All over the country, high school seniors are dropping their pencils on their last scantron of the semester. College kids and grad students are hitting send on their last final paper or lab report. And everywhere, the stress over exams and final projects melts away, only to expose a looming dread: the question.
At family holiday parties and church services and community prayers and dinner tables, every one of these young people will be asked at least once, and more likely a thousand times, a seemingly innocuous, pleasant question – one that inspires existential dread.
The question takes a number of forms. For the high school senior, it’s more and more often, “Where are you going to college?” For the college or grad school student, it’s “What do you want to do with that degree?” For anyone finishing up, it’s the fundamental, dreaded “What are you doing next year?”
The questioner, in my (very recent) experience, is always just trying to be kind, to demonstrate interest. You want to know what they’re interested in, what their hopes and dreams are. You want to understand a path that’s different from the one you took, or maybe feel confirmed in your own life choices. You want to know that they’ve thought about it, that they’ll be able to earn a living – that all the hopes you’ve invested in them will be borne out.
But those are not the sentiments the young person in your life hears.
The high school senior hears, “Were you good enough to get into the best school? Or are you a failure?” She hears, “Shouldn’t you have heard by now?” And if she’s not planning to go to college – she’s taking a gap year, or going to vocational school, or just trying to figure out how to be an adult for awhile – she hears, “What’s wrong with you?”
The college or grad student bears this wider kind of dread. Before, it was just which college. Now, it’s the whole yawning universe of possibilities, each one feeling like a permanent choice. He read Death of a Salesman in high school; he knows what happens to people who choose unfulfilling careers. In your kindly-meant “What do you hope to do with that?” he hears “You don’t have your whole life mapped out? You’d better get on it!”
But all is not lost. You do not have to leave the young person in your life stewing alone in the corner with their increasingly fragile psyche. As alternatives to the questions that cause panic to creep further up with each iteration, I want to offer you some conversation starters:
- What project have you learned the most from this year?
- What book or thing you’ve learned has made the biggest difference in how you think?
- Are there any books or classes you thought were worthless at the time, but later you realized you’ve learned a lot from them?
- What are you most excited about for the next semester? How can I encourage you in that?
- What are you most nervous about? How can I be supportive as you go through that?
- How have your career hopes and goals changed over the last few years?
Resist the temptation to give advice without asking, but offer reassurance that indeed your career plans changed over time, that change is good and normal. And remind them that there is a thoughtful person inside them, and your love of that person is not pegged to their GPA.
In short, aim for conversations that don’t require them to measure themselves against our cultural milestones of personal adequacy. Instead, ask questions that encourage them to reflect on learning and growth – after all, aren’t those the point of education?
