The liberal arts undergraduate eduction is dead; you must know what you want to be by age 16.
This is what you might conclude from looking around at the friends of my high schoolers. A couple of kids have been doing bench research in a lab for two summers, something I did not have the preprofessional stamina to pursue until my sophomore year of college.
Our youngest is on the verge of college applications. I never gave much thought to what studies I would pursue other than knowing it would be something in science, but since then it's become necessary to apply within a specific school (engineering, for example) if you plan to major in a competitive field.
Thankfully, my kid is not gunning to become an engineer, but it pains me to think the process requires a winnowing of her interests down to something so highly restricted at such an early age.
You used to get time to discover in college.
Maybe it's the pressure of getting value from the ever-increasing tuition, or the difficulty graduating in four years at public universities. The outcome is clear: kids in high school have less fun and spend more time worried about the stepping-stone value of a given time commitment in bringing them closer to their professional goals.
The problem is, it's hard to have professional goals as an adolescent - not impossible, just uncommon.
What do I advise her?
Should she pursue her passion, and turn a blind eye to whether that passion will support the standard of living she hopes to attain?
Should she choose a high-paying career, sock away everything she can possibly save, then pull the ripcord and retire early? Cash in and opt out seems like a sad way to grind out a career, although there are people who swear by it.
I feel a little underqualified to advise her. I am the son of immigrants, and one of the objectives immigrant parents dutifully inculcate in their children is career security and financial stability.
As a physician, I am the fulfillment of my parents wishes - I enjoy a level of job security (pandemic exceptions notwithstanding) and financial stability to provide for my kids.
I wonder often if this internalization of what my parents sought when they left their respective birth countries does not come with a blindness to big dreams, an inability to take extreme risks that could bring extreme rewards.