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this is purely anecdotal.

i did the maximum number of STEM classes in high school simply to leave the doors open. then i did an Honours Journalism undergrad. then i did a post-grad animation diploma. then... i took some advice from a professor: "find a field that lets you do a little of everything you're great at - otherwise you'll keep skipping around."

so my career is graphic design. it's clearly related to the arts, but there's a math element to it and i get to work for a broad range of clients who all have differing priorities, messages and needs. how a project looks is sort of fun to do - but how it WORKS (communicating/organizing info/code) is the real joy for me. i get to problem-solve, write, draw, code, edit and translate all day long (except when i'm teaching my kid) - but if i had to suddenly switch to doing something else, i bet i'd like that, too. i'm really weird like that.

I don't know the answer to this whine, but here's the answer to a related whine. DS is going through an anti-perfectionist phase; he'd be content to not think about anything, turn in things when he felt like it, and get A- / B+ . But he also wants to go into medicine or science and make a ton of money; he just cannot connect the short term with the long term.

My current speech: Would you really want to go to a doctor who'd only mastered 89% of the material? Truly? I wouldn't.

You don't owe me anything, but you ought to make the best use of you, for your own good and the good of the world. Not working in school right now means you're not going to know as much later, and that means not making the best use of you.

DeeDee

Can a solution be found to allow her to do the advanced work she can do and still have time for her friends. Maybe ask her what would be a workable solution to do both?

Good luck - teen angst plus gifted logic does not sound fun!

DeHe

Amen, DeHe. It's a real treat to deal with a snotty teen who can argue circles around a criminal defense attorney... not. She can make my head POUND-- and she knows it. She even knows on some level that she's being utterly irrational. But she does it anyway. (Gee, thanks, OE.)



Selective deafness and tough love, I'm afraid.

oh! one thing i forgot, and HK mentioning passion just jogged it for me. when i was young, my big passion was teaching, which was kiboshed by my (amazing, yet completely jaded) teacher mother, so i never got to go to school for it.

however, i've been passionate about teaching my whole life, and now because of homeschooling, i get to do it every day. sometimes our passions come and get us, even if we think we've let them go (which is another great reason not to slam any academic doors - who knows which skills you'll eventually need?)

Just so you know, though-- this variety doesn't like hearing THAT, either. (Right back to the selective deafness parenting technique.)

Either way, y'all have my condolences and sympathy here. I get to the point of wanting to tear my hair out when I get treated to how DD isn't GOOD at anything (yes, she really says this to me) and how everything we point to as counterexamples is just "Meh," "meh," or "meh" depending on the example. I feel like I'm arguing with an Emo-fixated BILLY GOAT after a while.

It's so grossly unfair to be THAT good at THAT many different domains and view it all with that level of angst and ennui.

There's a corollary here with vegetables and starving children in Africa, I'm sure. (And likely with the same overall success rate as far as arguments go with children, I'd guess.)

I am not like this, but my DH is. He is excellent at math but not interested in it. He does have an advanced degree in science, and it was always a help to him to be good at math, but the passion never developed. It was a simply helpful to his other goals. He also has forgotten much of the advanced math he learned, because he doesn't really care about it.

He is an example of someone who "could" do a lot of things in terms of sheer ability--but it really wouldn't have been a good idea to try to get him to. What I mean is that I think he would appear competent but be sort of incompetent at the same time due to lack of passion.

I did this because I was offered an engineering scholarship.

I had no interest in engineering, so I never did anything with my engineering degree.

However, it was a free education.

I then went to law school because I had no interest in engineering, which was where I learned that I had no interest in practicing law either.

Legal analysis, advocacy, argumentation, and writing are certainly some of my weakest areas, practically speaking, so I'm not sure how what you do for a career has anything whatsoever to do with your actual stronger talents and abilities.

At some point, you need to do something, anything really, to be able to survive day to day.

Sorry, this is a bit rushed. It seems to me there are too many people walking around in the world unhappy in their work. If she has a genuine passion I'd support her in it for as long as she was interested but, as per the PPs, I'd also keep the doors open on as much as possible. My daughter's test scores show she should be off the charts with maths, but she couldn't care less about it currently. Her area of passion is humanities related and so we support her with that and she has a mentor in that field. We found various ways to involve her in it and stuck with whatever she has enjoyed. But ... we've still made sure she's in (and have been lucky enough to find) a school environment where she's accelerated in math by a number of years as a matter of course. She's not working where she could be at maths wise, but she's not languishing.

Most of the parents of PG kids I know come from families with STEM backgrounds and without fail they are concerned about any of their kids who have an interest in humanities, and wonder how they can get them back on track. I on the other hand come from a (where tested) EG/PG family that pursued humanities (with STEM hobbies - we're a bit backwards!) From my experience there is some extraordinary work to be done in the humanities and to my mind, as the world becomes more complex and we need to understand the social and economic mechanations that underpin it - and need people to be able to articulate them (the value of great writers like your daughter!) - the humanities are vital. STEM is too of course, but having seen what can be achieved from a humanities base and being aware of just how complex it can become, it's not an area we should feel is 'lesser' or 'not hard'. Sure it can be done at a superficial level and often is (hence the Arts degree clichés), but once you get beyond that, the contribution that can be made in terms of policy development, social justice, social entrepreneurship, business, applied ethics and so on, is fantastic and exciting.

Might be worth exploring the concept of STEAM (the is for arts):
http://www.steamedu.com/