18 and Life

I work with undeclared freshmen at Montana State University. These students represent a bright group with many desires and passions. They tend to have so many desires and passions that they become easily overwhelmed by their choices.

It's true: freedom can be damning. Stupid freedom.

At this point in the semester, the student population I work with starts focusing on their next semester. They take a personality assessment and they complete some informational interviews. For some students, all of these tasks that show them the process of figuring out one's life is little more than reaffirmation. Lots of these students have suspected things about themselves for quite some time. Some have had inklings about being a teacher or studying sociology, but many of these students can't wrap their heads around choosing a major. Many of these students start to get panicky and want to choose that applicable major that will help them get a job, which most figure will be the "one thing" they should do for the rest of their lives.

ONE THING?!

Please people! How many of us are going to just eat one thing, or pursue one hobby, or go only to the same place for vacation for the rest of our live. Yawn.

Sure it still happens, but how often? We try to explain to students that onerarely keeps a job forever and one doesn't always work in her field of study. In fact, most college students will experience 7-10 major career shifts in their lifetime. I like to think arming my students with this information now might help some potential future discussions between parent and child. (How many of these discussions did we have, Dad?)

So as October starts to roll around, and as we start advising students for upcoming semesters, don't worry I am gentle with the "fresh"men/women. We ease into these myth shattering conversations. When a student gets back their personality assessment and can't understand why their top three jobs might be Clergy, Athletic Trainer, or Flight Attendant, I'll start talking about transferable skills, interests and abilities. But first, we're going to look at what they want to study.

To come out of college holding $19,202 of student loan debt (national undergraduate average of Stafford and Perkins loan debt of graduating seniors), wouldn't you like to have some fun and take some classes that interested you?

What about just learning? What about exposure to new ideas and cultures? What about enjoying this HUGE thing you've just started?

Then, I'm going to talk to them about traveling, about classes abroad, about working in a national park.

Certainly these things aren't for everyone, but many students don't think of these opportunities. Often, students just think about the next step that they have to complete.

As someone who changed her major about 6 times, still graduated in five years (with honors, thank you very much) and had many panicky nights where she felt like she needed a "plan," I feel very confident in saying catch your breath and go take a philosophy or a film class. Or a philosophy of film class. Add that yoga class, or take that medieval art history course.

How many times do we get to do this, anyway?


Montana State University map - Tagzania