Every time my boys’ college-fund statements arrive, I find myself daydreaming about their futures.
They’re young enough that I know it’s foolish for me to think about their eventual careers. Still, if I had to guess, I’d say my 8-year-old son will be an architect and my 3-year-old son will be a rodeo clown.
OK, I’m being facetious, not an architect.
(Actually, I think my 3-year-old is destined to be an entrepreneur. The other day his mother and I complimented him for playing alone with his fire truck. His response: “Give me a dollar.”)
As an inexperienced parent, I’m trying to think of ways to be helpful to the boys later about college and career choices without being intrusive.
Case in point: A teenage girl, a family friend, walked through the newsroom the other day to get her photo made for the sports pages. She smiled and waved. “Now, there’s a kid who got it all right,” I thought, waving back. I wanted to give her a standing ovation.
A state-champion cross country runner with a 4.0 GPA, Claire Turner of Red Bank High School has a track scholarship AND an academic scholarship to the University of Alabama. Why? A combination of things: faith, focus, discipline and good parenting.
See, parents, our simple, baby-boomer ways don’t work any more. The world is too competitive. A college degree in “anything” is no longer a ticket to the middle-class lifestyle. Nor is a college education inexpensive enough to treat as a mere time of discovery.
I was on the campus of Chattanooga State Community College recently. An administrator there said a significant fraction of the students in some popular programs at Chattanooga State already have bachelor’s degrees from other schools.
A pal gave me a booklet the other day listing all the doctorates handed out at a major flagship university this spring.
I underlined doctoral dissertation titles about:
* Authenticity in rap music.
* The fantasy sports experience.
* Long-distance friendships.
Many of our best thinkers have Ph.D.s, and the world would be a lousy place without their brainpower. … But a doctoral dissertation about fantasy sports?
Here, in my opinion, is an excellent dissertation title (also from my pal’s booklet): “Development of an electrochemical technique for oxidative surface mapping to investigate solution-phase protein dynamics using high performance mass spectrometry and advanced infomatics.”
Now, that’s what I’M talking about. Will somebody please give that kid a dollar?