Annette Taylor, Ph. D. wrote:
Sometimes I have students who come into my office to discuss their futures; recently one came in and said, "You know, I really like psychology A LOT." (This IS a very good student in the traditional sense, by the way.) "BUT, I really like my business classes A LOT, what should I do?" I gently steered him towards a business major......I just felt that given the conversation as a whole, it was a better fit for him, but it's hard to say precisely why I thought so.
That's probably fair enough. I'd hate to see students convince themselves needlessly that they should be business instead of psychology majors (in light of what seems to be some pretty good reason to believe that accomplished psychology majors can get those business jobs and do well in them), but you seem to have had the opportunity to help him make an informed decision. I especially like your "and not take my word for it" comment: I think there's no reason for you to have any qualms at all about any "power" issues once you've done that. In fact, it kind of connects to the other thread/request we had about faculty modeling inquiry and effective disagreement (didn't you just ask for examples, Annette? Just before providing a really good one? <grin>).
> Even as a non-clinician, I think we sometimes make these kinds of
interpretive decisions that can have major impact on students' futures. It is very scary sometimes to have this power. I did encourage this student to speak to several people, by name, and not take my word for it. He is very interested in decision theory and I thought he might really like some of the courses in our business program taught by decisions theorists and should take those before making a final decision.
I have a student in this same situation (interest in decision theory), and she's a double major (Psych/Business). I have another double major who is interested in risk assessment (interned at an insurance company). I think of these as great success stories for psychology majors.
But two things relate to the thread: (1) we do sometimes tell our students to leave or take another major (my favorite line I borrow from a tips posting many years ago, is if they want to help people, and want to make money doing so, to drop out and get their real estate license now, what are they waiting for?). If we are doing the job right this should happen.
Good point. One of my least favorite parts of the job is when a student who has her heart set on being some kind of therapist/counselor/ clinical psychologist asks me during her junior or senior year what the job outlook is for someone like her with just a BA. The only honest response I can give is some tactful version of "go ask the clinicians", if she spent her undergraduate career concentrating on counseling skills. I've got much better answers if she has worked on research and writing skills, but relatively few students come to psychology with that kind of thing in mind. I guess it's up to us to promote the more useful and concrete skills, but we do so at the risk of losing majors (not a big problem for most of us, I imagine) and of alienating our more counseling-oriented colleagues.
Anyway, with respect to the importance of an education, I think we walk a bit of a tightrope. There is a clear cultural push towards denigrating academic skills, and I think it's partly a backlash against an only somewhat imaginary elitist condescending attitude that some educated people have about their position in the world. I don't walk around thinking I'm better than plumbers and carpenters and auto mechanics, but I can see why they might think that I do. At the same time, though, that cultural backlash pushes the idea that an academic background is not good for anything at all and that academics "live in ivory towers", which couldn't be further from the truth (it's crystal clear to me that on the average, academics are more "worldly" than are people in general, in the sense of having a wide variety of real-world experiences). It seems to me that we need to do a better job of remembering that plumbers and carpenters and auto mechanics are highly skilled people without whom the world would fall apart quickly, while also reminding people that there are important skills (for one of many examples, decision-making when there are long-term and short-term outcomes to be weighed against each other) that we don't just have through natural common sense, but need to develop through academic study.
I guess the trick is to express our respect for the skills that people do have, whether or not they have a college degree: at the same time appropriately valuing skilled trades while not "giving away" (devaluing or denying) our own special abilities.
(2) not related to the thread I guess--that power is scary to me!
I'll bet that we have a lot less of that "power" than we often think we do.
Paul Smith Alverno College Milwaukee
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