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

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> 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
>
I was talking about me. You need to take Phonetics, Sound Patterns in
Language, Morphological Patterns in Language, & Syntactic Patterns in
Language (all undergrad courses) to get into the 2 year Masters program,
at the least. More for the 1 year program.

> '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.
>
See my paragraph above. You'd have to talk to the university about
talking those courses, though.

> > > 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.  =^)
>
Y'know, that's an awfully profound observation for someone in 6th grade.
She's probably right, too.

> 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.  :-)
>
Of course. First-year Linguistics is only one course, so I can test the
waters by taking it and take all sorts of other things, and delve deeper
in to what I like best. I tend to change my mind quite a bit, but I'll
stick with the occasional thing. Linguistics seems to be one of those.
If it was your run of the mill interest of mine, I would have moved on
by now.

--
Robert