The future is come with many unknown. When looking into the future it is hard not to think about our children. We want the best for our children and we want to help them be prepared for the unknown. However, sometimes our best intentions do not help in the way think they will. Tim Klein is here to help us change how we guide our children as they prepare for their futures. The best part is, this can help anyone at any age too!
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Jen: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast with Hilary and Jen.
Hilary: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for our listeners, for those that are new listeners and for those that are existing listeners. We appreciate you always being here and spending this time with us. We have a special guest with us today that I am particularly excited to learn from. So, we have Tim Klein with us and Tim, I'd love just to turn the time over to you and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do and where you're joining us from.
Tim: Great. Yeah. My name's Tim. I'm in Boston, MA, and I'm a clinical social worker by trade and I've spent the majority of my career in youth development. So, I started my career after social work school. I was the outreach director for a National Youth development nonprofit working with low income first Generation high school students to get them to and through college. From there, I shifted to being a school counselor at a large urban high school right outside of Boston, MA. So, I was doing college counseling, school counseling, that sort of thing, and now I do research at Boston College, along with my collaborator, Doctor Bell Yang, around how to navigate college career in life. And we wrote a book called How to Navigate Life where we talk about the current challenges we see young people facing today and how and then we show how our research on purpose and belonging can be leveraged to help people navigate, make decisions in high school, college, work and beyond.
Hilary: Oh my goodness. OK, we have quite a bit we want to talk about just with that summary I'm like, here we go, this is exciting. So first and foremost, we need to advocate on behalf of your book. Where does one go about purchasing that or listening to that?
Tim: Oh well, I appreciate that. I think anywhere you can buy books, Amazon, Porch Light, Book Smith, your local bookstore. It's called How to Navigate Life. The new science of finding your way in school, work and life. And yeah, it was, it was published by Macmillan. So, you should be able to find it anywhere.
Hilary: OK, perfect. And we will make sure we include when we include information in our show notes, we will include the title of that book for our listeners so that they can make sure that they have access to that because I am sure after our conversation they will want to know, want to know a little bit more. Tim, having a well 14 year old. So, I often refer to him as a preteen, but I guess that's technically in the teen stage. Having a team myself and he is my oldest. It has been an interesting experience watching him maneuver what is middle school where we're at and having him try to find his place, like. you said. And to decide what he likes and what he doesn't like. And it's interesting to see him being swayed by different groups and different social media and media access out there and so I can see this being a topic that is something that all youth need to hear it and parents of youth as well too. So, can we start with this? You mentioned maneuvering the challenges of life. What are some of the challenges that our current teams are facing?
Tim: Yeah. And we'll just take it, you know, like where you are at to make it as experienced near as possible. I think you know I have a 7-year-old and a four-year-old. I have two boys and throughout elementary school, I do research on purpose. Young kids are innately purposeful. They're intrinsically motivated. They're curious about the world. You go throughout elementary school and they are just intrinsically curious about what's about them. And they just want to learn for the sake of learning. And then we found in our research right around middle school, 6th, 7th, 8th grade. A curious thing begins to happen. They're this switch turns on, and they start feeling this pressure of I am playing for keeps. My grades matter. My extracurriculars matter. So, like what I am doing today, there is a ton more pressure and responsibility because I need to be executing at the highest possible level so that I can get into accelerated geometry so I can get into accelerated AP calculus. So, there's this shift to what we call a performance mindset. At that age, where that pressure and that stress makes school feel much, much more a high stakes game. And at the same time, so they know that they need to be successful at this point. They know what they're doing now is going to have implications about what they want to do in the future, and then they're going to start having these conversations. What do you want to be when you grow up? You know, like, where are you going? What do you want to do? And it used to be I want to be an astronaut. I want to be an NBA player. I want to be whatever. Now it's, I want to be a YouTuber, right? Or I want to be a streamer. And so, our big thing is we put all this pressure on young people to not only work hard today, but have a clear vision of what they want to do in the future and be working towards it. The only problem is we've never taught anybody how to decide what to do with their lives. How do you make these big decisions? And so the main argument we have is that we haven't give students enough slack and leeway and space to ask these bigger questions about what is this all about. What type of person do I want to be? What impact do I want to make? We kind of usher them into these very specific achievement tracks that we think everyone should be pursuing.
