The #3 College Myth, Busted: Parents Should Not Step aside Just Because Their Child Is 18

The stories made my toes curl.

One set of parents left the entire college application process up to their son. He was 18 and would soon be on his own. It was time for him to take the reins, they reasoned. But he forgot to follow up with the task of selecting a residence and was therefore assigned to the absolute-worst, this-is-the-pits, no-one-wanted-it freshman dorm at the university. Unhappy from the outset, he quickly confirmed that he hated his hall and dropped out, never to return.

Another set of parents had been worried about their son's D in a high school math class. They tried to intervene, but he repeatedly reassured them that he could handle it, so they backed off. After all, they persuaded themselves, he was 18. All his other grades were on par for acceptance at the school of his dreams. But he failed math and was forced to attend a college he found humdrum, his enthusiasm for his future fading fast.

Both sets of parents still seemed to be in shock as they told me their stories. Possessed of twenty-twenty hindsight, they realized they had mistakenly believed a college myth: By virtue of being a senior in high school, their child was ready to act as an independent adult. On his own, he would march straight into an appropriate education and continue on to a good job.

Certainly 18-year-old students have responsibility for their own lives. Most of them have acquired skills for getting what they want.

The catch is that there is no magic to turning 18.

People mature at different speeds. There is great variability with regard to readiness. Some teens have already planned for the future; others may not even be aware that they need a plan, much less know how to make a good one and act on it. Some juniors wish they could move on already, whereas some seniors can't bear the thought of leaving high school. I've seen them in the hallways during their final semester, trembling like the Cowardly Lion about to face the Wizard. I myself stepped out nimbly from high school only to fall on my face later, tripped up by career immaturity in the transition from college to work.

Do not step aside yet, Mom and Dad. You are still needed—and for more than footing the bill.

Here are five suggestions for mentoring a student on the threshold of adult independence:

1. Be guided by your child's readiness. If she does not stride forward on her own, then do not rush her. Let her revert to a teenage version of taking baby steps while you metaphorically hold her hand. Sometimes a person may regress a bit before she's ready to move ahead.

2. Anyone signaling "I'm not ready" needs greater support. Consider hiring a professional. For example, a career counselor could work with your student to identify new experiences that might help her progress. (Some career counselors even offer tests that measure career readiness.)

3. Reassure your child that nobody knows exactly what she wants to do with her life when she's 18. As one of my psychologist friends says to her teenage clients, "Your first job is just exploration." And exploration can be fun!

4. Now is not the time to begin a downward spiral. There is simply too much at stake in the transition from high school. Don't bow out until you're persuaded—by good evidence—that your child is in fact ready to take over, with all that implies regarding skills with time management, organization, and decision making.

5. Like it or not, as a parent you are a primary influence. Your child needs to develop a plan for her future and will probably look to you for support and advice. Become career literate yourself. I've designed this blog for exactly that purpose and will do my best to make it worth your reading.

The #2 College Myth, Busted: A Trial-and-Error Search for a Major Is Never Your Child's Best Plan

Somehow the idea has gotten around that once your child starts college, the best she can hope for is a trial-and-error approach to choosing a major and thereby stumbling into a career.

Of all the prevailing college myths, this one is the most likely to make me froth at the mouth. I guess I take it personally because it ignores the work of vocational psychologists. To my mind, our misplaced faith in trial-and-error is like prescribing bed rest and blood-letting for someone with strep throat, ignoring the proven benefits of penicillin.

Of course, trying random classes once she's in college might help her decide on a major. Or perhaps she'll simply join the throng taking six or more years to finish what was originally set up as a four-year degree. Certainly a willy-nilly search after your student enrolls is in the interests of the educational institution, only too happy to collect tuition checks for the rest of your lifetime.

Colleges offer from fifty to 120 majors; universities, from 100 to 200. A few institutions list as many as 300 possible majors. This abundance is surely a blessing, as it provides college students with boundless latitude to explore their options and find their passion.

But all those options can just as easily lead to confusion and dead ends.

As psychologist Rollo May wrote in The Courage to Create, unlimited possibilities are often more terrifying than energizing. “It is like putting someone into a canoe and pushing him out into the Atlantic toward England with the cheery comment, ‘The sky’s the limit.’ The canoer is only too aware of the fact that an inescapable real limit is also the bottom of the ocean.”

Your student faces a double peril: She must paddle through a tight pass between modern-day versions of the mythical sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis, avoiding the rocks of a prematurely-chosen major on one side and the whirlpool of indecision on the other, one that keeps her swirling through random classes on the off chance that one of them will push her out of the vortex.

