This is a serious post and I'd be interested in hearing your answer to a question I ask at the end.
My son is a Junior in high school. He'll be taking the SATs this year. Over at the College Board website, where you sign up for the test, they make you go through a whole series of questions about who you are, what you're interested in studying and so forth. The site forces you to make decisions about your career at age 16. They do this so they can market their test results to various schools who will then court the student based on their scores.
Meanwhile, the student and their parents are forced into having decision discussions about careers long before they're necessary. I took a chemistry class in high school, either as a Junior or a Senior, and that sparked my interest in chemistry which led to chemical engineering which led to math as my eventual bachelor's degree. I didn't settle on a major until I was a Junior in college! Meanwhile, as a part of a marketing effort for the College Board, my son has to go through all this angst four years earlier when he isn't even remotely ready.
It's madness.
When I was a Junior in high school, my interests were tropical fish and Dungeons and Dragons. My career goal was to own a pet store where I bred my own tropical fish in the back. For a while, I even bred and sold my own fish to local stores. I made single-digit dollars for my efforts. At 16, I wasn't able to do the financial analysis to determine that this was not going to work out. Had someone forced me to make a career decision right then and there, my father would have had to beat me over the head with reality instead of allowing me to grasp this in my own, natural time.
I finally discovered that you can go through the SAT registration process by clicking on "Uncertain" for every answer and so I did. The last thing we need right now is some corporation jamming premature decisions down our throat so they can sell their products to the education industry.
Question: In high school, I wanted to raise tropical fish for the rest of my life. What did you want to do?
Image used without permission from Rachel.
In January of my Junior year, I was just getting my drivers license. I was in Chemestry and Geometry and Spanish. None of them really interested me.
ReplyDeleteI was going to college, I knew. Both of my brothers were there in Mechanical Engineering.
I decided on Computer Science and KSU on the same night. I remember going and asking my Dad something about programming. And that's when I decided. That was probably a year later. Long after I'd taken and received the results of the ACT and SAT tests.
KT,
ReplyDeletechemistry was junior year. Do you remember the teacher's name. She was fantastic - I remember thinking seriously about chemistry when I started at the UC.
Like many of us in that class I wanted to work for NASA and be on shuttle missions.
Kelly, it was Mrs. Richardson. She was wonderful! I still remember my project - chemoluminescence. Yours was tear gas, right?
ReplyDeleteI decided early on that I'd be an engineer like my dad. My high school was stronger on the language side than the math, leading to quirks that I still have. And the hardest part was finding an engineering school willing to put up with me.
ReplyDelete(tants)t
Wow. I went the Marine Corps route, always wanted to be an Officer. So History and Social Sciences was my route to the dream...
ReplyDeleteYes, I made tear gas, but the project was chemical weapons. I'd forgotten about about the chemoluminescence. That was amazing.
ReplyDeleteHis name was Garvin. He taught us Biology purely by experimenting one hour a day, one school year. He was fantastic, as most of my teachers in high school were. We wanted a second year, but couldn´t get another. I wanted to get into Oceanography, but that stayed a dream. Life took me over it´s own lanes, with few switches to really do what I wanted. I stayed on track and got degrees in Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering, fulfilling my life together with the Humanities all of those wonderful English and History teachers had prepared us for.
ReplyDeleteI maintained a barely passing average in every class in high school. Except for the maths, bookeepin and accounting. Those classe I had at the very least a 98 average. I scored somewhere in the 1400's on my sats. I dont remeber what due to better living through modern chemistry. But in high school I had my heart set on being an accountant for the mafia. Which the strange part is I'm not Italian and I grew up in Texas so I didn't even really know where to go and apply.
ReplyDeleteI'd been pretty sure I wanted to go into some science or engineering field since about 3rd grade or so. Astronomy, paleontology, and entomology were strong candidates, but even then I could see that it would be tough making a living at any of them. I had settled on metallurgical engineering after taking welding in 11th grade. I stuck with that, too. After all, molten metal has certain charms that are difficult to deny.
ReplyDelete(Cut to Charles Laughton as Quasimodo, dancing around the pot of molten lead(?) in the bell tower, crying "Molten metal! Molten metal! Mwahahahaha!" And then he dumps it on the screaming mob, which then, briefly, screams louder . . .)
Gee, I'm the Chemist in this group, and in High School, although I took Chemistry, I was thinking I would go into Math.
ReplyDeleteI was totally clueless
ReplyDelete(recesswi)
As I recall, I just wanted to get ... um, never mind.
ReplyDeleteI was pretty good at everything so I made a pragmatic decision. The technical scholarship I was offered was slightly more money than the so-called "liberal arts" scholarship. So I became a physicist. Mom wanted me to be a real doctor (i.e., an MD), but I think I made a good decision anyway.
By my Junior year I had ruled out, auto mechanic, ranch hand, store keeper, truck driver, insurance agent, and banker. I knew people that did those things for a living and they didn't seem to have much fun.
ReplyDeleteI liked science and math, I didn't know much about how you would make a living with either. So my counselor recommended engineering or architecture.