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Question: Freshman year did not go so hot and my college has stated I cannot return next year. My parents and I agree that I should take a year off from school. I want to take the rest of my life off and just go ski and coach, which are the only two things that really make me happy. I live in the mid-west and the flatness and the weather here really depress me. I just don't feel like school is for me, but I know it isn't practical to try to be a ski bum the rest of my life. The very idea though of trying to return to a campus and study stuff I don't care about makes me feel overwhelmed and trapped. I don't know where to go from here.
Answer: It sounds like you do know what you want, you are just asking for permission to do something you and your parents think is impractical. Let me tell you what I think is impractical, spending four years and 160,000 on a business degree so you can pray to get a job that you don't really want and maybe save up enough money to go skiing 20 days a year (by the time you are 30).
When I was 22 a man asked me what I really wanted to do. I told him I wanted to travel around and put on presentations about male socialization and violence. He asked, "Why don't you?" I thought no one would take me seriously. I thought I needed a masters degree. I still gave it a shot but I didn't go after it very hard because I didn't believe I was "qualified".
12 years later I have two masters degrees and the knowledge that no one is going to take me seriously because of those. Now I do those presentations but I'm not as good at them as I would have been back then because I'm out of practice.
The best education in life IS LIFE. If you have a dream job find someone who is actually doing it and offer to work for them for free for as many hours as you can possibly spare. Someone is getting paid to do something that you would pay to do. I talk to people and coach lacrosse for a living. Both are things I would pay to do. If you are passionate about what you do and there is a market for your service you can make a living.
The purpose of college is a sorting machine where the really rich and the really bright meet and partner up as friends, romantically, and for business. You don't need college for that, you can skip that step and go meet the people who are already where you want to be and form relationships. College is a great life experience but it is not essential unless you want to go into certain fields which require a special license or certification.
Dan Miller, author of the book 48 days to the work you love hosts a free pod cast that you can download from itunes or from his website http://www.48days.net/ which gives people advice about how to pursue their dream using practical steps that you can show to your parents. Use this year to meet people and soak up experience and you will find you get a lot more useful knowledge out of that than any college could have given you.
When you are the one who has "failed out" it feels like you are all alone and everybody else has their stuff together. Most of your peers are just going through the motions of going to college because that is what everyone expected. Many of them will hit their identity crisis in 3 years as graduation looms and they still have no idea what they really want to do with their lives.
Your mission now is to fail forward. This experience is an opportunity if you can learn from it and use that information to make a quality plan for your future. When you are feeling overwhelmed take smaller bites and chew, we don't swallow life a year at a time we do it day by day.
Showing posts with label college. Show all posts
Showing posts with label college. Show all posts
Friday, July 15, 2011
Friday, August 28, 2009
Advice for college
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Question: I'm about to leave for college, but I'm nervous that maybe I picked the wrong school. How do I know?
Answer: There is no such thing as a "bad school" and the quality of your experience will depend entirely on your expectations and attitude.
Nationally about 50% of college freshmen will not return for their sophomore year. Kids and parents spend so much time worrying about getting in to a "good school" that they forget the more important point, which is finding a school you will want to stay at until you graduate.
In Illinois 75% of high school graduates will go on to some form of post high school education but only 25% will get a bachelors degree. Granted many of these people never intended to get a bachelors degree, they were working toward an associates or certification. None the less we must ask the question why do so many students "fail out" of school?
I think it has a great deal to do with the stories people tell themselves about what college will be like. Two myths: 1.) it is a giant party all the time 2.) it is much harder than high school
The first myth leads kids to try to create the image they have seen in the movies. They party, they skip classes, they procrastinate to pull the stereotypical all nighter, and they fail classes.
The second myth leads back to the first. College is really not that hard. Once you have been accepted to an institution if you show up to every class and turn all your work in on time you will graduate. Outside of community colleges, institutions of higher education do not accept students who do not have the academic potential of doing the work they will see at that school. That would a bad business plan. Once students realize it is not that hard they go back to myth one.
The biggest problem is that most students never stop to ask themselves what they really wanted to get out of their college experience. Many will say "a good job" but they usually do not know how to define that and they fail to realize that even the Ivy League schools cannot guarantee a lucrative job upon graduation.
It always amuses me when students claim they could not go to a small school because they want to meet more people. No matter what size college you attend you only get 24 hours in a day. No person has room in their life for more than a dozen close friends, and even that would be extreme. The smallest colleges usually have at least a couple hundred people. Therefore your social experience is not limited by the size of your school but by the size of your imagination.
There is nothing wrong with transferring schools if you think you find a place that is a better fit, but before you go just be sure you know what you are hoping to get from that place. You cannot get what you want unless you know what you want, and those who fail to ask themselves this question are doomed to be disappointed.
Your school is going to be fantastic if you bring enthusiasm, and you don't wait back for the amazing experiences to find you, but you decide what you want and go after it.
Question: I'm about to leave for college, but I'm nervous that maybe I picked the wrong school. How do I know?
Answer: There is no such thing as a "bad school" and the quality of your experience will depend entirely on your expectations and attitude.
Nationally about 50% of college freshmen will not return for their sophomore year. Kids and parents spend so much time worrying about getting in to a "good school" that they forget the more important point, which is finding a school you will want to stay at until you graduate.
In Illinois 75% of high school graduates will go on to some form of post high school education but only 25% will get a bachelors degree. Granted many of these people never intended to get a bachelors degree, they were working toward an associates or certification. None the less we must ask the question why do so many students "fail out" of school?
I think it has a great deal to do with the stories people tell themselves about what college will be like. Two myths: 1.) it is a giant party all the time 2.) it is much harder than high school
The first myth leads kids to try to create the image they have seen in the movies. They party, they skip classes, they procrastinate to pull the stereotypical all nighter, and they fail classes.
The second myth leads back to the first. College is really not that hard. Once you have been accepted to an institution if you show up to every class and turn all your work in on time you will graduate. Outside of community colleges, institutions of higher education do not accept students who do not have the academic potential of doing the work they will see at that school. That would a bad business plan. Once students realize it is not that hard they go back to myth one.
The biggest problem is that most students never stop to ask themselves what they really wanted to get out of their college experience. Many will say "a good job" but they usually do not know how to define that and they fail to realize that even the Ivy League schools cannot guarantee a lucrative job upon graduation.
It always amuses me when students claim they could not go to a small school because they want to meet more people. No matter what size college you attend you only get 24 hours in a day. No person has room in their life for more than a dozen close friends, and even that would be extreme. The smallest colleges usually have at least a couple hundred people. Therefore your social experience is not limited by the size of your school but by the size of your imagination.
There is nothing wrong with transferring schools if you think you find a place that is a better fit, but before you go just be sure you know what you are hoping to get from that place. You cannot get what you want unless you know what you want, and those who fail to ask themselves this question are doomed to be disappointed.
Your school is going to be fantastic if you bring enthusiasm, and you don't wait back for the amazing experiences to find you, but you decide what you want and go after it.
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