A better approach begins with understanding your student's strengths, particularly her abilities and interests, before she even applies to college. You don't want to start too narrow, not when she's still a teenager. So start wide—but do what you can to make sure that even though your child will be at sea, she is headed toward her personal best part of the deep. From that smaller and more navigable body of water, she can then steer herself with growing assurance.

Here's a hypothetical example of this technique. Let's say that your student is interested in the broad realm of ideas and her strongest abilities are with numbers and creativity. College majors that would allow those talents to be put into play include economics, computer science, math, marketing, and statistics. She tries introductory courses in all five subjects. One by one, over her freshman and sophomore year, she rejects computer science, economics, and marketing. She discovers that she likes statistics best, with mathematics as a first alternate.

By the age of 20, when her interests have begun to stabilize, she has attained a positive sense of direction. At the end of her sophomore year, she's ready to declare a major in statistics. And she's put herself in a good position to specialize, having the requisite background to head toward careers as an actuary, astronomer, biostatistician, math teacher, or operations research analyst, all of which would require and reward her talents with numbers and creativity.

To recap: You can help your college-bound student develop a short list of possible majors. I'll show you how. Over the first two years, she can take courses from a carefully-selected but small number of subjects, intending to rule most of them out. That way, by the end of her sophomore year, she is more likely to have settled on a major that develops her talents and also leads to gainful employment.

With stronger up-front planning, you can save her time, your money, and everyone's stress, with an added advantage: Once she completes her coursework, she won't be camping on your couch!

The #1 College Myth, Busted: Not Everyone Should Go to College

Nearly half of all students who start college never finish.

Yikes! Could it be that going to college was never really their best option?

There is a well-oiled track from high school to college in the United States. To be sure, the college experience offers many riches, including the intellectual ones I treasured as a coed. But it's primarily the presumed long-term financial advantages that have channeled our cultural wisdom into the prevailing adage that "everyone should go to college".

Except maybe not everyone. Maybe not even half of those who give it a try. I for one believe that our high-school-to-college track is a tad too slick.

Photo by Marcus Winter from Potsdam, Germany

One of my university counseling clients comes to mind. A young woman who had immigrated to Pennsylvania from Southeast Asia, she had lived in the United States long enough to learn that college was absolutely mandatory. Unfortunately, in course after course she would try and fail, crash and burn. Reading and writing in English, her second language, could not have been easy. To top it off, academics were not really her thing.

My client had good mechanical ability and an interest in cars—but she refused to consider a career as an auto mechanic. Data on the nearly equivalent salaries for employees in her major and in auto repair did not sway her. I never heard her say that she couldn't be a mechanic because she was a woman. No, she was determined to get her college degree because that was the way to succeed in America.

In future posts I'll provide guidance about how to help a student judge beforehand whether college is likely to be her personal best choice. For now, let's focus on the word college. As it is commonly used, college refers to a four-year institution.

Ah. Here's a quick way to change a cultural commandment that could otherwise continue to lead countless students astray.

For many high school students, a two-year associates degree might be much more appropriate. In fact, community college training may pay better than a four-year liberal arts degree. Nursing as well as a variety of technician jobs come to mind, with median annual wages above $50,000 and some above $60,000. Anthony Carnevale, the research professor who directs Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce, says that nearly one-third of associate degree jobs actually pay more at entry level than those requiring a college education. Many of these middle skill jobs also offer better benefits and chances for advancement.

What can talent mentors do with this information? I'd like to hear your thoughts. Here are some of mine:

For starters, let's not automatically use the word college or restrict our thinking to a BA or BS. Instead, we can simply tell students they need to get further training after high school.

Secondly, we can help our children consider possibilities that may include but are not limited to a four-year undergraduate institution. For example, they might find training on the job, or begin an apprenticeship, or join the military, or earn an industry certification, or enroll in a vocational program at a community college.

The following action suggestions may help you unearth local alternatives:

· If your child is still in high school, make an appointment to talk with her high school counselor. Ask about Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes and experiential learning opportunities for students who may not be college bound.

· Visit your local community college, online or in person, and survey their program offerings.

· Talk to a member of your community's Workforce Investment Board. Using your zip code, you can find names and contact information online.

I admire an observation made to me by Kathy Hanson, a CTE school district coordinator: As mentors, we can provide an attractive array of educational and employment options from which our students can choose. We can help them gather information and think through the advantages and disadvantages of each option. Then we can support their decisions.

