How to combat magical thinking in young adults?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Does anyone else have a college kid whose mantra is “Chill! It will all work out somehow?” It’s the vagueness of “somehow” that I object to. How exactly do you plan to achieve the goal? What specific steps will you take to reach the destination? How can you imagine it will just work out if you do absolutely nothing?</p>

<p>Sometimes I think that if at any time D has thought about doing something or has planned to do it, her mind mistakenly equates that with actually doing it. The same applies to having started something, like a job application, even though it’s a task that is basically worthless if not carried to completion. If she filled out the application portion but didn’t send it in along with a cover letter or resume, she still feels she’s done something significant.</p>

<p>As you might now guess, the lastest version of D’s magical thinking is “somehow” she will get a good summer internship …without applying. To be fair, she applied to a few, but got rejected from the ones she interviewed for. So she feels like she did her part, and seems almost oblivious to the fact that she has to start all over again, or better yet should have kept applying to LOTS of places all along. After some pushing from me, she applied to a few more but not enough given the competitiveness of the market. </p>

<p>Perhaps an ancillary problem is the magical belief that “I’m so wonderful, some company will discover me!” Kind of like Prince Charming stumbling across Sleeping Beauty. Sigh.</p>

2

<p>Hey, even some adults have “magical thinking”.</p>

<p>In the case of “it will all work out”, that seems to just be a way for kids to “shut parents up” when parents are on their cases to do something (study more, get apps done, etc). </p>

<p>As for confusing thinking about something with actually doing something, I’ve seen that as well. don’t know what that’s about.</p>

3

<p>Invite Uncle Turbo and said young adult to a restaurant for a meal and a chat and the Reality-O-Meter will be calibrated to its full range, from ‘Rapture with a chance of Brimstone’ to ‘Clouds, Occasional Rainbows, and a chance of Unicorns’.</p>

<p>On the other hands, parenting of said young mages should have included a brief tutorial to probability, namely, the probability of getting anything done without effort (not very much…)</p>

4

<p>Mine tells me, “At least I’m not a starving child in Africa!” And he’s right!</p>

5

<p>“No, but you’re going to be a starving child in America when I cut off the bank of mom and dad because you’re not doing anything you’re supposed to be doing.” (This was the CC response that instantly popped into my mind.)</p>

<p>Unless they already support themselves, in which case parents need to step back and let the child screw up with their own funds :p</p>

6

<p>As you might now guess, the lastest version of D’s magical thinking is “somehow” she will get a good summer internship</p>

<p>Again, I think that is just a typical young person’s response to “shut a parent up”. </p>

<p>Parent tells kid to “find a summer job” or whatever, and the young person doesn’t want to hear nagging, so he says, “I’m going to get a job” (or whatever). Later, when no job comes to fruitition, the kid will say, “I tried, but none were available.” But, at least in the meantime, he’s made you shut up.</p>

7

<p>TheGFG; you are talking about my S. He got all excited about some jobs he found online but unbelievably they needed a resume…so he is working on his resume…still…naturally the jobs will stay vacant until he finishes his resume next year or until they discover him in his room and beg him to join them.</p>

8

<p>^^^^All these descriptions sound just like my S2. He needs a summer internship in order to GRADUATE! He’s done everything else but the internship. He says he’s sent out some apps. and is now just sitting around waiting for them to all call him with offers.
He’s driving us crazy. Glad to know we’re not the only ones in this boat.</p>

9

<p>I did my share of magical thinking (or magical rationalizing). It ended about a year after I got married very young (voluntarily :slight_smile: ), and real life transmitted the idea to me that if I thought I was somehow “special” I was going to have to prove it.</p>

<p>I’m not sure how a parent can stop it. Usually life will do that for you. Except that its usually unpleasant when you’re cured that way.</p>

10

<p>It’s hard, no one likes to get rejection letters. I’m hopeful that now that S2 has arranged for the first semester of his junior year abroad he’ll go back to worrying about the summer. I know he applied to one or two internships in the fall, but I also know he didn’t get them.</p>

11

<p>Yes, I’ve resigned myself that the resulting disappointments of life will be her teacher. However, she has been aggravatingly lucky and some important stuff has surprisingly worked out decently for her, which only reinforced this thought pattern. Also, we will have to subsidize her with additional funds if she doesn’t earn enough this summer to cover her college expenses for next year. Making her pay us back later is an option, but the problem is that we don’t have the money ourselves to lend her. </p>