Hilary: You know you bring up that scenario and I'm just thinking, so, in our in our school system here in our local school system the students, the middle school students sit down with the counselor and they go through basically exactly what you have just described there. They sit down with the school counselor and they talk about academically what they are working on and what they need to be working on in the near future. And I remember sitting down with my 7th grader and having the counselor ask my 7th grader, what do you what do you? Want to be when you grow up? And what school are you going to go to what college are you? Are you going to go to and how are you going to pay for that? And I remember my 7th grader looking at me like deer in the headlights look, thinking well, hopefully that will come from you, mom. Right? And you know, I, one side of me thinks I am so grateful that they are better preparing our students for the future and academically they are much smarter than I think we were growing up. I look at what my 8th grader is learning now, and that was probably what I was learning in 12th grade, even college. But I do I see that pressure of, Okay 13-year-old, you should know the course of your life at this point when they have zero idea of what that includes. Like you said, what that entails. And so, I do, I both love and I hate this this scenario. We put them through this this performance mindset that they have.
Tim: Yeah. And in in that conversation, that school, and this is not the school counselor's fault. This is the system that they were in. But there is this implicit assumption that the purpose of high school is to is all college preparation. Like there we have just decided as a society that the purpose of getting the best grades that you can is to try to get into the college that is most likely to reject you. Right. And so this is a shift that has happened where everything we do is all around college preparation and so and we have been. And so, we put all this pressure on your kid needs to get into, like I said, the most highly rejected school. He wants to go to the college that is most likely to not get him into. And because we think the harder a school that is to get into the better that school must be. The better I will be. And so, we haven't. We've gone so far down this path. And you are right, Hilary. If you look at any statistic today, students are getting better grades, taking more AP classes, getting higher standardized test scores. Applying to more colleges, getting into more colleges than ever before, so quantitatively, this is the most successful generation of academic performance machines we've ever created. There's only one problem. When they get to a place like Boston College where I am, they're absolutely flaming out, you know, 51% of college graduates regret the college they went to. The major that they chose, or the career that they went into. 75% of college graduates to say nothing else of the 50% who don't graduate, 75% don't feel that their college experience is relevant to their life or to the work that they are doing. You know, so there are these statistics where even though they're working so hard, students are struggling more than ever before. And it's because of what I would argue is we have not answered the question. OK, if we what is the purpose of college? Why do we want you to go to college? What we've never given people the opportunity to define what success is for them. And so in lieu of that, we assume that success is winning. It's being at the top of the pyramid. It's beating out your peers, it's having the best upgrades and what we're finding now is that the performance mindset which we've studied in, in the purpose lab at BC, you know when you view life as a never ending sprint because it's a game, because the purpose of life is to win by beating out everyone. It's not a question of if you're gonna burn out. It's a question of when you're going to burn out. So, our whole thing is like we need to take a step back and we need to having these larger picture questions about what is the purpose of high school, what is the purpose of college? What is our individual sense of purpose, and then how do we design for that.
Jen: I have a 17-year-old stepdaughter and. She so she graduates this May and has decided that she wants to go to college. And we asked her, do you have an idea? We fall in that trap of what do you want to do? And her response was I went on the Internet and found out how much money I could find for something that I like to do. And so she's decided she wants to be a radiology tech. She's like I'm interested in that. I like science and I can make good money here, and that is her reason for picking the career. She wants is because she wants to make sure she has money. But her high school years have been so stressful on her and she is. I don't, I just can't fathom how she does it. She's like I'm going to be graduating with my associates. I've done all of these AP classes. I'm getting A's and everything and then just like, how do you deal with that stress? Because I grew up and I went to the school high school in the 80s and so we didn't have all of this other stuff floating around to distract us. And I, it wasn't even that motivated. But I just feel bad for her mental health and if she's seriously OK, in that department.