An Example of a Strength: Mentors in IT Help Rob Find His Place

In my previous post, I wrote about one of my weaknesses: I wanted to sing and play an instrument, but I was born with a tin ear. As long as I performed in the musical realm, a mentor couldn't do much except maybe hold my hand, express some sympathy, and push a pair of plugs into his ears.

Everyone has weaknesses, like mine in music; but by the same token, everyone also possesses strengths. With the proper mentoring, your child's strengths can become a path to finding her place in the world. Let me illustrate by telling the story of how mentors helped my son Rob develop his talent with computers.

As a seventh grader, Rob took Mr. Jewett's Introduction to Computing class. Computer skills came easily: Rob learned quickly, had fun adding cool extras to his assignments, and felt magic when he could make something happen on the computer. His friends all wanted to be the teacher's aide for second semester, but Mr. Jewett chose Rob. His technical prowess gave him a positive social identity and helped him overcome the tough luck of being a new kid in a junior high crowd.



In eighth grade, Rob took a Web Design course from Mr. Denise. The class was provided with PCs loaded with the latest Adobe software package and told, "Build a website with three pages. Go!" Rob was able to learn html by doing, always a better method for him than listening to a lecture. Mr. Denise also put Rob to work in the school's computer lab, another form of hands-on learning.

Sadly, by the end of eighth grade Rob had already taken almost every computer course offered through the school district. So his parents stepped in. I arranged for an independent study in simple coding to round out his ninth grade year. Then my husband and I gave him what proved to be the best Christmas present ever: an Apple laptop. Rob "played" with it for hours on end, learning all the while.

In high school, Rob built a gaming computer as a capstone project. Two new mentors—a high school computer teacher and a HP volunteer—generously extended themselves to support his project. The task was fulfilling in its own right and also offered something pleasant to focus on following the death of a friend.

At the University of Colorado in Boulder, Rob worked part-time at the IT Help Desk for the School of Business, assisting his professors with their computer problems. In addition to making spending money and continuing to learn about IT, he found community on the job, a form of social support that eased the stresses of college with its endless round of breakups, conflicts, due dates, exams, and head colds.

Rob is now employed as an IT consultant for Big Compass, using computer skills that mentors have helped him hone for the last fourteen years. To the C++ he learned in college, he's added programming languages like Java and Ruby on Rails—and it still feels magical when he makes something happen on the computer.

I don't know my son's salary, but for me, that's not the point. He's been self-supporting since graduation and even manages to travel abroad and save some of his income. His boss has become a role model; he feels valued at work; and he's given freedom to solve real-world problems in his own way. As he looks to the future, IT remains a keystone.

Please note: Although the work world is competitive, Rob attained both revenue and resilience without getting straight As. He never had to win an award as The Most Magnificent McGillicuddy. It was not imperative that he attend an Ivy League institution (although he works with Ivy League teammates at client organizations, teasing them about how much they can accomplish when only one of them went to Yale).

Of course, in our tech-driven world, Rob has been fortunate to find great opportunity in his area of talent. But any strength has the potential to provide identity, community, and a positive life direction while also increasing employment opportunities, if your student has received some mentoring along the way.

Among my son's exemplary mentors, I feel the most gratitude to his junior high teachers. Mr. Jewett and Mr. Denise noticed Rob's early enthusiasm for information technology. They nurtured his budding interest and ability. Exceptional educators with high standards who continually modeled their own sophisticated use of computers, they set tasks at Rob's growing edge and gave him increasing responsibilities. Their early talent mentoring launched him in one of the most daunting challenges of modern life: finding one's place.

An Example of a Weakness: In Music, Carol Cannot Be Anything She Wants to Be

My mother stands at the sink, her back to me, and says, "You can't be in the band."

"What?" Somehow I've made it to her side. "But Susan Weber is going to play the clarinet."

My mother scrubs a pot, her eyes fixed on the gray dishwater, her forearms slick with spent suds. I can see the constriction in her throat and hear the resulting harshness in her voice. "You got a low score on a musical aptitude test."

I remember that test. Our class had listened to a short series of tones and then been asked to choose which one had changed the second time around: A, B, C, or D? Not even understanding what the word tone meant, I had guessed at every answer. "So?"

"Only one kid got a lower score than you did, Carol, out of both fifth grade classes. So they don't want you in band."

"You mean I can't get a clarinet?"

Mom shakes her head, pressing her lips together.

Trying to take it in, I leave the kitchen, picturing a line of forty-some fifth graders placed in order of musical ability. Because I'm standing next to last in that line, I won't be beside my best friend when she starts band next month?

