Career and College Major Guidance with Tonda Bean

This week on Homeschool Highschool Podcast: Career and College Major Guidance with Tonda Bean.

Choosing a career and a college major can be a huge stressor for homeschool high schoolers. That’s why we were so excited to talk to a subject matter expert in that field, Tonda Bean from Wisdom in Minutes.

Tonda Bean’s story

When Tonda was in high school, she had good grades, so she thought, “I will just go off to college and everything will be fine.” As she got closer to graduation, she realized that she would need to choose a college major.

Unfortunately, she had no idea what to choose! So she talked to her father, who was an engineer. He thought it would be great for her to be an engineer. However, he was wise. He knew she needed to find her own path, so he asked her, “Well, what do you like?”

Tonda liked chemistry, so he suggested chemical engineering. That made sense to her, too, so she chose chemical engineering as her college major.

Unfortunately, when she got to college and started studying chemical engineering, she did not enjoy the work. However, she felt like she needed to stick with it.

Then there was an optional weekend trip to a chemical plant. Tonda thought, “Let me go and see my future. This will inspire me to keep going.”

And when she got to the chemical plant, she was not impressed. She said to herself, “Ooh, no. No. Oh, not this, no!”

After she got back to college, she changed majors to the school of business.

Sometimes you need to change majors for a better career fit, but there’s a cost

Tonda enjoyed her studies as a business major. She also liked the possibilities for a career better.

It was a good choice, but she did lose time because she had to start over on her major courses. She also lost a full-ride scholarship. Tonda ended up needing to take classes at three universities to stay on track for graduation. She did graduate and enjoyed her career in business.

Then she had kids…and college major choices again!

Tonda got married and had children. When they were in high school, she realized that they were on that same I-don’t-know-I’ll-just-be-a -good-student kind of path. So, she said to herself, “Let’s not do that again!”

So she started working on a system to help them envision their own future. For instance, she explored with her teens to explore their interests and ask questions like:

“What do you like, what do you not like?”

During that time, Tonda also became a scout leader. When the scouts would ask her for recommendation letters for college or other opportunities, she found that they often did not have a resume that they could give her. Published on 12 hours ago

Podcast Episode Details

Career and College Major Guidance with Tonda Bean