Re: A bit of advice re University and such is requested

On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Robert Hailman wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 7 Sep 2000, Robert Hailman wrote:
> >
> > > Now, in terms of interest in the three right now, Linguistics would be
> > > #1, Comp. Sci. #2, and Elec. Eng #3. This could all change, of course.
> >
> > You're in a much better position.  I'm a senior math major at Cornell U.
> > and while math is *beautiful,* I think I've always known I'd be a lousy
> > mathematician (despite a 4.0 in math courses).  I want to be a writer,
> > but linguist would be next best thing...and since I have no linguistics
> > classes and not enough languages, my chances of doing any sort of
> > linguistics in grad school are probably pretty low.
> >
> That's not a problem at U of Toronto, they have loads o graduate courses
> in Linguistics.
But could you take 'em if you were a math graduate student?  :-p

'Course, there's a physics major at Cornell who's going to a graduate
program that specifically makes neurobiologists out of physics majors,
and no, I have no clue how it's possible.  :-p  If there's anything that
makes linguists out of friendly and interested math majors (meep!), I'd
sure love to find out.

> > My younger sister some years ago claimed you could get a job with the
> > post office figuring out foreign addresses, but I won't vouch for the
> > veracity.  =^)
> And your younger sister was how young at this time? :o)
6th grade or so.  OTOH she started researching undergraduate colleges in
*8th* grade (when she saw how badly I was screwing up doing everything my
senior HS year) and is going to Stanford as a freshman this year.  Little
sisters can be darned smart.  =^)

Honestly--freshman year, take a variety of intros to things.  You really
shouldn't be trying to specialize too early unless you're *positive* you
know what you're going to do.  Rare, but it happens.  My boyfriend
decided in HS to become a physicist, and now that it's senior year he's
contemplating graduate physics programs.  OTOH, I was darned positive I
was going to study history and ended up not doing that.  If you have a
history of often changing your mind (like me), take that into account and
give yourself the chance to explore.  If not--well, you're yourself, and
can probably advise yourself better than I can.  :-)

YHL