers and thought, "like I'd want my daugher to end up like THAT!"<br>
and then I realized, "hmmm. She has some of those traits already...!"
:)</p>

<p>Thanks for all the back and forth of opinions, everyone. Even when there has been disagreement, it's good to get diverse perspectives on the subject. Food for thought. </p>

<p>It's good to see that lots of people have segued from engineering to other things, too, if their spirit moved them in another direction. So I am seeing things as much more fluid than I had initially. Thanks!</p>

<p>Thanks to all who posted specific school and program ideas, too. A lot of people read these threads and you never know who you might be helping.</p>

<p>Here's my cent on the topic:</p>

<p>My dad attended Amherst at the turn of the 1970s, and decided he wanted to major in the Greek classics. His dad (my grandfather) resented the decision, but quietly assisted him along the way; he knew it was important that my dad did what he loved.</p>

<p>Thirty years later, my father is happily employed as a patent lawyer who specializes in chemical law, and has been for some 10-20 years. Greek vases and busts share space with law books in his office. </p>

<p>The moral? Your passions in life can take you anywhere.</p>

<p>^^ The moral: Your father could be happily employed as a patent lawyer who specializes in chemical law a few years earlier had he not gone off path. </p>

<p>He ends up doing what he should be doing 30 years ago. In other word, he realized Greek classics isn't paying the bill.</p>

<p>I think it would be sad if someone has to spend 40 years in a career simply because the economy was weak at the time they were starting college. Seems very short sighted way to choose a life path. </p>

<p>I think its near impossible for us to imagine the careers and lucrative jobs of the future; let alone the fact that our children are likely to have many different careers in their lifetime; let alone the zigzag paths our children will fall into. I'm a huge fan of follow one's interests and abilities, rather than a parent's desires or in some cases, insecurities. </p>

<p>I am a professor in a business school. Some kids love it and are good at it. But I also see one too many miserable students who are there for the wrong reasons, such as their parents decided they needed to be accountants. Life is too short and our society is way too enriched (even in a recession) to justify it. I understand it, as half my family are from a country that values only engineers and doctors and in that country it makes so much sense! It's a matter of survival, and humanities are a luxury one can't afford. But it seems a shame to apply that same mindset to our environment when its no longer necessary.</p>

<p>I majored in something that had absolutely no 'future'. I now earn in the top 1% with huge job security and a job I truly love! I feel like the luckiest person in the world. Good thing I didn't listen to my relatives who thought I was being so impractical.</p>

<p>Hey mom2three, I'm a retired engineering prof and while I am not a slave to fashion, it is there that the similarity to your description to engineer geekiness ends. No gadgets in my possession and dragged kicking and screaming into cell phone use less than 2 years ago. Hate Trek but love the symphony. My thought of a great book is not scifi(never read one) but count McCarthy, Mathiessen, Toer and Updike among my favorite authors. And I love sports including golf, fishing and OSU football as "passions". And yep, most consider me a pol/news junkie and social activist(working this Sat at at a food distribution program). Love art museums particularly MOMA and went out of the way to visit Bilbou. I don't believe in UFO's but do believe in peacemaking to make my neighborhood a better place. Parties? My mantra is "party on dude". And in conversation my method is to ask as may questions as I am asked. I prefer watching Charlie Rose to MythBusters(though I do watch on occasion). Yep, my first stereo was a Dynaco Preamp and Amp kit but I have never over-clocked an electronic device and consider SkyCaddie a step backward to the game of golf. While I do have a digital camera, I could not get rid of my Minolta SLR 101. And my watches are a Swatch Engineer and Omega Seamaster circa 1963(a stylish windup). And my preference in cinema is the less special effects the better, though I did see the recent Bond film.</p>

<p>No, all engineers do not fit the stereotypical mold. Thank goodness!!!</p>

<p>Can we bottle your brand of engineer, originaloog? :)</p>

<p>(More seriously, point well made. Each person is unique, with his own combination of interests and talents. Yes,thank goodness for that.)</p>

<p>There's no question that engineers are all different, that engineers can succeed in their fields, that engineers can succeed in other fields, etc. But I'm willing to bet that these engineers who succeed were ones who chose engineering on their own because they were interested in engineering. </p>

