American Schools

Today's class discussion became to be a discussion about higher education. One student mentioned that the students in the united states do not have that much option about what to do. I think she meant that they don't know the choices within a major and all the occupations that a certain major includes.
In my opinion the American schools have a lot of options and it is one of the school system when one can major in almost anything and be successful in life. I don't know if that makes me seem like a hardcore believer of the American Dream. But I do, and I think most of it has to do with my parents always telling me that I can be anything I want to be I just need to figure out what I am interested in. I sometimes laugh at my conversations that I used to have with my dad when I was in 8th grade. My dad used to sit me down and ask me what I'm interested in and what I want to do the rest of my life. And I used to be like I don't know, and everyday I used to pick a profession and tell him how good I would be in it and why I'm interested. I never knew why he asked me that at such a young age. Normally children in the United States start to worry about their future in senior, maybe junior year of high school.
After I started my college, I randomly had a similar conversation with my parents and I asked them Why they would ask me when I was only 13 years old? There answer amazed me. In India, children graduate in tenth grade from high school and they decide what they want to do the rest of their lives in 8th grade. I was curious how they did that, so I was talking to one of my cousins who came here after she did her degree in computer engineering. I asked her how she knew what she wanted to do. She said she went to some professionals (guidance counselors you might call them), and she took an exam, and they told her computers track was her track. I asked her if she's happy or if she thinks she would be interested in doing something else. She is now married with a child, and she decided to go back to college and she's getting her bachelors in psychology. This is the field that she was interested in and she is pursuing it now after her marriage. I think she is one of the lucky ones, because there are a lot of people who never get a second chance.
My main point with this story is that in the United states we have a lot of programs that give everyone an opportunity to find what they are interested in. Even though they don't offer everything, they do offer more than other countries.