Pray that she marries well.

Sounds like she just doesn’t care and using the sellout thing as an excuse.

Does she know where all her nice things and good experiences come from? They aren’t conjured from nothing. They cost money.

Is she spoiled?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:By the way she is 14, so of course she still has a lot of time to change her mind.

Wait, she's 14? Holy cow, just smile and nod and tell her you admire her passion and let her grow up over the next 3-4 years before you so much as mention it again. She is going to change her views and opinions and passions 3928475903245x before she gets to the end of high school.

+1000 and this is the right answer even if she was 20

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:By the way she is 14, so of course she still has a lot of time to change her mind.

Wait, she's 14? Holy cow, just smile and nod and tell her you admire her passion and let her grow up over the next 3-4 years before you so much as mention it again. She is going to change her views and opinions and passions 3928475903245x before she gets to the end of high school.

That’s what I thought until she decided it’s okay to get Cs and Ds because capitalism is bad.

So is her goal to be a prepper and live off the grid growing vegetables and sewing her own clothes?

Because literally anything else requires a high school diploma, capitalistic or not.

This probably won’t work, but you can make the argument that by not doing well or applying herself in school she is actually playing right into the hands of capitalists and robber barons. They would love to keep people in their place by using the established system to keep them down, what they don’t want is people rising through their ranks, playing the system to their advantage and then getting into positions of power and authority where they can actually make a difference

Anonymous wrote:By the way she is 14, so of course she still has a lot of time to change her mind.

How convenient that her “morals” enable her to focus on her hobbies and blow off school work. Someone who feels this strongly about a flawed capitalist society, certainly could try to be the change in the world. She could find a number of ways to contribute. Law school, policy, agricultural work, teaching, Peace Corp, social work - the list is endless. She sounds lazy and this would not fly in my house. I don’t care what my kid ends up doing for her job, but make no mistake her current job is school, and that is what she should be focusing on. My DD has plenty of time to do other things.

My DS is like this at 16. I think it's a Gen Z prevailing attitude. They grew up with social media, the pandemic, climate change and extremely dysfunctional politics. They are very jaded and cynical about the status quo and how it came about.

Perhaps she is learning the art and stress of being judgy from you. I would recommend having a clear picture of what it is she wants, what it will take to get there and go from there.

I have seen the biggest sell outs in the nonprofit sector and the most generous and benevolent folks truly working for public good in all sectors. Note that sometimes to get in the position of doing good impactful things, you have to sell out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:By the way she is 14, so of course she still has a lot of time to change her mind.

Wait, she's 14? Holy cow, just smile and nod and tell her you admire her passion and let her grow up over the next 3-4 years before you so much as mention it again. She is going to change her views and opinions and passions 3928475903245x before she gets to the end of high school.

That’s what I thought until she decided it’s okay to get Cs and Ds because capitalism is bad.

Tell her she will have more opportunities to talk about philosophy, linguistics, and Marxism with super smart and principled people in college, and open more doors to meaningful work, if she keeps her grades up now.

I don't know why you need to convince her it's fine to be a corporate lawyer at age 14.

Anonymous wrote:By the way she is 14, so of course she still has a lot of time to change her mind.

Wait, she's 14? Holy cow, just smile and nod and tell her you admire her passion and let her grow up over the next 3-4 years before you so much as mention it again. She is going to change her views and opinions and passions 3928475903245x before she gets to the end of high school.

There is nothing wrong with needing to find intrinsic value in your work beyond a paycheck. It's how we get teachers and social workers and physical therapists and every other "helping profession". Some people are totally okay with working for a paycheck to fund the things that bring them value and enjoyment. (My spouse literally could not care less about the projects he works on--only that they provide a steady paycheck and he enjoys the people he works with). Other people need their job to provide value (I chose my field because it is intrinsically rewarding to me to help people one on one).

How old is your child? If she already has a business degree, my advice would be very different than if she's a junior in HS.

But regardless, I'm not sure sharing stories of morally corrupt lawyers to compare to worker bee lawyers is going to change her mind.

By the way she is 14, so of course she still has a lot of time to change her mind.

Anonymous wrote:I think you are going about this wrong. How old is DD?

When a young adult says "ugh, I don't want to be a corporate sellout," often what they really mean is that they don't want to do something boring for money. It's not really about principles or ethics. It's about looking at middle aged people who have boring jobs they don't even seem to like that much, but do them because they pay reasonably well and they have kids and a mortgage. That lifestyle (which, by they way, basically describes my life) looks really, really unappealing to a young person who still holds onto a dream of doing something more meaningful than being a working stiff. And I get why (again, my life).

