How can I get my child interested in a science major
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Anonymous
No, you're not. Parent the child you actually have -- the one who is 16 years old, loves dance, and does not currently want to major in science. |
Anonymous
| My sister originally wanted to go to culinary school. She ended up getting a BS in food science, followed by a PhD in chemistry. She now works at a good start up in the bay area making good money and doing cool stuff. |
Anonymous
| "How to make my child into an unhappy adult and make her feel like a failure in my eyes at the same time? " should be the title of this. |
Anonymous
Yep. A while ago I dated a guy who worked in finance but his true love was gardens. He wanted to be a landscape architect but did not pursue it because his dad thought it was not a good career choice. He was a nice guy but miserable with his work and I could see that a long-term relationship with him would end up making me miserable too. |
Anonymous
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OP, you cannot "get [your] child interested in science major". There are things you can do, including compelling her to get one by refusing to provide any financial support for college if she doesn't, but you can't change what's happening in her brain. I also would be less concerned about what a HS junior insists is her life passion, less convinced that a STEM major is the path to stability, and more interested in ensuring that my DD has the tools to make well-informed life decisions.
This is what she's interested in right now, so use it as a teaching moment. Teach her how to evaluate what it will take to be successful at her dreams. Have her shadow someone at a dance studio or work for a caterer or restaurant over the summer. Talk to her about what it takes to run a small business...or better yet, have her do some web research on it. Maybe she'll decide immediately that the difficulties of this career path are not for her, or maybe she'll continue to pursue it with open eyes and a determination to best prepare herself for what this career will take. If she does the latter, I promise you the skills she learns will serve her well and ultimately help her be self-sufficient in whatever she ends up deciding to do. But the biggest disservice you can do to an adolescent is simply tell them they are wrong or dismiss their chioces. She will defy you, and she will very likely go about these dreams in a way that doesn't make sense. -- Person who has a STEM PhD but whose parents, both MDs, told her she would never be able to earn much money or even marry a good provider (wut?) because she would only meet college professor. Every parent tries to make their kids in their mold, and the more they try the more they will fail. |
Anonymous
| My best friend in college started out as an electrical engineering major. Grades went south pretty fast. She ended up getting a major in dance, and then went to grad school for IT... and that's what her job was afterwards. EE wasn't really her thing... and it showed in her grades. You can try to put a square peg in a circle, but it will never fit. |
Anonymous
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Oh Christ.
Nothing pisses me off more than overprivileged people with massive familial safety nets droning on about "finding your passion." Fuck passion. Poverty sucks. Insecurity sucks. Not being able to get what your peers are getting sucks. Denying your child things sucks. So, culinary school. Bad idea. Bad, bad, bad idea. Awful. #1. Best chefs in the world never went to no culinary school. They were sold off at age twelve to peel potatoes and slowly rose through the ranks. This is how people advance in the food service business. And - please have your daughter read this - to a chef who hires her, if he WILL hire her, it will make like zero fucks of a difference whether she went to culinary school or not. She will still start peeling potatoes, just like Jose from Pueblo right next to her. Except Jose doesn't have any student debt OR a chip on his shoulder. He is actually pleased peeling potatoes. Will your daughter be? Catering business? Again, most cooks behind catering businesses never went to culinary schools. Bullshit idea. #2. Restaurant kitchen work sucks, for a woman. Most won't hire her except for pattiseur section. She'll work next to rude, over-testosteroned, over-tattoed, substance-abusing men. She will work when everyone else is off. Her dating life will be largely limited to other men in the business. Her hands and back will be ruined by at 29 - because when you have to haul a sack of frozen chicken from a reach in, ain't no one in the kitchen caring that you are a lady. You aren't. So get used to heavy loads and a hazardous work environment. #3. There is no money in it. A good sous chef in a GOOD restaurant makes like 60K. That guy has put in 15+ years in the kitchen. He is making 60K. Please read this until it sinks in. Money margins in food businesses are ridiculously low. The best way to make your daughter understand this is to have an unpaid stage in a kitchen. Let her see if she enjoys being on her feet for 8+ hr straight washing dishes by hand, peeling potatoes or prepping veg. Let her talk to an actual chef. See the look of amazement and pity in his eyes. While you're at it, look at his hands and have her ask herself if she'd like her hands to look like that. Having said this, if your daughter likes the IDEA of being around food and catering...have her major in something tangentially related but USEFUL. Like hotel management or hospitality. Or business. Or accounting. Or marketing. Because you know, the catering business doesn't succeed on the strength of its burgers, it succeeds on the strength of its marketing and business rigor. Dance, I just can't. Have her talk to dance teachers scrounging for lessons and making like 30K. And hustling. Really hustling. That's the tragedy of this, that you can sink $$ into your education, and then work really hard, and in both of these jobs you will make very little money. And because education isn't really necessary for any of them, you'll be in a much worse position than someone who just went to work these jobs, without student debt, and without expectations. I would never allow my child to go into any of this. You have the right instinct not to. |
Anonymous
How old is your child? Once your child is 18, you can't not allow it. You can stomp around and shout. You can refuse to provide money. You can throw your child out of the house. You can cut off contact with your child. But you can't not allow your child. Your child will make their own decisions. |
Anonymous
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PP at 15:21 wins the DCUM award for doing the best job of confirming an OP's biases and telling an OP precisely what OP wants to hear.
Too bad neither 15:21 nor OP paid any attention to how several PPs much earlier already suggested having the daughter get a job in catering or a restaurant, so she can see what it's like at the lowest level. And several PPs mentioned to OP already that the DD could study hospitality or business. Those aren't exactly goopy, romanticized "follow you passion" suggestions. |
Anonymous
| You can always encourage her to lock down a STEM provider. |
Anonymous
I am telling her god's honest truth as someone who spent years in restaurant kitchens, unlike you privileged bitches who ooh and aaah over your plates but have no idea that a guy who made your food needs five Advils just to get to the end of the shift, that he doesn't have health insurance and never will, that he never gets home before 2 am, that he spent the last twenty New Year's nights working, and that his back has gone to shit at age 28, and that he is only allowed a day off when his mother dies. That an expensive degree in this field is useless. That's not a bias. That's an actual fact of life, the life that most of you will never know. |
Anonymous
My children are 21 and 17 and I didn't allow it the same way my parents didn't - by brainwashing them, like I was, since age five that financial security must be their goal. Ergo, occupations that didn't offer that didn't occur to me as possibilities. Ergo, both my children are headed to moneymaking fields. Their passion is their business. I wouldn't need to cut off contact or throw them out of the house or do any of that stupid stuff. Being poor will be their best punishment and the best vaccination from stupid decisions that lead that way. |
Anonymous
That happened because they were outstanding businesswomen, not outstanding dancers. |
Anonymous
And THAT is an actual problem. Because if she was BORN to cook or to dance...you and she would both know it already. |
Anonymous
That's because you have no idea how professional cooks live. Have you lived that life for a week, you would have thanked your stars for your law degree. You think your life would have been exactly the same as now, except you'd spend nine to five cooking? |