<p>Thanks to all who posted. Keep the stories coming. I am glad I’m not alone in a CC world of perfectly responsible children.</p>

12

<p>Magical Thinking is the American way of life.</p>

<p>I can afford this house because the bank approved my mortgage.</p>

<p>I can day trade as well as anyone, and I’ll make a fortune.</p>

<p>I can knock out a wall, expand the back of the house to include a 1000 square foot gourmet kitchen, and I’ll make it all back plus a profit on the resale. </p>

<p>My child will get into Harvard.</p>

<p>I’ll audition for American Idol and be discovered.</p>

13

<p>besides the “shut up the parent” approach in some relationships I think there is often a planner & a procrastinator dynamic. My mom would complain if I didn’t have a plan months before a target date … and my procrastination drove her nuts … and it almost always did work out … I just got there in a way very differently than my mom would have.</p>

<p>(Full disclosure until I got to college and my procrastination killed me)</p>

14

<p>I’m going to play devil’s advocate and say this: how many of you parents had their sh** together in their early 20’s? Internships? Resumes? I personally worked at a dude ranch (yes a dude ranch!!) between my junior and senior years in college-best summer of my life! I still managed to get a job offer my senior year, and was gainfully employed after I graduated (in the economically depressed mid-80’s).</p>

<p>I suppose all this focus on internships, resume building, career direction, stems from a basic lack of confidence in the job market and future potential, I get that, I’m fighting these same fears for my kids. But I guess the ‘magical thinking’ phrase gets to me…what if having so much fear for career viability forces our kids into career paths that are rigid, and just not the right fit for them? </p>

<p>I wish my kids could have a few years of magical thinking without somehow falling behind- I wish they could have a summer on a dude ranch when they’re 21…because their next break is going to be (if they’re lucky) when they’re 65…that’s a long, long time by any measure.</p>

15

<p>“how many of you parents had their sh** together in their early 20’s? Internships? Resumes?” - I did. One of my college summers was spent working at a donut shop - it was a miserable job with lots of night shifts and early mornings . The next two summers I had co-op positions at a major corporation (two different locations)… I still work for them almost 30 years later. </p>

<p>BUT it seems that all jobs (grunt jobs and internships) were easier to find back then. I think many students get overwhelmed by the slim odds of finding summer internships. Yes, I agree that if you never apply your odds are zero. It’s a harder sell with discouraged teens.</p>

16

<p>yale… I’m 21 with a very decent resume and an internship under my belt. </p>

<p>It’s very, very difficult to get decently employed after college right now - ESPECIALLY if you don’t have a decent work history, internships, a good resume, etc.</p>

17

<p>I’ll provide a lengthy anecdote, as I feel this applies to me.</p>

<p>Last year during Christmas break, my parents tried giving me “the talk” during our family trip up north to visit other family. I kept avoiding the conversation, knowing what was coming, until finally they had me cornered in the 10 hour car ride back home. They wanted to know what I was planning on doing after graduation, as I had no internship experience, the only work experience I had was a serving job, and I had no clear plan for any job pursuit or graduate school. I had no idea what I was going to do, other than pursue a job with a Fortune 50 company that I had an extremely good connection with. I spent the next semester focusing on my thesis that I blew off first semester, and between that, a varsity sport, and my part-time serving job I was too lazy to look into post-graduation plans. I did get an interview with said Fortune 50 company for a management program, and I thought I was going to get it because of both my academic record (which was still great despite my career ineptitude) and the connection I had. I was not offered the position, because my major was economics and not business. I had also not gotten an internship again that semester as I didn’t have full-time availability for one of the few offered in the area (I had class…)</p>

<p>So other than the occasional application here and there, I didn’t really look into much else, and finished my thesis with a great grade and graduated with honors. But I was still at square one. I kept on with my serving position, as I am good enough at it to make the money to support myself. I looked for more jobs, and the area that I was in was not offering much outside of the typical B2B sales jobs advertised as “marketing.” I did interview with an out of state position that would have been a good career start, but it would have paid me less than my serving position, and I did not have the money to finance a move. </p>

