I thought I would give an update and input on this question. One, I took engineering since I was in that age of post war parents. Our whole neighborhood seemed to be engineers that got educated as former soldiers in WW2. Having a professional degree was critical. Stem was the focus. I never worked as an engineer, going right into a junior analyst job at Merrill Lynch. It was unusual and couldn't be done now. No MBA, I just interviewed well. Learned on the job. Now students do what I had to learn in DECA courses. But I always knew I wanted to live in NYC and be an "executive" from a young age. Somehow I got there.
Now, I asked my daughter when she was in 9th grade, what she wanted, since you have to design a college application around it. She wanted deep ocean ecosystems research. Never waivered. Although our college plans were one way, her professional goals went another. And we talk a lot here about what colleges, graduated schools. I am seeing that her choices are critical for her path. She is at USC, got into second year, with 8 AP credits for first year. She got a work/study job at the museum uploading marine specimens for some national classification project. So has research job paying $16 an hour. Her oceanography prof is helping her get into the right labs. She wanted this one lab, prestigious and he told her the guy was nasty to his staff and directed to another, where the lead got her PhD in the MIT/Woods Hole program that my daughter aspires to. She is in a small group of ocean science where the profs want to promote the program. They have a 10 week diving/research program in the summer and have already told her that they can get her on the Antarctic research boat the following summer. Critical for her studies. She has to push the research as she loses a year of freshmen research with the AP credits, but the profs are helping. I would never have thought a year ago that this school was the best option for her, now I have to admit, this is probably the best option. On so many levels she would not have these opportunities. But my kid wanted a specific field. Knew all along. How did she figured it out? By trying everything.
She was considered gifted at piano, we are talking at 3 they were pushing her when we were just trying to get her in group piano. So we pushed for a few years, but she didn't love it. She did ballet but in puberty, her body development said, I don't think so. She was hurting herself trying to turn out her closed hips. She has a 2nd level in horseback riding. She learned to swim early since we spent summers on the ocean. She played tennis and became a high performance laser sailor. She was a semifinalist in a global tech competition and created and taught web dev java classes during covid. She wrote her essay about teaching a 65 year old woman who was not tech savvy, and the resulting amusing stories. She also travelled to 7 continents and 45 countries by the time she was 15. She snorkled on the great barrier reef and in the carribean and Hawaii. She skiied on the school ski team and learned what it was like to be above the tree line and see the world. What it was like to climb stairs in the Potala palace with low oxygen. All kinds of little experiences that all add up to seeing the world more clearly.
She says her dorm friends comment how independent and driven she is about creating opportunities for herself. So I think if you show your child how to take opportunities and explore options, they will learn to find their way.
