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For some time, there have been professionals meant to help young people navigate life’s challenges. In the past, these included teachers, coaches, school guidance counselors, even therapists. Now, there is a new group of people who specialize in providing support for college students and new graduates figuring out the next step and making important life decisions. This can be a double-edged sword, though. Young people want advice, but also need experience making decisions for themselves.
Professional Career Coaches
In an article for the New York Times titled “Career Coaching for the Playdate Generation,” Laura Pappano writes of the new trend toward private career coaches. They work with college students to help them take the “right” steps towards finding a career. Some of the services offered can include:
Testing for strengths and weaknesses
Matching skills with possible careers
Developing a resume
Coaching on how to do an interview
Job shadowing and career exploration
These services don’t come cheap. The parents of one student profiled for the article paid almost $5,000 for the services of a private coach. However, the parents felt that it was money well spent to help their son be able to make a deliberate choice about a career instead of groping in the dark as they did when they were young.
Pressure to Make the “Right” Choice
It makes sense that young adults and their parents want to get this kind of help. There are so many programs of study and careers in today’s economy that picking the “right” one can feel overwhelming. Also, with the price of tuition rising and more students graduating with debt, it is important to be sure you can earn a living and pay back those loans.However, it’s also important to remember that we often learn the most from our mistakes. The pressure to make the “right” choice often makes people so afraid of failure that they become paralyzed. And, if they make a choice that turns out not to be right for them, they blame themselves for making the wrong decision.
The Downside of Making the “Right” Choice
There is a lot of pressure on students and graduates to perform and succeed, to the point that they may be afraid to make a mistake about important life decisions. All of this advising can send a message that, whenever you need to make a major life decision, you need to hire a specialist to guide you through it. Although they should reach out to people they trust for advice, young people also need to feel confident to make decisions on their own.If you invest a lot of money seeking professional advice, you put even more pressure on yourself to make the right decision the first time. Often, however, we are only able to make good decisions about our lives when we’ve had enough experience, good and bad, to make an educated choice. Sometimes, rather than seeking professional advice, the better course is to try out various things until you find the one that fits. Choices that don’t work out aren’t necessarily bad choices. We often learn more about ourselves from situations that don’t work out than we do from putting pressure on ourselves to make the right choice every time.
Be Open to the Experience
The most important thing is to resist the pressure that you have to figure it all out now. A few do know what they want to do early on, but for most people it is a process that takes time. By trying things out and being open to experiences, we gain knowledge about ourselves and our capabilities. Some ideas include:
Taking courses on a variety of topics that open you up to different ways of thinking.
Participate in a study abroad experience.
Apply for internships or summer jobs that you find interesting.
Be active in clubs or extracurricular activities that allow you to work with different groups of people, learn new things, and have leadership opportunities.
Can Therapy Help?
One way that therapy can be helpful for young adults is by helping them figure out who they are without having to get things right the first time. A therapist can also help as a sounding board to learn from one’s mistakes and process them, as well as talking about the feelings that come up from the experience.There is tremendous pressure to make the “right” choice for important life decisions. Students and graduates can resist this pressure by being willing to try new things, be open to the experiences of success and failure, and most importantly earning from their mistakes. In the end, they will find themselves in a much better place professionally, and more content in their lives as well.Read more about Life Transition Counseling with Jane Rubin of Lost Highway Blues. Click to learn more about finding your life path with Jane Rubin, Ph.D.