Tim: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I feel for her, honestly. And it's because, you know, she is in this world where with the Internet, with all this information, with TikTok, with everything we have created this society in which we are telling young people that the path to success is a path that's linear. You need to like come up with a five-year plan right now and then you need to map out your stepping stones and do that and like it makes sense like in your head. You're like, yeah, of course. Like figure out what you wanna do. I wanna go be a nurse. I wanna go be an accountant. I like. I'm gonna go be this very financial stability job that's there. And then I'm just gonna follow these steps to get there. It's like this idea of pathways. Right. The only problem with that is like none of us follow those plans. You know, like when we were younger, when we were in high school and college, you went to college. Nowadays, young people think that they have to go to college knowing exactly what they want to study. When we went to college, it was like I have no idea. This is a rite of passage where I'm gonna explore. I'm gonna take detours. I'm just kind of kind of live. And then and then, like, experience. See what it has to offer, and then I'm going to see what emerges from there. And young people today, for a variety of reasons, feel like they. That is a privilege that they do not have and the problem, and so they are on this pathway mindset where it's like this linear path. You know, she has to go be a radiology technician, she has to get certified, and so she's like, I have one path I need to follow. And the problem is the farther along she gets on that path. What if it's not what she thought it was going to be, right? What if it's very different from it? What if technology comes in and dramatically changes the nature of that role? But if our students only have one path, as soon as you take one step off that path, what are you? You're lost. You're falling behind. You know, and so and so like, the more they feel like there's one path and typically it's nursing, that's what we're seeing a ton is like, especially young women. It's like nursing. I wanna go into nursing cause it's financially stable. I know I can get a job. I can see that path. But. This they feel like they have to commit to something now and then they don't have any agency in the future to step off that path. So, it's under and it's like, not only do they have to love what they're doing, but they have to be incredibly good at the same time.
Hilary: You know, I see that in our in our high schools up here as well too, and I mean and Jen, I think the situation that your stepdaughters and is very similar to what a lot of our youth are in. That they do have the luxury of taking some of these college prep classes in high school. So, I do think most high school students are graduating already with, you know, entering college as a, for most of them I would assume a sophomore. By the time you're a sophomore, usually you need to make that decision as to what classes we're totally bypassing that freshman year of college, which is when you take all of your general courses, where you get to experience subjects that you wouldn't have otherwise experience. They don't have that anymore because that has already been crossed off the list through their high school experience. And it, and the tricky thing is, I think that we're, I think teachers. I think the system. I think you know those individuals. Well, we're seeing this. They're seeing this as the benefit because we're helping kids save a lot of money by taking away, you know, a year of college that they would have had to otherwise pay for. But you're right, it's forcing them to walk into that experience already, have made that choice. Yeah. And not having that opportunity to take those elective courses. Which oftentimes helps us to open up doors that we wouldn't have otherwise thought to open.
Tim: Yep. And on that point, you are right. Like we are in the zone of how can we pack as many college credits in for as cheap as possible as fast as possible. And what you are highlighting is another major issue that we have in higher education. Where we fundamentally misunderstand the true value of higher education. We live in a world today where people think that the value of higher education is being able to say I went to Boston College. Being able to put Boston College as a bullet point on my resume or in my LinkedIn profile, and this is what we call brand capital, because what we think is like ohh, if we are associated with Boston College, people are going to assume that I have a certain motivation, work ethic, strengths and ability and because of that assumption, they are more likely to hire me for a job right? And so that does exist like me saying, you know, I was a teaching fellow at Harvard. I graduated from University of Chicago. Like, you are assuming things about me because of that association. But the value of that is wildly misrepresented. And we've actually found in our research that there are two other much more important things in higher education that lead to thriving in your life after and one of those is formative experiences. So, hands on experiences having a work study job working on a group project, community service like getting involved and doing active things that is correlated. Those experiences are correlated with mental health. Once you graduate from college, it's correlated with students feeling like they are prepared for the mental demand of the workforce, and it's correlated with having finding your future career purposeful. So, one it's these formative it's hands on experiences where you're doing things and you're interacting with the world. And the other one is meaningful relationships. You know, meeting peers, mentors, faculty members, meeting people who are who are serving as mentors, who are expanding your knowledge of what the world is, who are changing the way you think about things. Again, saying research says that you know, if you have three to four friends at the end, if you have three friends at the end of your freshman year of college, you're three times more likely to say that your college was worth the experience was worth the price of admissions. And so we know that in people and experiences, increase the value of higher education, but we don't tell this. And so basically at the end of the day, it's if you go out and meet interesting people in college and do interesting things, that is going to maximize your likelihood of finding something that you like is purposeful and the reason that is. It's because when we go out and do interesting things and meet interesting people. It causes us to think about our lives and the world that we live in. And at the end of the day, and we could get into all of the academic jargon about what purpose is. But I'll just tell it so purpose is living a life that's personally meaningful, where you feel like you're contributing to the world beyond the self. And it's and it's correlated with every happiness, success, any outcome or indicator it's correlated with. And so, people are always asking us how do you cultivate purpose? How do I get? How do I find it for my students? And really the answer is the more you intentionally think about your life. The more likely you are to find purpose in it, and so as those experiences in college that lead to that sense of purpose. But we live in this world where students are trying to get through college as fast as possible just so they can say they graduate so they can move on to the next thing and they're missing all of those formative experiences.