I don't remember Susan proudly carrying her shiny new instrument into our classroom. I don't remember being left behind, one of the few souls remaining after the mass exodus to the band room. But I do remember this: Mr. Wagner, my first man teacher, contacted my mother and suggested that she provide me with an alternative activity, something that not all fifth graders could do. And thus it was that for the next couple of years my mother took me to Mt Solo Stables on Saturday morning for horseback riding lessons, where Cathy McRae became my buddy in the arena.

No, I never became an Olympic equestrian. And whenever I tell musical people that I was banned from learning an instrument in elementary school, they are appalled. To be sure, no one should be prohibited from making music. And yet, now that I'm familiar with aptitude assessments and not only approve of them but even advocate their use, I don't want to ignore the information they provide.

In my case, I believe my fifth grade test yielded an accurate prediction of my ability. I received an equally low score two decades later on a Tonal Memory aptitude test at Johnson O'Connor. I've also done poorly in any number of informal "tests." Nearly everyone who has ever heard me sing has asked me to stop. Even sweet little Rusty, a severely disabled boy I once babysat, didn't want me to sing "Rubber Ducky" when he took his bath. Shortly after I'd start to croon, his palms would hit the surface of the water, drenching me with spray as he yelled "Pops!" (his version of "Stop!")

Five decades after receiving a rude lesson about one of my weaknesses, here are my thoughts on the matter:

1) Although I myself had been unaware that my musical ability was in the low range, my weakness was obvious to others. If I had been allowed to play the clarinet, I'm confident that my performance would have earned scowls and scorn from my fellow students, which would have been even more excruciating to me than being excluded from band.

2) The school should never have asked my mother to do its dirty work. Instead, an educator should have talked with me privately and explained that even though there were plenty of things I could do well, remembering tones was not one of them. It certainly wasn't my fault, but my low tonal memory would make it painfully slow and laborious for me to learn to play music.

3) My lack of ability limited my options. Although I'd still love to be a singer, it would have been kamikaze crazy for me to pursue a career in music. Of course I could learn and improve, work hard and persevere, but it would take an unrealistic level of outside support for me to succeed. At an early age, I had discovered that no, I could not do whatever I wanted to do.

4) I later learned to play the recorder but lacked the motivation to continue making music with that or any other instrument. Eventually, I came to appreciate that not being musical was a blessing in disguise, in that it gave me more time for a preferred endeavor, one for which I possessed significantly greater talent and passion: reading.

Breaking Away from the Competition: A Footrace Illustrates Strengths and Weaknesses

I was unhappy with my life, so I went shopping. Surely I could justify buying a new pair of sensible shoes. Instead, the salesman held up something that looked like it belonged on a Barbie doll, with a high heel and stylish strap over the instep. He slipped the sandals on my feet and leaned back, admiration in his eyes. I couldn't afford the shoes but bought them anyway, because the salesman had made my shopping experience a pleasure. As it turned out, those sandals brought me joy every time I wore them.

A year I later bought running shoes from a different salesman. Knowledgeable but surly, he insulted my intelligence for choosing a pair that later proved to be comfortable and long-lasting. I still wish I'd pulled him aside to hiss in his ear: "You sold me these shoes despite your poor performance. You should do yourself and your customers a big favor by getting out of sales!"

In all my years of buying footwear, those two salesmen remain in my memory because one of them was just as awesome as the other was awful. They anchor opposite ends of a continuum. That same continuum exists for most human behavior, with strong performance at one end and weak at the other.

Let's switch now from a verbal explanation of strengths and weaknesses to a visual and numerical description, using the metaphor of a footrace. A footrace measures running skill. Like other skills, running can fall in the strong, average, or weak ranges. The image above shows the distance 100 runners have covered after ten seconds. (It also illustrates what statisticians call the normal curve.)

You'll notice that there is quite a bit of spread between the racers, with most of them bunched up in the middle of the pack. Those sixty-eight folks are running in the average range where it's hard to distinguish one from another. In contrast, the first sixteen racers—the strong runners—have broken away from the pack, while the last sixteen—the weak runners—have fallen behind.

In the high and low ranges, strengths and weaknesses are extreme enough to become "visible to the naked eye." In other words, observers are more likely to notice that you're fast, if you're one of the first sixteen runners, or slow, if you're among the last sixteen to cross the finish line. Arrows below the footrace image mark the point where the average range begins and ends (these two points are also known as one standard deviation below and above the mean).

Running is only one skill, but this general concept of performing in the high, average, or low range applies across the world of work. Every occupation has its own unique pattern of required skills, such as those necessary for selling shoes. When your student can use her greatest strengths on the job, she will become an effective and perhaps even phenomenal employee, like the guy who sold me the snazzy sandals.