<p>I know very few people (read: none) who have had a happy, successful careers in areas that they did not choose for themselves, but were pressured to study. On the other hand, I know some unhappy doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, etc. who were "forced into" those careers. Some are financially successful but hate their lives. Others are neither financially successful nor happy.</p>

<p>Well, I actually know an extremely happy, successful engineer who is at one of the most prestigious places in the world for his field, and he has said his parents forced him to choose engineering over the career he originally wanted. That's probably rare, but it happens.</p>

<p>Before entering college, students cannot really know if they would like engineering, simply because it's not taught in high school. So, if they have a general interest in math and science, and no definite career choice, it's not a bad idea to give engineering a try.</p>

<p>Many students are encouraged to explore the liberal arts and switch among various humanities majors. But for some reason, engineering is assumed to be different -- that is, if you're planning on majoring in engineering, you must be positive that is the field for you and somehow have developed a "passion" for it. I really disagree. I think many students only discover if they like (or hate) engineering after trying it for a year or two.</p>

<p>I think there are probably more students entering college with no 'passion' for a particular major/field than those with a passion. They can probably be broken down as those who have a passion in a particular area, those who have some level of interest in a particular area but don't know enough about other areas to know whether they'd be interested or not, and those who have no elevated level of interest in any area at all but would like to learn and explore.</p>

<p>Some students just aren't aware of many different fields and this seems especially true for engineering if their parents aren't that familiar with engineering. HS students have generally had some contact with medical professionals, businesses, and some contact with the sciences due to their HS science classes, but most don't know anything about engineering even though it actually touches almost every aspect of their lives. In addition, most HS students don't have much of an idea of starting salary levels for different majors so education on this point is a good idea. I think it's a good idea for parents to review all kinds of majors with their HS kids, even ones the parents might not be that familiar with.</p>

<p>My d sounds very similar to the OP's. She's extremely talented academically, but has a wide variety of interests. For eleven years she did competitive dancing until she decided she couldn't deal any more with diva drama. In fact, she's only one the prom committee at school right now because her best friend drug her there, but she does homework in the back because she could care less what the table decorations look like. And, yet, she's fascinated with history and politics, art history, movies (lordy don't mention Twilight and gasp ... Edward). But her love is math. Every day of the week, whether it rains or shines, 2 + 2 = 4. She doesn't have to debate whether two felt passionately led to be with two and thus four was created out of their love, or worse yet ... that three might intervene and cause four to fall away. Can you tell she's taking AP Literature at the moment and I'm hearing about it. Poetry, egads. And she loves being a part of mission trips in church and traveling and meeting people of different cultures. She's been doing this since 5th grade before she ever knew there was anything such as an EC. She acutally asked me at one poinet, "you mean people count these hours?" Never occured to her.</p>

<p>But at the same time, she's good in all her school subjects. So she sits back and debates: engineering because physics and math make sense to me or medicine because I got a 5 on the AP Bio test and I want to help people or pharmacy because my AP chem teacher says I'm a natural and I could use this occupation to make good money, help people, and have flexibility if I want to start a family. She's been driving us crazy with the back and forth. And, then her uncle gets into the mixture -- he's an attorney -- and he's encouraging her to go engineering and law school because his firm's always clamouring for people qualified that way. My head spins just thinking about it. </p>

<p>So, after months of back and forth, she's finally decided she's going to be an engineer. She's so much like her father it's uncanny (he's an engineer. Combustion, actually ... gonna blow up the world <g>). But she realizes this doesn't diminish her options, in fact, it opens up. If she lets her uncle bend her to law school, engineers typically score extremely high on the LSAT. If she wants to do pharmacy, she'll have most of the core reqs in her first two years as an engineering undergrad. Med school, again ... no problem with engineering. And, well, there's always plain engineering. I was like ... but it's so hard to keep the grades up in case she wants one of these other professional degrees, and she's like, "Mom, are you kidding. I'd love all math and science classes. That's easy for me. It's the humanities that make me sweat ... don't make me write and expose something about myself." So engineering here she comes, who knows where she'll end up. :)</g></p>

<p>zebes</p>

<p>The following quote was in response to my post about my dad's undergraduate degree in Greek classics and current job as a patent lawyer...
"The moral: Your father could be happily employed as a patent lawyer who specializes in chemical law a few years earlier had he not gone off path.
He ends up doing what he should be doing 30 years ago. In other word, he realized Greek classics isn't paying the bill."</p>

