Volume 27 · Number 2 · Winter 2010
Parents
Major Decision
For some students and their parents, picking a field of study comes down to this: love or money?
Music major or pre-law? Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky showed obvious musical talents at a young age, but his parents apparently werenÃt sure he would make it as a musician. They sent him to the Imperial School of Jurisprudence to prepare for a career in civil service and, after nine years at the boarding school, he worked four years as a clerk in the Ministry of Justice before deciding to go for the music career. And all the parents of little Nutcracker snowflakes have been awfully glad he did. (Jan Conroy/UC Davis)
Choosing a major can be difficult and stressful. For parents, that is. It’s hard to persuade your kid to pick a field that will lead to gainful employment or medical school within half an hour of graduation.
Oh, wait. I’ve just been informed that some people feel students should be the ones to choose their major, on the theory that the search for self should be conducted by the individual, not by mom and dad.
Are you kidding me? College students? What do they know? In high school, kids choose classes from maybe a dozen disciplines, including study hall, with its limited professional applications. Suddenly in college they face more than a hundred possible majors — many of which will prepare them to borrow large sums for postgraduate degrees. Once they finish college and enter the real world, these young adults will select among countless career options in thousands of industries and enterprises, none of which are hiring right now, but thank you very much for calling.
So 18-year-olds are bound to be dazed and confused, while their parents have the mature perspective on college and the job market that you can only get with the aid of trifocals. When my husband was an undergraduate more than 30 years ago, his father guided him away from a degree in the newfangled field of computer science. Phew! Good thing he didn’t get stuck on the ground floor of that passing fad.
Despite our collective wisdom, not all parents believe that students need supervision to choose their major. I guess it just depends on your view of the college experience. Are the undergraduate years the last breath of childhood or the first whiff of the real world? (Just a little friendly advice: Never pose this question to students who are paying for their own education. Yowza!) Assuming parents are footing the bill, there are at least two schools of thought.
One group believes students need to grow up and recognize that college is an investment. They expect kids to choose a major based on future earning potential, even if that choice takes the skip out of their step. Another group feels that college is a golden opportunity to explore intellectual passions. They advise kids to take a wide range of classes and try out several majors until they find one that fits, without concern for financial return. Don’t worry! There will be plenty of time in the future to take the skip out of their step. A few months of unemployment should suffice.
Maybe a career is too much to ask from a major. I happen to know that Manhattan’s Naked Cowboy majored in political science. The former bodybuilder plays guitar in Times Square wearing nothing more than a cowboy hat, boots and tighty-whities. He’s the third most popular tourist attraction in New York City, right after the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. I hear he earns more than $1,000 a day.
I’m not saying that political science is the right major for your child. I’m just saying that the paths to personal success are often circuitous, and some require bodybuilding. Ask the governor.
After all, the undergraduate years are only a beginning. I know a web designer who majored in art history. A piano teacher who majored in anthropology. A French literature major who became an olive farmer. A biochemistry major who did graduate studies in hotel management. As well as a slew of engineers who majored in . . . well, engineering.
And then there’s my friend Bob’s brother, who loves his job as a math teacher at an inner-city high school. Bob’s brother majored in psychology, after auditioning majors in electrical engineering, botany, German and the field of “undeclared.” His parents were unfazed by his academic explorations. They just kept asking, “Have you thought about what kind of doctor you’d like to be?” As the youngest of a large brood of highly accomplished siblings, Bob’s brother didn’t have to become a doctor. A lawyer was also OK. I guess it’s every parent’s dream to one day have significant medical and legal problems.
Oh wait, successful young adults, that’s the goal. Sometimes parents view an undergraduate degree as just a stepping stone to further studies, a prestigious job, and financial reward. Show me the money! They assume personal fulfillment will follow. And if it doesn’t, well, they hope that one day their children will grow to love their hedge funds.
In Bob’s family, his parents made many sacrifices to raise their children in America. They expected everyone to dig into the American cornucopia of higher education because back in the old country, anyone privileged enough to attend college is given only two choices. Students who are good at math and science become engineers. Those who excel at arts or the humanities become unhappy engineers. Whereas here in the United States, college students have the additional opportunities of becoming unhappy doctors or unhappy lawyers.
So Bob’s brother attended law school, passed the bar, and has never worked a day as an attorney. He’s taught high school for more than a decade, supports his family, and enjoys playing golf in the summer with his big brother, Bob. His parents have accepted his path, although occasionally his father will ask wistfully, “Have you thought about what kind of lawyer you’d like to be?”
Guiding kids through their undergraduate years so they manage to acquire marketable job skills is probably beyond the scope of a parent like me, who majored in history and stood blinking in the headlights after graduation. Like most college students, I chose a major based on the answers to burning personal questions: What do I want to do with my life? Why won’t anyone pay me to do that?
Sometimes parents successfully nudge kids into a major that suits their wallets rather than their interests. Doing that at the expense of a good family relationship seems like a lousy investment to me, even by those creative Wall Street accounting standards. Still, we’re living in an ugly economy. I see no harm in telling students the truth: If you delay graduation long enough, pretty soon your parents will agree to any major, as long as you hurry up and finish the dang degree.
Robin DeRieux can be reached at rdderieux@yahoo.com.