Background: My daughter is a freshman. I am reading “What High Schools Don’t Tell You” and I love the author’s advice about picking some big lofty goals and working out a plan to achieve them. The problem is my daughter really don’t know what she wants to do (and who can blame her, I didn’t know what I wanted to do at 14), but she knows she loves science.
I liked the part of the book where she lists out potential goals, like “I would like to write a novel” or “I would like to make a major medical discovery.” - She has 50 suggestions, but they are for all kinds of fields, so only a few are science related.
I was hoping to think of a few science-related ones to give my daughter some ideas to help her maybe get a better idea of what she wants to focus on, but I am a comp-sci person so I’m not as familiar with what people do in more science/biology/research related fields. She is enjoying biology right now and has always enjoyed astrophysics and astronomy.
That’s the kind of stuff she loves - anything that they would talk about on “How the Universe Works”, but of course it takes a long time in physics to get to a point where you actually get to study that stuff.
People in biological sciences study primate behavior, discover new species of insects, develop new drugs and therapies for cancer, teach at colleges and universities where they also conduct research, go on to become physicians, veterinarians, dentists… Biology covers a lot of territory. I’ll stop there since I’m less familiar with astrophysics, though it is what my son wants to pursue.
He attended Astronomy Camp in AZ and SSP. He read books like Kip Thorne’s Black Holes and Time Warps. He owns almost every Great Courses’ lecture on physics and astronomy. (If you don’t know what those are, check your library. Audible has them. And they always go on sale for 70% or more off.)
My D thought diseases - everything from physical ones like Ebola to mental ones lie sleep disorders - were fascinating. She was interested in neuroscience first, then epidemiology. She took a pre-college course in each, did an independent study through her HS/a local college with one. Thought about med school but really liked epidemiology.
She applied to college as likely Chem major but changed her mind…but her interests were consistent throughout most of HS in that way. She read books on epi/pandemics, she took Env Sci because she as interested in the ways environment affects disease, she loved math and science anyway so took a lot of that.
I’m not sure she ever had a goal like you’re talking about, but being part of,say, eliminating Zika would have been the sort of one she’d have named as a HS senior. Maybe she did - I didn’t read all her essays
Maybe this is on the more technical side of things and not the easiest read for a high schooler, but in my research field(s), every few years an opinion piece will be published that outlines the major questions in the field and a little about the importance/current progress. Both are free to view without paywall.
The one for biology (language is a quite technical): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610715000115
The one for chemistry (well written for a general audience, skip to pg. 7 for the good stuff): https://gmwgroup.harvard.edu/pubs/pdf/1241.pdf
These pieces provide a little bit of insight into why academic researchers do the work they do, and how exactly science and the search for understanding helps to change the world.
When I was a high schooler there’s no way I would have thought quite so deeply about global problems, nor would I have known where to begin. I just knew I loved reading about how things worked and asking ‘why?’ I bought old med/bio/chem textbooks from the library discard piles and tried to read and comprehend as much as I could (usually not all that much, but maybe some osmosis happened). I remember being fascinated with brain chemistry at some point, then viruses, then prosthetics…
The biggest questions of public relevance are also correlate well to the ones that are most funded by the government. There’s huge push to understand Alzheimers disease and find a treatment- there have been some pretty prominent disappointments in pharma for Alzheimers treatments in the past few years. The cancer moonshot, better batteries strong/large enough to power entire communities and hold the energy collected during the day from the sun, ways to artificially close the CO2 cycle so we can use CO2 as a source of fuel (aka. artificial photosynthesis), controlling pain without opioids, etc. Unfortunately, the media doesn’t write about scientific research in a compelling way most of the time, so it’s hard to read the news and appreciate the value of research.
My favorite places for reading about science in very accessible language:
Science Daily
Scientific American
Aeon
@kutter I read that same book when my son was a freshman in HS. (He’s now a freshman in college.) Back then, I had him look at the list of lofty goals and mark ones that he liked. We used those to start a shared Google Doc with ideas about what he could do during school years and summers. His favorites in the list were:
There were a bunch that didn’t resonate at all. Since there were already plenty that fit him, he didn’t go on to make up more.
Anyway, that was our starting guidance when looking for summer and school-year opportunities. He has done some cool astronomy things and some cool computer things. He got to work on curriculum design for elementary kids. And, he did some unrelated things that he still loved. No time travel work yet , but he will likely be working on a research project for NASA at JPL this summer.
Anyway, if she loves science, make sure she has the opportunity to shine in math. That keeps the doors open for any science field. Some comp-sci background is super useful these days in almost any science field, including biology.
I’ll give a perspective from an older parent (kids graduated from college). Let the kid be a kid. Outside of her academic commitments, consider encouraging her do something different from science. It’s nice to have a counterbalance from other pursuits.