Strengths are characteristics that help the worker adapt in a specific environment. In the sales environment, for example, strengths could include positive characteristics like being outgoing, developing rapport with strangers, and generating many alternatives. An employer seeks and compensates employee strengths that contribute to meeting his customer's needs. If you were the owner of the shoe store, of course you'd want to hire the most effective salesman you could, because he would help keep you in business.

Your child is best served by looking for work that is enhanced by her strengths and not affected by her weaknesses, so that she can break away from the competition throughout her career. If a particular job requires important skills that she can only perform in the low range, then she's better off looking elsewhere.

Do you suspect this point is too obscure to matter? Consider this little known fact: Many job seekers must submit to pre-employment testing. Employers seldom share the test results with their candidates; instead, they simply hire the applicants whose strengths provide the best match for their position.

And the unfortunate job applicant who has already spent her time and her parents' money to earn her bachelor's degree? She may not even be aware that she's running in the middle of the pack. She will not be hired. And most likely, she will never know why.

Mentoring Tips: Five First-Rate Ways to Support Others in Conversation

Your student wants to talk with you. You're flattered to be consulted and eager to help.

Now what do you do?

Here are five mentoring tips, gleaned from my experience as a counselor (as well as a supervisor of various kinds of psychotherapists):

Tip #1: Begin with what you hear and see and feel in your child's presence

There's something amiss in the phrase "just listening." To put yourself aside while you truly listen to others is to give them a precious gift.

Psychologist Leona Tyler wrote: "Counseling is basically a perceptual task. It is not possible to learn to say the right thing at the right time without learning to listen and watch and understand." It is the same for mentoring. Look. Listen. Let curiosity gently move you along.

Despite my desire to serve a helping of wisdom along with my counseling, I can't recall a single instance of praise for my profundity. On the other hand, clients thanked me over and over and over again for listening. 

Tip #2: Model patience with the process

Offer a contrast to our frenetic culture. Slow down. Conduct your conversation so that your student can hear herself think and begin to heed that small voice inside.

My clients would often tell me that they didn't know what they wanted when they actually did, deep down. Perhaps they were slightly scared to express it out loud, but eventually, because I waited and listened and probed instead of rushing in to offer advice, they would get around to declaring their heart's desire.

Of all the quotes about creativity, my favorite is from Epictetus: "No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen." Developing talent is an equally slow process.

Tip #3: Respect your student's desires

Personal values bring emotion (note the root word motion) into play, and that kind of energy can move entire mountain ranges. So let your daughter know that you respect her values.

One young woman admitted during a counseling session that she wanted to be a good nurse and mother and live in the country where she could raise a big vegetable garden. Then she trembled and hung her head in shame. Her goals didn't fit her parents' values, so she felt as though she had just confessed to something sinful. Hearing my respect for her goals helped her move forward.

Well-meaning friends and family, full of "shoulds," often plaster their own priorities on a young person who already feels vulnerable because her values are at odds with the mainstream (or perhaps simply at odds with her parents). When in dialogue, honor her desires—not your own.

Tip #4: Express confidence in his or her ability

If you believe that your son is capable of doing whatever it is he says he wants to do, then tell him so.

Lawrence Hatterer, a psychotherapist for fine artists in New York City, believed that his single most important contribution was a belief in his client's ability to create. Creative people of all sorts have told me that they were helped by such confirmation. Just one other person who believed in them was enough to strengthen their self-confidence.

I experienced this myself, when I told my sister that I wanted to write fiction for children. She read some of my early efforts and said, "I think you can do it." Sounds simple, but what a boost!

Tip #5: Contain your own anxiety

When your student wants to discuss something important, chances are that she will be uncertain and a bit worried. Anxiety is contagious—but don't let her scare you too.

One of my clients had been fired from a prominent position. Already embarrassed by his public demotion, he became panicked by his subsequent lack of success at the job hunt. Fear wafted off of him like bug repellent, which undoubtedly hurt his chances with potential employers. I helped by not becoming scared myself. Once he calmed down, he got the job he wanted and became one of my most grateful clients.

Try to focus on the person instead of her anxiety. In other words, let her feelings be her feelings and attend to her as a whole person. Attending does not mean rushing in to save her from feeling bad. Nor does it mean taking upon yourself the task of making her choices. It means going back to basics, to the starting point of what you hear and see and feel in her presence (see Tip #1).

Rest assured: You can provide information and opinions and emotional support, but you do not need to make decisions. That task belongs to your student. After all, she's the one who must live with the consequences.