How to Guide DC as she picks a career

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I agree with the PPs who advise you to let her find her path without adding any pressure to her own self-imposed expectations. At the same time, though, as someone who was very much in your daughter's place 30 years ago, she might need to hear from you that she doesn't need to find the perfect and ideally fulfilling job right now -- or ever -- she just needs to take one step in that direction.

New poster with a DD who is a rising senior in college. This post is very good advice, OP. I realize you want to feel she's on a defined path -- I understand that feeling in a very personal way as a parent of a college student, and we have graduation looming even earlier than you do. So I do get the parental reaction to want more definition, earlier.

But please heed the post above re: the bigger picture. Your DD surely knows, either through discussion with you or just by picking up on your concern, that you feel she should pick a lane soon, for her own good. But the PP is right. The best thing to tell your DD, and she does need to hear it from you more than from anyone else, what PP says in bold above.

I would add that other PPs are right to advise she work with the college's career center, her academic adviser if she has one, etc. But that's going to be on her to organize and pursue after you recommend it--once.

Your DD sounds great. She sounds versatile and flexible. What can look like indecision sometimes really is indecision--but for other people, it can actually be a sign of a person who is going to be good at turning their hands to different subjects. I would not press her too hard right now. Junior year is sometimes a big year for students figuring out these things anyway.

I'll add that while the posters saying it's best to wait and work a while before going to grad school are not wrong, that's not necessarily the best case for everyone. A great deal depends on the field and the individual's own inclinations and finances. I've known folks who waited and ended up not going to grad school because life intervened in the form of relationships, moves, etc. and others who waited, did go back, but could never go back full-time, so getting a grad degree took much longer than if they'd gone full-time directly after undergrad. Your DD's field of study in any grad program, if she does one, will dictate a lot of the timing too.

(I'm glad I did grad school full-time right after undergrad, and hope my own DD will do the same--she's in a field where the pandemic screwed with job prospects for the short term, so grad school would give a little more time for that to settle down. Your DD isn't in that boat, I think, with the interests you describe.)