My son loved science and was especially gifted in mathematics (he went to a state math competition in middle school). I let him follow his other passions in ms/hs. He was a fantastic musician and really enjoyed many activities (piano lessons, marching band, jazz band, composing for school plays etc). So that’s what I let him do. He still was able to go to at top engineering school. He’s now a software engineer with some interesting music hobbies on the side. .
I had no lofty goals. I know I liked Math and Science. I majored in Electrical Engineering and now work as an engineer in Telecom. It’s okay not to know exactly what you want to do.
Ditto # 10. Let the kid be a kid. She will evolve/mature in her interests- even in college. This will happen without paying attention or having her spend extra time with it.
I strongly declared I was only going to take the minimum two years of required science (integrated- all subjects combined each year) in HS as a freshman. I was a chemistry major in college who then chose medicine. Son- gifted and in many areas- took both math and physics sequences in college plus additional courses. Eventually chose math, honors so did grad courses (unlike my lab research for chemistry honors) but added computer science courses to finish off that major as well instead of math grad school- now in computer software. Fellow chemistry major went for computer science with her masters.
It will be interesting for you to see how your D’s life unfolds. It takes patience to wait and see. Be sure to let her explore many interests through her HS classes and activities. No need to stick with any all four years if she discovers they are not her thing.
In college I took a wide variety of electives, as did my friends in my major. So did my son. All people are multifaceted. My H had an Indian medical education- no opportunities to take the wide variety but straight sciences/medical subjects from post HS onwards.
I find it interesting that the assumption is that the parent is going to create a to do list for the child. I didn’t read it that way. I read it more as offering ideas to think about. I share ideas that I think my kids will be interested in all of the time. They can make the decision to ignore the suggestions or they can opt to pursue them. They have much more limited life experiences and we as parents can see things about them that they may not recognize in themselves. No reason to not expose them to lots of ideas to contemplate.
My daughter is going to pursue a degree in physics, particle physics is her area of interest. She loves doing research. I don’t think she knew what she was going to major in when she was only a freshman, though.
Hey, curious rising freshmen here. Typically when I stick with my gut, I turn out to be right. I have a strong passion for chemistry and biology and have been looking at some pretty competitive medical schools for college. I’ve planned out my classes and everything, but I know that anything can change between today and when I take classes at my high school. What if I find out my passion is in law and I’ve been taking classes in per-med up until junior year? Is it a good idea to plan like this before high school?
Octobug22- medical school follows college and you don’t need the most elite college, you just need to do very well. Plus- you are just beginning HS. A lot happens in the next three years until you figure out colleges to apply to. Then there’s the eye opening college experience. It is fine to think you want to be a physician now but that is one possible future. Several years ago another woman undergrad chemistry classmate and I wondered if we should have gone the other’s route- she did the chem PhD and I the MD. So many paths.
Everyone is multifaceted. HS has rigid requirements that guarantee you will get a variety of subjects, actually colleges also have breadth requirements as well. Premed is an intention, not even a college major. Your HS experience will prepare you for any major at many colleges. Your college major can be anything if you plan on medical school- you just need to take the requisite courses, do well and the other things. Likewise you can major in anything in college for law school.
Plan the most rigorous versions of HS classes available to you. Be sure to have four years worth (middle school counts) of a single foreign language. The math, language arts, social studies for college admissions is likely required by your HS. Adding in music, sports, art to round out your education is good. Plus, top students tend to need more to do than the minimum. Plan on no study halls to max out your classes. Take some for the fun of it, regardless of them being “useful” for college. Live your life for the present, not just the future.
PS- I stated I was only going to take the required two years of HS science when I was a freshman- was a college chemistry major. Don’t worry about your current passions. They may/may not change.
Ditto “Let the kid be a kid.”
That said, when my son was a freshman he started off in the school’s science research program (which he hated and dropped out of), but one thing he did as part of that program was read ten articles from *Scientific American * every week. It gave him a good look at all the science out there and we still subscribe to it even though he’s long since graduated. He was much more interested in teaching himself Linux and modding computer games. He ended up majoring in CS and minoring in physics.
When my daughter was in seventh grade she told us, “I want to be an epidemiologist.” My clueless social-scientist husband asked, “Why do you want to be a skin doctor?” Like @OHMomof2 's daughter, my girl wants to study infectious disease and, almost nine years after making her announcement at dinner, public health is still something that makes her eyes light up. However, the daily grind of research was less than intriguing for her and she proved to be seriously challenged as a freshman when she first worked in a lab setting. But now that she’s doctor shadowing and working in a clinical setting, she has found that she “forgets about time because the day goes so fast” when she’s involved in patient care. I feel like that she found her passion and the kind of setting she wants to work in to pursue it. I’m just glad she had the time and the opportunity to pursue her passion and refine it a bit.
, but he will likely be working on a research project for NASA at JPL this summer.