Daughter ruining career prospects

[Anonymous]

I posted this on the College forum, but I thought this forum might be better for finding ways to help my daughter. DH and I are in a tricky situation right now where DD is being immature:

Our daughter has always been an idealist. She is a junior at an Ivy, and we first advised her to major in Econ, Applied Math, or Statistics for good job prospects. However, her idealistic nature led her to declare a History major. DH and I told her the immense importance of summer internships for humanities majors, as the coursework alone is nowhere near specific to get her a job post-grad. This past summer, she completed an internship in the business arm of a FAANG company.

[Anonymous]

What’s the question?

[Anonymous]

Agreed, what is the problem?

[Anonymous]

Sorry it cut off -- here's the rest:

She decided not to pursue that internship again as she really disliked it. This past summer and fall, she applied to around ~150 Summer 2023 internships at this point and received around a dozen first-round interviews and a couple second-round interviews (some of them at very good companies, like MBB and Bridgewater -- but no offers on those).

She has not been able to receive an offer until today. She just got an offer a couple hours ago with a "knowledge broker" (whatever that is).

She does not want to take the offer and instead wants to work as a summer camp counselor. DH and I are extremely disappointed in her -- we all know how important the junior summer internship is for landing a good job post-grad. It is frustrating beyond belief that she would rather be a summer camp counselor than doing a pretty legitimate corporate internship during her most important summer.

Does anyone have any tips to try to convince her? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Good for her for wanting to do something fun that will give her real skills instead of a BS internship at a BS company.

[Anonymous]

Oh for heaven's sake. Leave her alone. I say this as the mom of 4 college graduates, all gainfully employed, not all of whom had junior year internships.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good for her for wanting to do something fun that will give her real skills instead of a BS internship at a BS company.

Well, I've looked at the internship, and it seems very legitimate. Their former interns have good placement into full-time roles in strategy and management consulting.

And please do tell -- what "real skills" does a summer camp counselor gain?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh for heaven's sake. Leave her alone. I say this as the mom of 4 college graduates, all gainfully employed, not all of whom had junior year internships.

I bet they were all in practical majors, no?

[Anonymous]

You need to back off. A summer counselor is fine. An internship will not make or break her career.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure she's the immature one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good for her for wanting to do something fun that will give her real skills instead of a BS internship at a BS company.

Well, I've looked at the internship, and it seems very legitimate. Their former interns have good placement into full-time roles in strategy and management consulting.

And please do tell -- what "real skills" does a summer camp counselor gain?

If you can’t think of the soft and hard skills it takes to work as a camp counselor, then you are not very bright.

[Anonymous]

You need to relax. I just posted. Do you realize many CEOs have liberal arts majors? Undergrad is irrelevant. She can do grad school if she wants something else.

I was an English major. I have a master’s in literature. I make 200k (more than my fed attorney ex husband).

[Anonymous]

You AGAIN?

Clearly your daughter is rebelling against you after what i suspect is a lifetime of you being overbearing and pressuring her. She is taking pleasure in yanking your chain. I suggest you say "that sounds great dear, but you know dad and I can't fund you at all after you graduate, so just as long as you are clear on that, I say go for it."

Basically she is rebelling like a young teen because she probably never got that chance when she was in high school because you were on her case all the time.

[Anonymous]

Maybe if you hadn’t pushed her to apply to A HUNDRED FIFTY!!!! internships she wouldn’t be so goddamn burnt out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You AGAIN?

Clearly your daughter is rebelling against you after what i suspect is a lifetime of you being overbearing and pressuring her. She is taking pleasure in yanking your chain. I suggest you say "that sounds great dear, but you know dad and I can't fund you at all after you graduate, so just as long as you are clear on that, I say go for it."

Basically she is rebelling like a young teen because she probably never got that chance when she was in high school because you were on her case all the time.

And I should say, I actually agree with you that this is a dumb move on her part -- the summer to work as a camp counselor is after freshman year, not junior year, even for a social sciences/humanities major (which I was myself). But you created this problem and the best thing you can do now is to practice radical acceptance and let her figure this out in her own time.