Hilary: Isn't it amazing that the answer to the question of life and most things in life is all about connection and all about relation. Like that's just it's such a fantastic reminder for us that really it all comes back to those people around us. Oh my goodness. OK.
Tim: But it's hot, but just on that, it's just it's hard to have faith that if I just if my students are interested in things and if they're going out and meeting interesting people and doing interesting things, having faith that they are going to land on their feet, even if I don't know exactly where they're headed. It's very hard to have faith that that is going to work out because of it feels like we're in a world today where you are either wildly successful or you are broke on the street. And so like, I'm you. And so, like there is feeling all this pressure where there's no in between. You're either massively successful or you're a massive failure. And so that's what makes it hard for people to trust in the process here anyways.
Hilary: I can see that OK, we mentioned that it. What it's not necessarily a school counselor problem nor a teacher problem or a parent problem. It's a system and changing things in the system tends to be quite difficult. So, what are the initial steps that we need to take. When we have children in high school in middle school, probably even in elementary school, like small things we can do and implement to build this sense of purpose and you know, experimentation phase that we want. In our kids, how do we do that?
Tim: Yeah. I mean, so one it's like so one thing at a high-level purpose is you know doing things in life that are personally meaningful that feel like contribute to the world beyond the self. And so, to do those things. You and your students have to know what is personally meaningful to them. You know, like, what do they like to do? Where do they feel like they are at their best? So, one is just giving them opportunities. And in our book, we have these four elements of purpose. So we talk about these four elements, make up purpose and using the strengths that make you your best self, you know like for you to I won't put you on the spot here, but it's like when I go through this, I want you to ask yourself in my role in what I do, do I feel like I can show up as my best self and use the strengths that make me my best self. That's one and so any time we're using the character strengths that make us best selves, by the way, people could go take the VIA character strength survey if they wanted to take a survey to understand their strengths, but one anything when we get to use our character strengths, it's personally meaningful, you know, and so and then the other part is like developing skills that make us our best selves. So anytime we're showing up as our best selves. And also, growing and gaining skills were motivated to learn. That's what's personally meaningful in life. And so, part of it is we need to give students the space to understand and articulate what their strengths and skills in the world war and then the second part of this is making a positive impact in the world. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to sacrifice your material well-being to like, solve cancer or climate change. People, oftentimes when they hear a purpose they think like, oh, I have to be solving the biggest problems. No. Like we've actually found in our research that if you have a job at Dunkin' Donuts. I'm from the East Coast, so we may get but like if you think you are job at Dunkin' Donuts, you're using a part of that paycheck to help your parents pay the bills, and that's helping your parents. If you genuinely think that's contributing to your parents, that's a sense of purpose that's helping beyond the self. So, we have to get people students thinking about like what needs in the world. Do they care about what problems are they seeing that feel like it affects them? What problems are other people going through? And like what positive impact. How do they wanna be meeting needs in the world? That's personally meaningful to them and then the final piece is doing all that in a way with their core values, right? So, it's just like understanding what do they value most, what's most important to them, what do they want to stand for. So, at the end of the day, you know, if you wanna, like, go deep and read the book, it's like purpose is using your strengths and skills to make a positive impact that aligns with your core values and the hard work there is identifying those things, yeah.
Jen: I'm just thinking of myself and I figured all of that out later in life. Because I didn't go to school until I was in my late 20s to college. And went in there thinking I was had one purpose. This is what I was going to be. I was going to be a history teacher and that was it. But I'm grateful that I did do that little search of what do I like? What do I want to do? Because I feel like that what I'm doing now is where my strengths are. And that there is a purpose within my life, and I feel like I'm doing a better and I'm giving better to my community, to my family. And all of that kind of stuff and. Yeah, my brother had he works in Sacramento, and he makes a lot of money. And he's like, Jen, you're a social worker. You don't make much money. He's like, you really need to find a job where you make more money. And I said. Nope, this is where I want to be this is my purpose and so it. It is such a great thing if kids can find that peace, that strength, that reason for doing good, no matter what the job may be.
