Picking a College, and a Career

When I went to college, the selection was pretty easy. I didn't have much money, and there was a college not too far from my parents' home. So, that's where I went. As I recall, I thought that their International Business major sounded interesting. By the time I started, they'd cancelled that major, and I ended up getting a bachelor of science in economics degree. I never used any of it, other than the fact that having a bachelor's meant that I could be an Air Force officer. When my daughter was talking with an Air Force staff member at the Kent State ROTC detachment, he mentioned that the program was significantly harder to get into and to succeed in than when I went. Back then, he said, they would take anyone who had a 2.5 GPA; now, they wanted more. I didn't mind, because his statement was true. Back then, ROTC was a club that just happened to result in you being in the Air Force. Now, you have to earn it.

My daughter is trying to approach this in a logical fashion. She has a general idea of the kind of thing she wants to do, but she's open to trying different areas. She knows that she wants a relatively small school (which Kent State is, despite being about four times bigger than my own college, and twice as big as my wife's). She doesn't want to go to a school that's in the city (mine was; my wife's, not so much). She wants to be a military officer, either Air Force or Navy, and she would like to do it by being in ROTC. But because she really doesn't want a desk job, she's also willing to think about enlisting, getting some high-density technical knowledge, and applying that in a hands-on way. She is hoping for the best of both, enlisting, getting the training, and moving into being an officer.

She's a lot more organized than I was, which stands to reason: she's smarter than I was.