<p>Since when did my dad consider the Greek classics to be a viable career choice? He majored in the classics because he was passionate about them, and it certainly didn't set him back.
The real moral of my dad's story is that he spent his first four years pursuing something that he loved--Greek literature--and still got into law school at Cornell. That's why I take issue with those who feel they have to have a career-oriented plan from the start of their freshman year.</p>

<p>My coworker--a senior who is graduating this year with distinction in Biology--was worrying today about the prospect of finding a job after college (I was secretly horrified that she hadn't already put a resume on Monster, etc., but I kept my mouth shut). If Biology majors with extensive lab work are worried about finding a job, my blood chills to think of my own job prospects in three years, with a liberal arts degree and multilingualism in geographically unrelated languages (German and Hebrew, oy vey).</p>

<p>Edit: But my mother has a B.A. in Theatre and my dad has a B.A. in History, so at least I can live without fear of parental judgment.</p>

<p>Ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad makes a great point. But I would also extend it beyond engineering. I think most students don't have a clue about most majors. Hard to know whether you will like or be good at psychology, or accounting, or linguistics, or engineering or law if one hasn't had an opportunity to take such courses (even then a HS version or summer class in some of these things often has little bearing on what its like to actually major in it or do it for a living). </p>

<p>Similarly, most students- heck most of us parents- don't have a clue about the vast majority of occupations out there, what they involve, what people do for a living or what kind of person would enjoy such a career. Most of us have a really limited scope of possibilities in our mind based on what we see and our own experiences. I think it's why you see some occupations running in families, such as medicine, or engineering, law enforcement, or teachers. I've found it's really common for PhD students to have a family member who is a professor-- knowing someone 'in the cult' makes it possible to actually see it as a viable career option. I am constantly telling my students about it because despite seeing professors every day, they really don't have an idea about what we do for a living other than lecture, and it never occurs to them that its perfectly realistic career option for many of them.</p>

<p>^
Except that, in most fields (except accounting and maybe clinical psychology), professorship really ISN'T that viable of an option. Most fields are incredibly oversaturated, and many PhDs work as adjuncts for poverty-level wages with no benefits or job security. Only about 25% of English PhDs ever get tenure-track jobs.</p>

<p>I work with k-5 kids and for the older ones who are about to enter middle school, I like to talk about various career opportunities. ASEE has a great publication that lets one know a lot about what the various fields of engineering are <a href="http://www.engineering-goforit.com/3rd-Edition-Options.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.engineering-goforit.com/3rd-Edition-Options.pdf&lt;/a>
I assume other professions have similar offerings.</p>

<p>question-Quest: actually that is not accurate. It is true for many of the humanities but I can name a dozen fields where there are plentiful jobs for PhDs. Though my advice is not about any PhD, but to the fields I'm affiliated with, to whom my students are already on the path in that direction in their undergraduate years.</p>

<p>But the point I was trying to make was not that students should get PHDs but simply that even when exposed to a field everyday (as in seeing four professors a week), students still do not get a sense of what the job of a professor entails (so surely understanding possible careers they don't see every day is even more of a challenge).</p>

<p>just follow your dreams! my mom went to princeton for something to do with art history+ visual arts, my dad went to corpus christi at cambridge for organic chem and pharmacology. Throughout their lives they have worked various jobs unrelated to their college majors, and now both work with computers [which barely existed when they were in school] for my dad's consulting firm. You never know what the future of technology holds. They are both happy and successful and have interests outside of work. Now my older brother is a comp+electrical engineering major at carnegie mellon and im preparing for art school. Just do something you feel passionately about and enjoy yourself, things will work themselves out.</p>

<p>Think about it:</p>

<p>With EVERYONE AND THEIR BROTHER, SISTER, COUSIN, AND NEICE going into applied sciences these days, why would engineering remain the only viable option. The engineering demand will be going down within the next five years, especially as the economic contracts.</p>

<p>The humanities on the other hand, these offer timeless professions</p>

<p>^^ Not true according to most outlooks. Our country still isn't producing enough of certain engineering disciplines including computer science. And not 'everyone' is entering these disciplines - in fact the vast majority aren't.</p>