Tim: Was there a moment if you don't mind me asking, like, when did you know? Can you remember a moment when you realized that history was not the direction for you and that you wanted to shift?
Jen: It was my first exam and it was. I love watching history on television. I hate having to memorize dates and knowing when all of these things happened throughout time, but I was also taking a parenting class at the same time, and there was an individual that came in and did a presentation on the place where I work now. And I said that that's what I want to do. And that's the place.
Tim: What? What was that? Wait. What? What was when you say that like what was the thing that you were seeing?
Jen: I want to do it helping parents be the best that they can be giving them tools for, you know, navigating this life of parenthood. And then it was The Family Place that they were talking about, and I'm and they're talking about all the things that they had done or they do. And I'm like I want to do that. I want to be. I had a great childhood. I want to help other people have a great childhood.
Tim: Yep. So, a couple of things there so one, just in this like one, you realize that the skill set you go into history and then you realize the skill set needed there. And we have these three different buckets of skills. So, one is called cognitive skills. Then there's interpersonal skills and intrapersonal skills. So, you get into history and it's all cognitive skills, right? It's memorization. It's all just about using your brain, which some people love, you know, analytical, thinking, innovation, creativity. But then you had an experience and you got connected to someone to go back to, like, the value of Higher Ed and you saw. Ohh interpersonal here's an opportunity to use interpersonal skills, right? And so, like this is like I want to use skills around emotional intelligence, communication, collaboration. And you realize those are the skills I want to be using in my career. So even you didn't have that language but you saw like a skill alignment there. And then the final piece here. So that's what was personally meaningful to you. And then in the final piece you were. Like so, when it comes to needs in the world, usually our desire to make a positive impact comes from adversity. We've had to overcome ourselves. Where I've gone through this challenge and like I know how hard it is and I want to help other people going. Through the same thing. Or it comes from advantages we have. I've had these advantages. I had these resources that made my life better. I am realizing there are people in this world who are benefiting from those advantages and I want to pay it for forward so like. That is, you are embodying what purpose like work looks like on the ground, but you just did all of that reflection on your own, or maybe not on your own, but like without a purpose program. So.
Hilary: So, Tim, because Jen is a much smarter, more mature person than my son. I imagine I'm imagining asking my 14-year-old these questions, and I'm imagining him coming up with a response like I love basketball. I'm really good at it. I win every Fortnite competition I'm involved in and I want to make some money. So, that's my strength and skill and value in life is to become wealthy, right? I mean, I'm assuming these preteens and teens, with their egocentric mind, they come up with questions, answers like that. So, do I embrace that? Do I guide that in a different direction. How do I how I expound on that conversation?
Tim: Yeah, yeah. Right, right. No. And so like one thing on, on the purpose expiration level, he says I love basketball, right. Well, I'm curious, what is it that you love so much about basketball? Is it the competition? Does he love winning? You know, is it the teamwork aspect of it where he likes being part of a community bigger than him? Does he feel like he gets to be the best version of himself when he steps on the basketball court? Is he using strengths that there, that he's not using in other places, so it's just getting curious. Like, what is it about basketball that you love so much? You know, cause it honestly might be where he's like. I love like coordinating a group of people together. You know, I love helping people to, like, communicate, and we're all working together. And to make sure everyone knows what their role is and you're like, guess what? That's management right there. You know, like, that is a highly transferable skill set and so it's just like we have to know that there's purpose everywhere and it's just getting curious about what is it that you like so much about it. But then, like even more concrete, there are three things that when we ask people to do, we know there are three things you can do to cultivate purpose. You ask people to envision the future. Just to think about the future, you ask them to reflect on the past and you ask them to be intentional in the present. And so, this is what we call purpose crafting. And so, what you could do with your son around purpose crafting is like, pick an area in his life that he's really invested in. He's about to go to a basketball camp. Right. And you ask him, what do you hope happens at, what do you want to happen at basketball camp? Right there. That question, what do you want to happen? Right there, we are asking him to set an intention about envisioning the future of basketball camp and talking about what he wants to happen. And so, and getting like, you know, I want to learn how to do a left-handed layup. I want to learn better whatever it is. And then you have like, what is the desired like if you have that intention, what's the desired outcome? What do you hope is the result of that. And I know that sounds so silly to do, but literally like people with a sense of purpose. They set intentions for the future. They envision the future, and then he's and then the second part is like, OK, I want to go to basketball camp and I want to be able to dunk or whatever it is. Right. Let's say he wants to be able to dunk. The 2nd part is asking him. Why is that important to you? Right. Why is it and we are creating tools for this, but why is it personally meaningful for you to be able to dunk?
