Career suggestions for girl who likes crafts & is good at math but not that good

In My Humble Opinion
1

So we thought that “computer engineering” would be a good possible career choice for The Cat Who Walks Alone. Designing and working on computers. She has a logical mind–she’s always been good at those “if Billy is wearing green socks and Bobby only wears blue socks on Tuesday, then what’s for lunch in the cafeteria?” word problems that have me weeping helplessly, my mind a total blank. (“Can he try on the socks?” I ask the teacher.)

Also, she’s always liked arts and crafts, cutting and pasting little things together, real homemade stuff, not Martha Stewart “crafts by the numbers”.

And she’s good at math, breezing through things like Trigonometry and Pre-Calculus that would have had me gobbling in terror.

However, she had to drop her Calculus class this semester, as she said it was “too hard”.

So imagine our disappointment as she and I sat here yesterday afternoon looking up course descriptions from the U of I for “computer engineering”, (thank God for the Internet) when we discovered that it requires 2 years of calculus, and that’s not “going in”, that’s “after you get there”, Freshman and Sophomore years.

And we found that practically everything in the “professional and technical” category of the Labor Department’s Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2000-01 Edition that has “engineering” in the name (mechanical, materials, electrical) also requires at least 2 years of calculus.

So we’re kind of back at square one. The Better Half now says maybe something like designing web pages for people, but I said I didn’t think of that as a “career”, more of a “hobby”. All the people I know who do that “for a living” are just barely hanging on by the skin of their teeth, what with the dot.com bust.

So we’re looking for something that fits the skills of somebody who likes arts & crafts, has a logical mind, and is pretty good at math.

Oh, and The Cat herself has no clue as to what she “likes to do”, other than the usual stuff like “listen to music”, “eat pizza”, etc. But she does say, quite firmly, that she is not a “geek”, and she was mainly worried, at first, that a major of “computer engineering” would mean she’d have to walk around school with a Palm Pilot glued to her hand, like the other geeks.

Any suggestions?

2

Oops, I left out:

There’s a Career Fair at the local junior college next Tuesday afternoon, and the high school is loading 'em up on busses and taking 'em all down there, so she’s looking for suggestions as to which tables to browse at.

3

Well, my suggestion is not to be too scared by Calculus. I breezed through the pre-calc courses too… and totally failed calc. I just couldn’t get it, it didn’t make any sense whatsoever. I needed the class to graduate in my major. So I took it again…failed it again. Both times with the same instructor.

Finally I took it a third time, this time with a different instructor. Got a B+. I got that not because I had already had failed it twice, even after that I understood nothing. I passed it because I had an instructor who knew how to teach the class and knew how to explain things in a way I understood.

I’m not going to suggest that she go to school and take a try at the calc classes and hope for the best, I suggest trying an outside class before she goes, that teaches calc. You’ll have to pay for it of course, but she may find out that the reason she failed it was that she couldn’t connect on her previous instructor’s thought processes.

4

Here’s a site that might be helpful. Might give you some ideas about careers you might not otherwise have considered.

http://career.missouri.edu/holland/

5

Some analysts have described web designers as the new blue-collar class, an equivalent to being an auto mechanic rather than an automotive engineer, and I agree so I think she could aim higher.
The one thing I see most lacking in the typical computer curriculum are the things you get from a liberal arts education. CS majors tend to get excused from wider coursework, and focus almost exclusively on computer stuff, so they have no sense of the bigger picture. So we get computer geeks that think something should be done just because they know how to do it, not because there’s any actual need for it. So we get geeks programming ways to adjust your monitor’s brightness and contrast via your cel phone.
When I was about to enroll in college, I attended a lecture from an MIT recruiter. He told a story about his own enrollment in MIT just before WWII. He said that when he entered MIT, the technology he would spend the rest of his life working on, radar, had not yet been invented. His conclusion was that technology moves so fast that whatever you go into college preparing for is already obsolete by the time you graduate, so you’ve got to develop a wider set of general-purpose analytical skills.
My suggestion is to get her enrolled in a good liberal arts curriculum and let her sort it out on her own. And go heavy on the math anyway.

6

Architecture, perhaps? That requires some math and it’s about building things.

7

Is she good at chemistry/biology? Nursing and pharmacy are both good careers.

Depends, too, on whether she wants to attend grad school- in some cases, she can get a liberal arts degree and then go on and get a more technical graduate degree.

City planning is a field where a variety of undergrad degrees are welcome.
Guess it boils down to how much time she’s willing to spend.

8

Here’s another slightly off-op request reply, pretty much in the same vein as Chas.E’s (even if he doesn’t like bow ties).

Look less at what she likes now and might settle for in a career now. Look more for a school that has a number of solid (as in fairly well respected) departments. That way if she starts out thinking computers but winds up in biology, she won’t feel the need to transfer to a new school.

I went to college figuring on majoring in economics and opening a fancy-schmancy men’s clothing store. I wound up majoring in natural resources and now have two additional college degrees in forestry. I do policy research, and will likely wind up teaching college somewhere. Thank goodness for a liberal arts curriculum and for advisors that wouldn’t let me declare a major until near the end of my sophomore year.

9

If she wants to be a CompSci major, just do it - don’t be scared by the Calc classes. As long as she can get through them and pass, even with a C, she’ll be fine. I don’t know why they make CompSci majors take so much math - I’ve been programming for 10 years, and I’ve never had to use anything more complicated than basic algebra.

10

Take advantage of the career-counseling services offered at your college. She can take one of those tests to determine her leanings.

