Ready Your Kids for Change

NedMart
Fri, 26 Feb 2016 20:55:55 +0000

My daughter is a HS senior, so we are playing the wait and see game right now. She has been accepted to a great school in the early action round, but it is not her top choice (why did she apply EA to a less than top choice school - well, it was well thought out, but beyond this post).

The more I look at CC posts and just having some recent alumni interactions with current college students, the more something becomes crystal clear to me. This moment of clarity can be summed up as:

It does not matter what you do in college. What matters is who you become in college.

It is true that some degrees are marginally more marketable than others when you get out - but nothing - I repeat, nothing - will guarantee a bright and secure future for our children. Those days are gone, if they ever really existed at all.

Now, that is not to say that our kids will not be fantastic and have a great and meaningful adulthood. Quite the contrary, there are more exciting opportunities today than when the parents on this board were entering the workforce. We are in the midst of a revolution as significant as the industrial revolution at the turn of the last century (and prior). It will take a generation or more to play out and many are experiencing the pain of this transition right now. This revolution is about being nimble, resilient and optimistic.

Set the expectation with your children that they will have to learn for the rest of their lives. Learning will not stop when you get out of school. In fact, college today teaches next to nothing about your first job. That first job will lead to many jobs in the future where you will have to reinvent yourself over and over, learning new industries, new markets, new job functions, etc.

It will be hard, but it will also be awesome! Those who learn to learn and keep learning throughout adulthood will be just fine. This is the most valuable skill they can acquire in college.

Imagine your child sitting for a job interview: The interviewer asks, “Tell me about yourself.” Their response is, “Well, I have lots of skills and talents, but probably my favorite thing is just learning new things. How much learning is involved in the job we are discussing?” I do a lot of hiring of college kids and I would be completely blown away by that response.

Anyway, thanks for reading my rant. All the best!