And then the second part is how could that actually contribute to the world beyond the self? How could you knowing how to dunk, help other people around you and what we're doing with those questions is we are asking them questions to put a purposeful intention, we're asking them to identify purposeful motivation behind that intention. Because we know if he goes in, he says I want to learn how to dunk. And you say why? And he's just like, it's all materialism. It's all so he can flex on TikTok. We know that's a performance mindset and that's not going to be enough motivation to overcome the big obstacles. So, so and so the third. So, like, what do you hope happens at basketball camp? Why is that important to you? So, and then the third one is acting in the moment. What can you do to make that happen? What can you intentionally plan to do to make that happen? And I know it sounds silly, but it's like you, if you can just be asking your students and helping them answer these three questions. So, like they walk on, they walk, you know, they they're going to go back from Thanksgiving break or whatever it is. This, you know, we have two weeks left in the in the in the school semester. What do you want to have happen? Why is that important to you? What can you do to make it happen? And we're finding this purpose crafting technique can really be used in one-on-one clinical work with social workers. You know, this is all motivational interviewing, what I'm talking about. And so yeah. So, these are some tools. But again, do you think that would work with your son or would he still give you the biggest eye roll ever you try to do those things.
Hilary: No, no, I'm actually thinking to myself. I am so excited for him to come home because I would love like, I'm like, thinking of those questions and I'm taking guesses as to what he would say, but I love that I actually love that idea and I can see him. So, he is on a he is on a basketball team right now that I often refer to them as the team of misfits. They're not great, but he loves it. And so, I can see in him that he would provide a response. As a I love being around my friends or I love when we can work together or I love when so and so makes a basket and we can all cheer for him, like I'm seeing these responses in him thinking, OK, now we can see a bigger picture here. So, I actually yes, this approach is fantastic.
Tim: OK. And I'm glad you said that because there is what I'm talking about here. It's intention setting not goal setting, because if I was to say like what is your goal for the next game, right? Like he'd be like, I want to score 14 points it. Would have been all like very person. It would have been like a quantifiable metric that is outside of his control and it would have been, you know, like focus on him. But if what if you say OK, next games coming up, what do you want to have happen in that game? He would he probably be more. I want everyone to be working together. I want to be trying my best. He would start talking about process oriented intentions that are much more in his control, right? And that that is the shift the goal of basketball is not to beat the team the goal of basketball is to show up as your best self and to like tap into why you're doing it. And so yeah, I just really appreciate that example because when we talk about goals, that makes us very selfish. But when we talk about intentions that can bring in and be much more purposeful.
Hilary: And I think we are a goal oriented society and a goal oriented educational system. So, I love that. I love this and not that goals are bad. But like you said, goals are primarily focused on me, myself and I and so, I love that idea of. Of re-switching the mindset.
Tim: Yeah. It's so it's so funny. You bring that up because we are a goal obsessed society and we are. We are terrible at making goals, you know, like we don't have any good goals set. There are no we don't have good tools to set meaningful goals for people like we have smart goals. And like smart goals are really, really ubiquitous. They're everywhere. But like, I don't think most people even know what smart goal stands for. And like you know, and that and the thing I love smart goals too, because it's tangible. But what they what the what goal setting usually misses out is why are these goals important in the first place. You know and that's what we're missing in it. And so that's really what the work on purpose is all about. It's like it's the because of the goal. And basically if people can take anything out here. So, I did college counseling, so like I was getting students into the most rejective Ivy League colleges you could get into. And I realized in my research in my in my entire career that Why you go to a college is much more predictive of success and happiness than the college you go to itself. Meaning if I take. Two students and they both say I wanna go to Boston College. If I say, well, you wanna go to Boston College because. And the rationale, the story they tell about why going to Boston College is important to them. That is the driver about whether they're actually going to be successful and happy at Boston College. And I genuinely, genuinely, if I have a student who's going to a Community College, but they can give me a very purposeful because statement about why they're going, I will bet on them all day. Then a super stressed out kid going to Dartmouth College, who has no idea why they're going there, in the first place.