<p>At this point I realize I need another degree to get my foot in the door somewhere, or face the prospect of becoming a career server (which I had began mentally preparing myself for). I mean, I wasn’t completely lazy about applying for jobs, but I could have tried a lot harder. And I think a lot of it was my young mindset wanting instantaneous results, which I certainly was not going to get. There is really not that much out there, especially where I live. My mom says midsummer she’ll pay for me to take the LSAT, as she thinks it would be cool to have a lawyer in the family and I mentioned once that it was a possible option (that I was only saying to appease her).</p>

<p>I buy some LSAT books and spend the next two to three months moseying my way through practice problems and tests. In all I did study fairly well, but not with the rigor that I should have. It showed on test day when my score was ~7-8 points lower than my practice tests score (that I was taking in a nonconsecutive fashion, big mistake). It’s still a good score for lower tier 1 schools though, so I tell my mom I’ll write my personal statement and begin some applications. I also mention a masters in finance at a local university as a possibility, since not having experience in this area had presented me problems in job applications.</p>

<p>Except I don’t follow through with any of this. I try to steer conversations away from all of this. I’m working two serving jobs at this point, which is pretty tiring, but even when I’m at home with free time I don’t work on what I should be. I was not like this in high school, and while I was starting to get lazier in college, it was not like this. I had no definitive goals planned out, no action plan in place, and with money flowing in during the holiday season from my jobs, I have no motivation to pursue any of this. I don’t write any of my personal statement, other than naming a few vague topics. I also don’t look into what is even needed to get a masters in finance. All I have to show for this period is a vague list of schools that I had planned to apply for.</p>

<p>Finally, a friend in a similar boat as me says he’s skipping the LSAT and taking the GMAT to apply to an OOS flagship for a masters in accounting. I had studied for the GMAT in brief spurts previously, and he convinces me to take the test and apply to the same school. I sign up for the GMAT with only two weeks to prepare, as he mistakenly told me the deadline was a month earlier than it was. I mean, I could have gone on the website and looked up the deadline, or god forbid, started my application, but no I take my friend’s word for it and still spend most of my time working at my serving jobs and aimlessly surfing the web. I did learn the GMAT format, do some practice problems, and only take two practice tests, one being the night before the actual exam. Maybe 15 hours actual prep time for a major standardized test.</p>

<p>I go in and take the GMAT, and I blew it right out of the water. I got a very high score, and higher than I had anticipated. I remember my brief dreams of going to business school, as this score is good enough for the top ten. I talk to my friend again, who at this point got into this program he told me about. Still, I let him tell me everything I need to know about this program, rather than researching it myself. </p>

<p>I tell my parents about my new plans, and they say I should still apply to law school and I should apply to several accounting programs. I find some others similar to the one my friend got into (rather he told me which ones had a similar program). Except, in the end, I barely get my application into this one program. And I mean barely. I never started any other applications, and really only had serious intent to apply to one other school anyways.</p>

<p>Fast forward to today, and I’m sitting with a nice scholarship to an OOS flagship school that ranks in the top ten for MsA’s and has a 98% job placement rate, with 80% going big 4. I really feel like this was the best option for me all along, and I’m glad someone else directed me towards it, as without this person I would have applied last second to law school (shudder). I feel like some of your kids, with no definitive plans and something finally falling into place. I felt daily like I had zero direction and zero idea of what I was going to do. Reflecting back, I initially feel like my personal growth during this period is scant, but I’ve come to realize that even though a serving job has no relation to my future career path, it has reminded me that I can work hard and achieve. My boss was one of the people I had write me a recommendation, and hers was glowing.</p>

18

<p>Bookmark. A serving job sounds okay.</p>

19

<p>erhswimming; I can see it all happening as it did to you and is very understandable and reassuring…if I were not S’s mother! :slight_smile: I would just like to be at that place where I am looking back at S’s experience rather than watching it happen. On the other hand he was great at magical thinking in high school so why am I surprised! and that worked out fine too.</p>

20

<p>When I was a newlywed teacher, I really wanted to take the summer off. My DH wanted me to get a summer job. I was really dragging my feet. He told me “look, you haven’t done anything yet about this summer job. It’s not going to come to YOU.”</p>

<p>That night an attorney called me-a friend of mine worked for his partner and had mentioned she knew someone looking for a job, so he wanted to set up an interview.</p>

<p>Sometimes it really does work out. :D</p>