Did your parents take an active role in your college and career decisions?

My parents pushed us to go to college, and so did our schools. It was always “when you go to college…” and “when you’re in college”, as if the decision was already made for us. I grew up in a middle class family. I’m in school now and I got a ton of guidance and support for it. I don’t really like it too much, though. Both of my parents went to college and so did the majority of my relatives.

I had very strong support from my parents in elementary, junior high school and the first years of high school . I always knew I would be either a “scientist” or an architect: My parents kept on me to do homework so I could get into a good college and get a good job. They said where the time came they would have enough money to get us into college.
That support lasted until my Mom contracted terminal breast cancer leaving my Dad with other priorities. My brother and I could see he was just treading water taking care of Mom, working, paying the bills, taking care of the house, ... so we did the best we could to take care of our end of the bargain. We did our homework. We did not misbehave. We didn’t go out drinking, or get anyone pregnant., or whatever. Without the treat of punishment, we chose to be “good kids”.
That experience made us independent and competent.

We had so many opportunities to swing the wrong way. but didn’t because of our own moral compass and the image of our Dad trying to hold it all together.

So many kids in single parent families swing the other way and use the freedom to misbehave and get in trouble. I saw it. And i see a lot of it today.
Then they complain they can’t read or can’t get into college or get a good job. I do not have much sympathy for anyone who headed down that path.

No, my mother didn’t have any real involvement in my college choices. My father died when I was young. And unlike LuckyGuy I was pure evil. I’d stay out for days and I could have probably paid my tuition with what I spent on booze and a few other things. I was the first in our family to go to a four year college program.

@Adirondackwannabe Oh man… How much heartache did you dump on your poor mother? How do you sleep at night? ;-).

It would have been so easy for me to screw around I just couldn’t do it.

I guess I was a wait for two marshmallows kind of kid.
I made the right choice – for me!

@LuckyGuy At the time she was pursuing my future stepfather, so I was pretty much on my own. I don’t know if I could have handled a tight leash anyway. It worked out okay and she still loves me. And I never hurt anyone else back then. How I sometimes wonder. And I made it through college.

No, and I wish they had. We had the money, my dad had his EE degree, but he once told me that because I was a girl I didn’t need to go to college. I just needed to find a man to take care of me.

Well, I did, and when that went to shit I got my BS in education. But I have virtually nothing to show for it.

My dream was to become a journalist. I wish they’d supported me in that. However, when the time came for supporting me in anything, they were too busy destroying their marriage, and thinking of themselves, to help me, or my younger sisters, with anything.

They did not give a single shit.

Pfft. They never encouraged me to do anything. I’m still the only person in my whole family to graduate from college. Everything I have and everything I have accomplished is due to my own determination.

It was always assumed we would go to college. My parents, first generation children of immigrants, both went to the University of California during the war, so we had a high standard to meet.

But other than assisting us in filling out applications, the choices for what school to apply to, and attend, and what to study were all our own. My father would talk to us to offer advice but not to direct us.

I had the grades and test scores to go to a very good University. One of them (and this was in the days the dinosaurs roamed the land) even pursued me with an (unheard of at the time) academic scholarship.
My father veto’d me going anywhere other than a public (in-State) school. I’d already completed half of my college degree concurrently while in high school..so I went to the best in-state public school I could find for the remaining 2 years (I stretched it into 3 by taking ice skating and ballet and some graduate seminars because I felt too young to leave University at 19)...but I am still slightly bitter that his out-dated misogynistic views (Why does a woman need a college degree? She’s only there to meet a husband after all.) impacted my college selection.

Now that our oldest is leaving (just 12 days from now!) for college..I regret even more that I wasn’t able to visit and select the right school for me. We let our son decide – and supported him every step of the way in the selection process as he whittled it down from the top 12 schools he was accepted at (that offered scholarships) to “the one”.

Those of you who didn’t have any models, how did you discover what you wanted to study and do for a living? How did you even know what was possible? I know that for me, the only careers I had exposure to were house painter, wallpaper/painter, firefighter, retail, and plumber. In the absurd town I currently live in, many of these kids’ parents have decided which ivy league schools their kids are going to by the first grade. The kids’ exposure to careers – and actually seeing it in action – means that they know more about opportunities in finance than I do.