Hilary: Hmm, best thing. So Tim, we we're talking a lot about this path of you know of high school to college, but I'm assuming we can find this purpose. Choosing not to go to college as well too does. That look the same, creating that path, does that look the same if we decide on the trade school or even just finding an occupation outside of higher education?
Tim: Yeah, it does. I mean, so it it's really like you when evaluating any post secondary decision you do want to look for this combination of what we call brand capital which is the name brand recognition, what we call Community Capital which that could be called social cap. But like the people involved. And then and then the human capital. So it's basically like if I want to go to a trade program, it's like, what are the skills I'm going to be learning at that program and how valuable are those skills? What is the community like, is this an area where I'm going to be meeting peers and I'm going to be meeting mentors who's really going to engage with me and then. Is there brand capital there, you know, like is there any sort of positive association with going to that place? And I would really focus on the social capital or the Community capital and the human capital more than the brand capital. There there's no issue. I do a ton of work with CTE programs and vocational programs. The issue sometimes is that you don't want. To go to a place that's only teaching you technical skills. Without the more what we call universal human skills. So, remember, I talked about cognitive skills intrapersonal skills, you know. Those are what we call universal human skills because they're universally valued. They're in demand. Like the skills that make us universally human. Those skills are really, really valuable. Typically you learn those in a liberal college setting. But you can learn anywhere. And so if you're going to a trade school, you want to make sure that they're not just going in there. And it's a boot camp. Where they're teaching you a technical skill set, and that's all you're getting because we are living in a world right now where technology is developing so fast that technical skill sets become obsolete. More like usually. Now it's around three years. If you learn a technical skill, meaning a specific skill for a specific domain or technology. That skill set typically will last three years before technology disrupts how that is working and so, like you know, you're not to scare your stepdaughter, who wants what did you say she wanted to be a like radiology tech? So, what people want to be looking for is how much of that job is routinized grounded in a pattern repeatable overtime. Right. So, the thing about social work is that almost none of what you do is repeatable, right? Because, like, every person is different. And so, because of that, though, because it's not routinized at all. It can't be automated, but if there are parts of that job that can be automated that is repeatable, that is routinized, AI is gonna come and create an automation to do that. But so, like so. If it's the tech part that's, but if she loves engaging with people, you know, being really creative and solving problems and providing information for people to help it, like focusing on that, not necessarily just radiation technologists to do that, it's gonna be a lot better. And cause we're actually seeing that like we're coming out of this phase of like. Well, go into STEM. Because that's where all the career stability is. You know, and actually what we're finding is that that's the most disrupted industry you can go into because usually it used to be like, ohh go learn to code and go do a coding boot camp and then you're going to be super valuable. Now with ChatGPT and open AI, that specific technical skill set is not as in demand as it once was. So you just want to be looking for a balance of technical skills, human skills, relationships.
Hilary: So, OK, for our parents, for our listeners out there that are thinking to themselves, I need a mini Tim in my pocket so that he can guide me through this conversation with my child. Right, because I may not be able to do this on my own. What are some, like, practical, easy, applicable steps that parents can take with their kids today that are going to help in this process?
Tim: Yeah, yeah. And I, I think 1 is having the conviction. That like if your student brings them their best self to whatever they do that that is going to be where they're most successful, right? So, what I mean by that, it's like if you know, we have a Jennifer over here who is at her best as a social worker. That is going to lead to a better outcome, then Jennifer, being miserable as an accountant or whatever. And I'm not here. I'm not saying there's plenty of purposeful accountants. I'm not saying you can't. But you know what I mean? So, it's like 1. It's having the conviction that where my student can show up as their best self is where they're going to be most successful. And so, to do that it's taking the pressure off yourself to try to be keeping up with the Joneses and competing with everybody else. I think. I think parents have this deep seated fear that if they don't push their students to do everything. And if they don't helicopter their way to get every single, every single opportunity for them, they're going to inadvertently undermine their students ability to be successful, right. And so one it's having conviction in your students that. The best version of themselves is going to be where they're most successful, and if you can believe that then you just need to start delighting in your student. So it's like tape becoming aware like what are the best parts of them instead of trying to fit them into this square box. It is like what makes them what do you uniquely delight in? What is something about them that you love about them? And then it's fanning those flames. It's like validating in it. And then it's looking for opportunities where your student can continue doing those things. And honestly, if you can start doing it, it's a way more fun way of parenting because, like you can meet your kids where they're at, you can be fully on their team. And then you don't feel like they have to continuously be meeting these expectations that are impossible to me and I'll just like I have a 7 year old and a four year old. So they're like, OK dude, wait till you have a 15-16 year old to do it. But like I genuinely don't care about my kids grades at all. I just care about them like being socially well adapted and balanced. And it's allowed me to like I'm. Not looking for a skill set that I can then project on to engineer like oh, he's great at Legos. He's going to be an engineer. Like I'm just not doing that. And it just makes it. I can be so much more present in my parenting because I just know that if I delight in my kids and if I know if I can help them become their best selves, that is going to work out. Even if I have no idea what working it out actually looks like.