11

[small hijack]
Acutally, the CompSci programs I’ve been in have never been exempted from taking ‘general education’ classes, which bring in lots of the liberal arts background. It’s the CompEng that have been ‘short changed’, espically history classes. Where I’m at now, we’ve got a foreign language requirement, humanities, etc., etc.
It mostly depends on how the program is oriented: this one here is definately a math and theory base, rather than the here-and-now approach. FSM’s! PDA’s! Turing Machines! NP-Complete problems! Rah, rah, rah!
[/end small hijack]

And I second Athena’s comment about in practice, not really needing all that much math in CompSci… unless you get into game programming, or anything else that involves modeling of real-life (or theoretical) systems. (But then, we hire a consultant to do the math for us. We just have to make sure we cut-n-paste the equation right into the program.) :wink:

Also, she doesn’t have to declare what she wants to do right away. Find a place that’s solid in many areas, or at least in the areas she has an interest in. First year of school there, have her ignore the people screaming at her to ‘get her educational career on track NOW!’, and take classes from as many different disciplines as she can. Encourage her to attend as many career-related services as she can, and to attend seminars and the like. The idea here is to expose her to at least the basics required in the fields she has some interest in, and to see how she likes actually doing them. (ie: have her take a beginning programming course, a music theory course, etc.) Worry about if those classes will ‘count’ later. If they help her make an informed decision about what she wants to do with her life, then those clases will count.

Whew. Time to stop rambling. :smiley:

<< Err. Yes. I’ll think of something witty to place here later. >>

12

Archaeological or Art conservation. These are the people that (among other things) put the broken-up pots back together at the museum, and clean off the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It requires a knowledge of chemistry, history, sometimes classics depending on your focus, archaeology. Definately a hands-on job. Unlike other jobs within the social sciences, you are not dependent on grants and other “soft money.” (You are a line items others have to budget for on their grants).

This is not an undergraduate degree. First you would do an undergrad in something like Art history, anthropology, history, etc. Even chemistry. Then you would follow up with a 2 year masters to become a conservation specialist. For art conservation, the top school is probably Rhode Island School of Design. For archaeological conservation, there is a good program at George Washinton Univ. (in DC). It really doesn’t matter where you do undergrad, as long as a strong base is established in areas like history, art history, anthropology, etc.

Or, consider properties, carpentry or crafts for theater or movies. You’d want to find a strong theater program and then get involved with summer internships, etc that would give work experience in the area you are interested in. Strange as this may seem, all of my friends from college who were seriously involved with “backstage” theater stuff are employed in their chosen profession. Or if not, its by choice.

Speaking in unasked-for opinions, I think its misguided to plan out a career at this point. Your daughter’s interests are likely to change. A general path, perhaps, but not nec’y a career.

13

I would suggst you not worry about her career plans. Any “Career” she decides on now is no more likely than a thousand other careers to be the one she actually chooses.

Send her to a good, reputable school and let her learns something. Then she can pick a career five or six years from now.

14

Perhaps Textile Sciences?

15

Depends on what you’re programming. I’ve only done a couple internships, and I’ve used a lot of math (finite state machines, correctness analysis, graphs, matrices etc.) The way I see it, math is a set of tools, and the more tools you have, the more likely you’ll have the right one for the job.

That said, I wouldn’t sweat the calculus requirements. Since there’s no good notion of continuity in most of the models used in computer science, there’s no real room to apply the techniques of calculus. Geometry is more relevant here, cause that’s what the math ends up being like.

Of course, the most important thing that an engineer should learn to do is to write a simple english sentence that people can read. I’ve been grading CS assignments for the past two years, and this is a major problem. Writing is a valuable skill, so if she has it, she’ll stand out from the rest of the crowd.

16

My sentiments exactly.

17

Ceramics? It goes all the way from earthenware pots to high-tech ceramics for the manufacturing industry (ceramic engines, parts for the space programs). The Saskatchewan Institute for Applied Science and Technology (hows that for a mouthful) has a very good ceramics program.

Or maybe glasswork? Art glass is a wonderful medium, and lampworked beads and stuff are highly sought after in the craft world…

18

How about horticulture? Working with plants is rewarding, and can be artistic. There is a lot of science involved, a little math. There will always be a need for plants in people’s lives. I don’t think it is a ‘geeky’ occupation, and there is a lot of leeway as in you don’t always have to do things “strictly by the book”. There is nothing like working in a bright, sunny greenhouse, surrounded by plants and flowers, in the middle of winter. There is opportunity to travel, going to plant trials & seminars and such. Plus it’s really, really, fun.

19

Electrical Engineering(computer Engineering) is not alike Comp Sci. With the Comp Sci progrmam here, you only need 2 semesters of calculus. If she is artistic, is good at math, and likes computers, tell her to look at a Comp Sci degree and later a grad degree in computer graphics (3d modeling). If she thinks making stuff like the works on http://www.renderosity.com, then tell her to think about that.

20

Hey, I’m a computer programmer who worked in the craft industry!

First off, she doesn’t want to work in the craft industry. It doesn’t pay very well. There are a few people at the top who make a lot of money, and a lot of people barely scraping by.

Second, yes, yes, yes, she should try taking Calculus again when she gets to college. A different teacher can make all the difference.

Third, I sense a little vagueness on your part about what “computer engineering” is. I’m not picking on you, this is the voice of experience. I committed to a computer programming degree without really knowing what it was.

So, does she want to design computers? Computer chips? (Maybe electrical engineering?)

Does she want to program computers? Create the programs that people use?

Does she want to work on computers? Fix them, update them, train people to use them?

Then the most important question of all - does she want to work with computers at all? If she’s interested in programming, she should take a programming class. She needs to learn a programming language and write programs. Many people who love working on computers hate writing programs.

Oh, and by the way, I’m sure your daughter’s not a geek. But if she’s going to be in the math/sciences area of college, she needs to learn to be nice to the geeks. There’s going to be a lot of them, and they’re the ones with all the answers!