@LuckyGuy – It does sound like your username is appropriate. But do you ever think that you were given a very supportive environment up until high school, which gave you a background that is pretty different from many of us? You knew that you were college-bound from an early age. As far as being the “wait for two marshmallow” type of kid – that’s something you are, not something you became, correct? Why the lack of sympathy for those of us who didn’t have the environmental and natural advantages that you had?

Neither of my parents attended college, both went to work as soon as they finished their public school in England. I cannot ever recall a conversation with either of my parents about college. They never said whether it was what they expected and I just always assumed that I would go. But thinking back on it now I guess I should have known because they were adamant that I take and do well on both the ACT and the SAT. They left the choosing of both the college and career path up to me. They supported my both mentally and monetarily and helped me secure loans when I needed them later on.
For my part, it never entered my head that I would go to a private school, I assumed that it would be a state school with the lower tuition rates that the family could afford. I did apply to an out of state University and it was the first one to issue an acceptance letter but I was eligible for several funding assistance programs that would have made it comparable in cost to the ones in my own state.

I have to clarify, that my parents paid for two years of college at Kstate. I knew from the time I could write that that’s what I wanted to do, so I majored in Journalism. I guess I just looked at the majors available and saw it listed.
I wrote an article for the school paper about a riot I was in when I went home for Easter.
It got a LOT of positive reviews. I was a little bit famous on campus for a few weeks, and I was assured a spot on the school paper the following year.
Then my folks divorced, Mom moved 2000 miles away, and dad pulled the funding out from under me, giving me the “You don’t need a degree because you’re a girl,” bullshit.

My parents both went to university and none of us were ever very career-oriented. They were however very interested in being smart and sensitive and eloquent and creative, and encouraged me in those things, as well as in doing what I was interested in. They helped me by talking to me about interesting subjects both in and out of school, and they helped me search for a university. They also sent me to a good private school which also helped. They also paid my tuition and expenses. I studied humanities and taught myself most of my trade skills (computer engineering and game design). I considered studying computers at college, but at the time, it didn’t look like college-level courses offered anything I couldn’t teach myself with books, while other subjects seemed to offer more unique perspectives from taking them at University. I learned good writing skills at university, as well as many interesting subjects which are good to know for game design and/or life in general, and I got to try various subject which were interesting and find out whether I’d want to do them as a serious enterprise, which was mostly not. For example, I learned I didn’t want to do serious work in physics or math even though I was very good at them, and that I probably didn’t want to be an academic because of all the pains and nonsense.

Both parents graduated from Penn State Univ. in the mid-40’s; Dad in engineering and Mom in bio-chemistry. They expected all four of their children to graduate from college.

The first two had top grades in high school and went to college knowing what they wanted to major in. #3’s grades weren’t so stellar. She was accepted to a large university and knew that she wanted to be a teacher. Her grades were touch and go, but she did graduate in the early ‘80s and is still teaching.

As #4, my high school grades weren’t so great either, but good enough to be accepted to two colleges. One was large and one was a small private school. The parents encouraged me to accept the later, thinking that it would provide more individual attention. They were right; it did. The problem was that I had no clue what I wanted to do. I changed my major from business to chemistry to English with certification to teach (all with the parents’ permission).

My GPA fluctuated enough that the school “suggested” that I take a year off and then come back. The parents were not happy. Upon arriving home with my tail between my legs, Mom told me to go and get a job in a hotel (I had worked at one for a couple of summers and loved it), get some direction, and then we could decide what the next step should be.

I did as she said and found out that this was the ideal field. When a letter from the college arrived a year later asking if I wanted to come back, I laughed. I had found my niche.

So…what did you do at the hotel?

Front desk clerk to executive secretary, to personnel administrator, to management trainee, to assistant manager at four different hotels, sales at one point, to regional trainer, to reservations mgr. at two different hotels, to training manager for one of the company’s brands, to QA inspector, to QA manager, to director of training for one of the company’s brands.