Instead of trying to draw these distinctions between an Amazon lawyer and a corrupt doctor, I would instead have conversations with her about how to navigate the practical need to support yourself and your family financially (and ideally in a stable career) and also the individual drive for meaning and purpose in life. The happiest people I know are those who found a way to marry those two things together.

Even if we just take the two professions you've mentioned so far, lawyer and doctor, you can talk through with her how someone plans a career in these professions to hold onto some of that idealistic drive for meaning.

Do you know how someone winds up as a lawyer at Amazon, sort of not being very proud of themselves but also appreciating the paycheck? They do it by making few choices in law school and afterwards to drive their legal career towards something more meaningful. They took a job with some big law firm and wound up in the employment group for no reason than because they wanted to avoid M&A, and then they hated the law firm life so they looked for in house positions and Amazon's needs matched up with their experience (at a job they didn't even like that much).

If, on the other hand, they'd thoughtfully considered which areas of law they found most interesting and rewarding, focus on finding internships and fellowships in those areas, and then taken a job with a firm (bit or small or midsize) that specialized in that kind of law, they'd be positioned to take a lot of different jobs (in policy, in-house, or at a firm) that actually plays to their interests and feels meaningful to them.

Same with a doctor. You can become a doctor without becoming a claims adjuster for an insurance company. You just need to not sleepwalk through your career.

I don't think coming up with hypotheticals of very morally corrupt professionals is going to make your DD settle on a major or pick a career.

No, for DD it is 100% about principles and ethics. I admire that, but she is young and her understanding of it is immature. She has read a lot of Marx and books about how we are in this late capitalism society and hates the idea of contributing to the system by being part of it. She reads things about abandoning morals for money and seems to assume most jobs are like that and therefore undesirable. She loves gardening, sewing, baking, art, etc., along with more intellectual pursuits of philosophy, linguistics, etc. and is spending all her time on that instead of schoolwork, thus getting crappy grades. I am totally okay with her working the land while she reads books but I hate the idea that she is going to cut off opportunities to work some tolerable but unrewarding corporate job so she can actually have hobbies.

I think you are going about this wrong. How old is DD?

When a young adult says "ugh, I don't want to be a corporate sellout," often what they really mean is that they don't want to do something boring for money. It's not really about principles or ethics. It's about looking at middle aged people who have boring jobs they don't even seem to like that much, but do them because they pay reasonably well and they have kids and a mortgage. That lifestyle (which, by they way, basically describes my life) looks really, really unappealing to a young person who still holds onto a dream of doing something more meaningful than being a working stiff. And I get why (again, my life).

Instead of trying to draw these distinctions between an Amazon lawyer and a corrupt doctor, I would instead have conversations with her about how to navigate the practical need to support yourself and your family financially (and ideally in a stable career) and also the individual drive for meaning and purpose in life. The happiest people I know are those who found a way to marry those two things together.

Even if we just take the two professions you've mentioned so far, lawyer and doctor, you can talk through with her how someone plans a career in these professions to hold onto some of that idealistic drive for meaning.

Do you know how someone winds up as a lawyer at Amazon, sort of not being very proud of themselves but also appreciating the paycheck? They do it by making few choices in law school and afterwards to drive their legal career towards something more meaningful. They took a job with some big law firm and wound up in the employment group for no reason than because they wanted to avoid M&A, and then they hated the law firm life so they looked for in house positions and Amazon's needs matched up with their experience (at a job they didn't even like that much).

If, on the other hand, they'd thoughtfully considered which areas of law they found most interesting and rewarding, focus on finding internships and fellowships in those areas, and then taken a job with a firm (bit or small or midsize) that specialized in that kind of law, they'd be positioned to take a lot of different jobs (in policy, in-house, or at a firm) that actually plays to their interests and feels meaningful to them.

Same with a doctor. You can become a doctor without becoming a claims adjuster for an insurance company. You just need to not sleepwalk through your career.

I don't think coming up with hypotheticals of very morally corrupt professionals is going to make your DD settle on a major or pick a career.

DD is so lackadaisical in coming up with some sort of life plan because they don't want to be a corporate sellout. I'm trying to explain the difference between doing that in a truly bad way and just having a regular old job for a company that might not be the best thing for humanity. Like the difference between being an attorney for Amazon (not the best for humanity but wouldn't violate my ethics) compared to becoming a doctor who approves claims for United Healthcare and gets a kickback for every claim they deny (not okay with me and I would assume with most people).

Any other examples?