Jen: I'm just thinking, you know, starting that young. Not only are you flaming those for your kids and encouraging them to do what they're strong in and creating those good social networks and things like that. But it's also creating practice for you for when you do have that 15-year-old and I think that's something that we forget about is if we're like, oh, I'll just, I'll just learn how to do that when my kid is a teenager. But if you're practicing all these things when they're young, it's going to be so much easier when they're older.
Tim: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And to that point, remember, we started this conversation where kids in elementary school are innately purposeful. They're looking to use their strengths. They're looking to grow skills. They innately want to be helping people and doing away with what aligns their values. So, it's really, you know, it's protecting them. From the from the performance mindset that it's going to start creeping in in 6th, 7th, 8th grade, you know it's really protecting themselves against that pressure and being like I know you have what it takes. And I know that if you just. So like you know, figure out who you wanna be and what you wanna stand for. I know. Like if you can like really be find who that is, you are going to be successful and happy. And so then it's like it's really protecting you against all that other noise.
Jen: It's a domino effect. You do all of these great things on their strengths. And all of that and their intention of learning and loving, doing fun things. It's just going to be a domino effect throughout their life because they know how to do that part that's problem solving meeting people. All of that good social emotional skills.
Tim: Yeah. And I'll leave you with one last thing that parents can actually do right now, because like a lot of the times parents, they are really pushing their students to get into college for the right reasons. They want financial stability. They want them to not have to deal with all the issues that they did. But that intention gets lost in translation. Like students aren't aware about why you are pushing them so hard, why you are always on them, about their grades. And so, they interpret it as you don't believe in me, right? And so, if you are a parent listening to this and you should do the same thing. We asked before so it if it's college application season, what do you want to have happen? That's the result of college applications, or your students going to college. What do you want to have happen when they go to college? Why do you want that to happen and then what can you do to make it happen? But if you can start getting clear on your definition on your intentions and definition of success, understanding your own motivation for it, you can start sharing that with your students. Here's what I want to have, you know, and Hilary, I would say like with the you could do it with like. OK, what is your intention for this next game? Like, what do you want to have happen during that basketball game? Why do you want it to happen? And like, what are you gonna do or what can we do and that is actually modeling this type of thinking that we're talking about. And so that honestly is often the best way to cultivate purpose is by modeling it ourselves.
Hilary: Perfect. Thank you. I, my mind is just racing. I love this and I love this feeling of new knowledge. Tim, it's been amazing.
Tim: This was super fun. And you are you were great. Sorry. Go ahead, Jennifer.
Jen: And no, I was just going to say thank you as well.
Tim: Yeah, this was super fun. You two are very, very good at this about creating space. I can tell you 2 have worked together for a long time because there was like 0 interrupting each other or anything like this. And so, I appreciate the time. And so yeah, more soon. You know, it's funny how you said, like, is there a little Tim, you can be in your pocket. We're working on AI chat bots that will help people take go through this process using what we call reflective intelligence and so more on that soon. But yeah, I really appreciate taking the time to come on here.
Jen: Thank you so much. I am so glad that I we asked you and that I got to see you in the Resilience Conference. I just I've taken notes for myself and I probably could listen to you a lot longer. So, thank you so much for coming and teaching us. I hope that our listeners have been able to. There's a lot that. They we can take from this, so hopefully you're able to take some great information from this. We want to thank you for joining us and we'll be back next week and we will remind you to be kind and patient with yourself.
Thank you for listening to the Parents Place podcast. If you would like to reach us, you can at parents@thefamilyplaceutah.org or you can reach Jen on Facebook. Jen Daly – The Family Place. Please check out our show notes for any additional information. Our website is the family placeutah.org if you're interested in any of our upcoming virtual classes, we'd love to see you there.
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