Other than the first two, which were with one hotel chain, the rest were with another one. I lived in four US metropolitan cities and traveled to 40 of the 50 states. It was an adventure for a small town girl with no college degree.

That’s awesome!
They have degrees in hotel management, don’t they? Did you get one?

Yes, there are several universities that offer a hospitality management degree. I worked with several people who did. Most didn’t last more than a year once out in the field for a variety of reasons. I considered taking courses in it in order to finish off my degree (the company would have paid for it), but it was never required, much less a degree, in order to move up the ladder. Experience and proven ability seemed to be what counted.

Nice @Pied_Pfeffer.

Come to think of it, it’s rather astonishing how little my parents were involved with my academic pursuits. They footed the bills, and left me alone! It’s incredible! I think it was the shock that I had any ambitions in that direction that left them dazed (but generous) But then it was an era when a credit unit from an elite university went for around 18 bucks. I was extremely fortunate in my parents, as well as just plain lucky. Everything just fell into place beginning with the insult from a pompous snit that I lacked the “fiber” to stand up to the entrance examination to a snooty prep school. Yes even my fellow fools paved my lucky way forward. There are those who may well claim that it was all a terrible waste, and I must admit that I’m in no position and have scant evidence to dispute it.

My parents were the one who decided that I should become a teacher in the first place. It’s partly because they both graduated from the same school I go to, and partly because they thought it was the most painless job I could do. At first I was opposed to the idea because my wish clashed with their, but in the end I realized that they were right. My wish waa just too unrealistic.

“Painless?” How do they figure teaching is painless?

My parents had zero involvement in my college choice and since I was paying for it myself, there was no reason they should.

I chose the one that was the absolutely farthest away from home I could get and still remain within NY state (because my Regents scholarships was only good at NY schools.) Plattsburgh was about 15 minutes from the Canadian border, so that was it.

Had it not been for an alert guidance counselor who plunked my test scores down in front of me and asked point blank why I was not in a Regents (college bound) program, I would not have gone to college at all.

He was the one who told me about the SATs and college board exams (as well as the Regents scholarship exam) and kept track to make sure I took them.

He also looked over my applications, read the essay part, before I mailed them.

How did I know what to study or what I wanted to do ? All I knew was that I was good at English so that determined my major. One summer I worked as a camp counselor with 8–9 yr. old kids. That’s when I realized I’d rather teach Elementary than High School. So that was just serendipity.

My parents had no involvement in any of this. They were both chain smoking alcoholics so that determined their financial and personal priorities. (My stepfather had been fortunate enough to have been born into a very wealthy family yet chose NOT TO go to college. Talk about voluntary ignorance; he was the epitome of it.

Had it not been for that guidance counselor, I don’t know where I would have ended up (I had a vague idea to go into the military as a photographer).

Years later, I sought him out specifically to thank him.

Nope. I wish they did.

My father was proud of me, but he was just happy I was going to college (as most of my relatives, including my father, did not). He didn’t really care what I was studying though.

My mother, before I graduated high school, made a point of telling me I’d be paying for school on my own. Which I did by working almost full-time while in school.

Nope. My parents didn’t even talk about college with my sister and I a single time – even though my dad had gone. But that’s not surprising given all of the other things they did and didn’t do.

I did, but I guess there’s one day for every person that they should learn to be independent from their parents, for those who get help from their parents in college, this day just comes a little later.

My parents where both high school dropouts that later got their GEDs, but they always encouraged us to learn. They just didn’t know how to help us.

I had no support from my Mom in grade school or high school. No encouragement whatsoever. (my Father died when I was 4). Mom was always gone (working) or sleeping. My two older Sisters were suppose to watch me but they usually off doing their own thing, When I flunked 2nd grade a friend told me that I will never be able to go to college. It was my 4th grade teacher (Mr. Butler) who forced me to learn how to read and inspired me to work hard and achieve success. I did OK in high school (hardly missing a day) and graduated from college with a BA in Zoology and Clinical Science.

Also I worked my way through college working part time at KFC. It took me 6 years to graduate.

You go @gondwanalon!