<p>My D is a freshman at a LAC (Dickinson), and is taking a 3rd semester Italian class. She is undecided about her major, but is strongly considering psychology. Her Italian professor has encouraged her to consider an Italian minor, and offered to be her minor advisor.</p>
<p>D has asked my opinion on if she should do it. Italian was one of her favorite classes in HS, and she likes her Italian class, but has never really considered majoring in Italian. She may want to study abroad in Italy. </p>
<p>D is the only freshman in her 3rd semester Italian class, and I assume that is because Italian is not very commonly taught in HS. It makes some sense that the professor is trying to recruit additional Italian minors, since Italian is not overly popular. (During move-in time, there were posters around campus encouraging students to take the 1st semester Italian class.) </p>
<p>My immediate reaction is that she doesn't need to decide anything yet. The only decision she needs to make now is if she should take the next Italian class next semester. The class she is taking now fulfills her graduation language requirement, so she could stop now if she wanted to. The minor would require 5 additional classes beyond the class she is now taking. </p>
<p>Are there any benefits to minoring in a foreign language, especially a not-so-common one like Italian? Spanish would probably be more useful (but isn't on the table). </p>
<p>Any CC wisdom? She will be home this coming weekend for fall break and I wanted to consider the question before discussing it with her again.</p>
<p>I think a minor cannot possibly hurt anything. Most schools, a minor only has about 6 courses. If she is already on the 6th course, it really only means she has to take 3 more classes. If she likes it that much, she should go for it!</p>
<p>Well sure, if she wants to work in Italy – makes tons of sense. If she’s going to do a study abroad she might not have to do the “international school” route. A good friend of my older son was a poli sci/Spanish double major. He does no longer lives in the US and is a ex-pat worker in Spain. Another friend minored in German and has been working in Germany since graduate school. Also a second language is simply fun. Minors are fairly meaningless and I encouraged both my older kids to minor in something they found fun and interesting. For the oldest it was English and for the second it is Geography.</p>
<p>It can’t hurt. Based on what you say, it would likely make her happy. It may set her apart for grad school or a job depending on what she wants to do. She should check out what type of study abroad Dickinson has for Italy, if they have a center there, and if she could take a psychology class at the university. If she plans on going into counseling, it’ll help her see into other cultures and their viewpoints, which is essential (although in the US Italian won’t be directly useful, that “intercultural communication” knowledge based on personal experience is invaluable). If she is going abroad after “italian 4” or “italian 5”, she’d probably be done with her minor then, or have one extra class to take, tops.
I’d say “go for it”, I can’t see a downside.</p>
<p>I think taking a good chunk of classes in a foreign language is always a good idea.</p>
<p>The credential of earning a minor, maybe it wouldn’t mean a lot for your daughter. But it would probably mean a fair amount for the Italian program, which is always going to be concerned with justifying its existence to admins. If your daughter is interested in being an active alum and having a say in Dickinson’s long-term future, that’s something to consider.</p>
<p>But more importantly and self-interestedly, if she’s going for a big major like psych, she’ll probably get more attention, better advising and mentoring out of her Italian minor than her nominal major. Something like that can have a positive effect on college and post-college success even when the subject matter isn’t directly applicable to anything.</p>
<p>Language skills are always valuable. If she takes enough Italian to be fluent, it would be a breeze for her to pick up Spanish too, if she wants to do that later.</p>
<p>If it were me, I’d go ahead and start taking whatever courses you need for a minor. As others have said it can’t hurt and it may help. From experience being fluent in one Romance languages makes the others much, much easier. If at some point she gets tired of taking Italian classes she doesn’t have to stick with it.</p>
<p>I would think there is no business reason to get the minor. What is useful - is to be fluent in another language. You do not need a minor to do this. </p>
<p>On her resume - what counts (if it applies to the job) is “fluent in spoken and written Italian” … what really won’t matter to employers is a line that says “Minor in Italian”</p>
<p>If she ever wants to teach Italian -useful. If she just wants to do it for the “degree” good for her. </p>
<p>My son is going to finish college fluent in two languages - no minor in either. </p>
<p>Another thought might be to take another course of Italian and try another language.</p>
<p>My kid is almost done with her minor in Japanese. It has introduced her to others interested in that language, and offered opportunities to socialize in organized outings. I don’t think she is close to being fluent, but she likes it.</p>
<p>My d. was a double major in Italian, and is now finishing up a dual Ph.D. in musicology/Italian. Having said that, what is important is fluency, not the minor per se. Unless your d. is thinking about graduate school in the humanities, having the minor recorded isn’t going to make any difference to anyone.</p>
<p>Agree that there is a difference between the fluency required to work in another language (or culture) versus a college certifying that you took x classes to fulfill requirements for a minor, including lit and culture. </p>
<p>I’m not sure why so many feel Spanish is a more useful 2nd language, except casually- it really depends on how she intends to use her major. If she intends to specialize in, say, Spanish history, it makes sense. Depends on the focus. Even if she vaguely thinks she may become a counselor, she’d have to be mighty proficient to serve a native Spanish-speaking clientele.</p>
<p>I would recommend continuing in Italian and taking those Italian classes which she enjoys - if she ends up with the minor, fine - if not, also fine. Depending upon what major she chooses she may or may not be able to get the Italian classes in for the minor.</p>
<p>^That really depends on the department. My son has taken Arabic every term and spent a full year in Jordan - and he still doesn’t have quite enough for an Arabic minor.</p>
<p>I would leave it up to your D. If she enjoys it, fine. DD2 has a minor in Japanese. She just enjoyed the language and wanted to do it. I asked if she could get a job in Japan but they use a formal version of the language for business so it would be useless for that. But she loved her semester abroad.</p>
<p>Most likely the Italian Prof noticed that your DD was a talented and motivated student and needs more students like that in her classes. I know my DD’s High School economics teacher (mandatory class) encouraged her to take the AP Economics class for the same reasons. My DD liked the class and did sign up and continues to enjoy it.
If she wants to do a semester abroad in Italy, why not?</p>
<p>OP here. I guess one of my key questions is if an Italian minor would be helpful for future career or grad school prospects? Or if there are other benefits, such as forming a good relationship with a minor advisor and other professors in a small department. </p>
<p>One concern I have is that if she decides now to do an Italian minor, it would make her less likely to add a different minor or double major in the future if she came across another subject that she became interested in, which might end up being more useful career-wise. Of course students change their majors all the time, so she COULD change her mind about a minor, just that knowing her personality, once she made a decision she would be LESS LIKELY to change it later. While she certainly enjoys Italian, I don’t think she would be thinking about minoring in it at this stage, if the professor hadn’t suggested it. </p>
<p>She is likely to study abroad, regardless of whether she does the minor or not, but it might influence her on Italy vs Australia, which is another country she is interested in.</p>
<p>The general usefulness of minors for social science or humanities majors isn’t really clear to me. I’m an engineer and tend to discourage the high schoolers on CC who are planning to major in engineering but thinking about double majoring or minoring in something else, since it wouldn’t be much of a benefit in an engineering job search, and would likely require additional semesters in school, because engineering majors allow so little schedule flexibility. However, social science and humanities majors have a lot more freedom in their schedules, so adding a minor would likely not influence graduating on time. (My S’14 is on track to graduate on time with a poli sci major and two minors - econ and legal studies, and could probably add a history and/or classics minor pretty easily, except his college won’t allow more than 2 minors. The legal studies minor wasn’t really planned for - he just realized that it came for free from the classes he had already taken.)</p>
<p>Of course the decision belongs to D. I’m just gathering info and thinking about it before discussing the possible pros/cons with her.</p>