What is College for?

mackinaw
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 11:48:07 +0000

To follow up on my previous comment, I’m going to paste something here that I wrote on CC a couple of years ago.

Sometimes when I think of life choices that young people must make, it brings to mind the line from Robert Burns’ “To A Mouse”:

“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!”

I’m not trying to be pessimistic but rather realistic. We can plan and scheme, and hope and dream, but stuff happens over which we have little control. Opportunities arise, inspiration comes, but so do roadblocks and dead-ends.

As I have watched my kids’ careers evolve, I couldn’t have predicted either one of them, no matter that the kids were thoughtful and resourceful. But being thoughtful (planful) and resourceful is critical. Very few career lines these days are strictly linear, starting with a college degree and moving into a specific occupation and life career.

Instead careers tend to be broken into segments. I’ve given this metaphor before on this discussion board, but it bears repeating, I think. It comes from a commencement address that I witnessed a few years ago, in which the speaker came to his summation and said. “It is customary in ceremonies like this for the commencement speaker to offer advice on how to proceed up the career ladder after graduation. But I’m not sure the idea of a “ladder” really fits any more – if it ever really did. Instead, in today’s economy careers are more like “climbing walls.” You have goals, objectives you’re trying to attain. But you don’t move straight up. Instead sometimes you go upward, sometimes sideways, sometimes even downward for a while, and sometimes you may need to get off the wall. The important thing is to have an objective and to be flexible and resourceful in finding your way toward it.”

For the OP’s daughter, it’s important to define goals but also to do a constant “resource assessment.” What are her skills and talents, what experiences can she draw on, what interests would she like to follow? She may start out on one path but learn along the way that it’s not what really interests her or it’s a dead-end. What then? Assess where she is then, decide on another move, which could even be getting off the wall to obtain another degree. But she should always be enterprising, use contacts and experiences, and keep open to new paths that fit her evolving interests and talents.

I think my kids’ career lines are very unusual, but they followed this kind of path. Careers develop in segments, and the economy is moving in often unpredictable ways to offer new opportunities. The really important thing for young kids in college and recently out of college is to be able to assess where they are – even if they don’t like their current job, what skill or experience can they draw from it that’s useful for the next move? One skill and resource is networking. There’s no college course in networking. But remaining flexible and taking new opportunities is important.