I mentioned last week that this is the time of year when my high school seniors are starting to make their decisions about where to go to college next year. For some of them, the answer is cut and dried: there’s one school that makes the most sense personally, academically, and financially. But for many of my students, the decision is murkier.
 
I encourage my students to build some variation into their college lists: big and small schools, local and out-of-state colleges, marine biology and journalism programs. Shockingly, teenagers are not robots and they often have evolving interests, goals, and ideas of themselves. So we kick the can down the road and leave that as a decision for the future. But today is that future, and now is the time they have to choose one of those paths, which can feel impossible. It’s not impossible because there are no good choices; it’s impossible precisely because there are many good choices, and we love, more than anything, to imagine what our lives could be like.
 
In 2017, Martin E.P. Seligman wrote in The New York Times, “We call ourselves Homo sapiens, the “wise man,” but that’s more of a boast than a description. […] What best distinguishes our species is an ability that scientists are just beginning to appreciate: We contemplate the future. […] A more apt name for our species would be Homo prospectus, because we thrive by considering our prospects.” Seligman is a professor of psychology at University of Pennsylvania and an expert on Positive Psychology, and optimism and pessimism, and he argues that it is our ability to plan and to imagine the future that sets us apart from other species.
 
Getting to choose one of several colleges is a wonderful problem to have. It allows you to envision yourself in different environments, with different friends, as different versions of yourself. Maybe you’re at a college by the ocean and you become an avid surfer, starting every day with the waves and a breakfast burrito. Or maybe you’re studying computer science, spending your weekends networking at hackathons. Or maybe you’re living in a big city, having debates about your philosophy homework at a hipster coffee shop.
 
Channel your inner Homo prospectus and envision yourself as different people in different places, and then choose the one you feel the most excited about. And know that there is no wrong answer; you can be happy in lots of different environments. And this is by no means the last big decision you’ll get to make that shapes your life. So imagine all your different futures, choose wisely, and then start daydreaming about what comes next.

​I was flying home from visiting friends and colleges in Austin this week, casually flipping through the in-flight magazine, when I saw a blurb about untranslatable words, those words in other languages (usually German) that somehow convey an entire paragraph in English. Words like saudade, which in Brazilian Portuguese means, “a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia for a happiness that you merely hoped for.” Or kalsarikännit, which in Finnish means, “drinking at home in your underwear with no intention of going out.” Or my favorite, wabi-sabi, which is a Japanese word that translates to, “a worldview centered on an appreciation for the complexity of real life.”
 
I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot for the past few weeks, the complexity and ambiguity of real life. Some of you are aware that April is when high school seniors hear back from the colleges they have applied to and start making their decision about where to go next fall. One story that has consistently come up in the last few years is how colleges are putting increasing numbers of students on their waitlists. There are lots of reasons for this, like students applying to more colleges, making it harder to predict how many students will accept an offer of admission. But the result of this expansion of the waitlist is that students find themselves in college decision limbo, neither admitted nor denied, just staring at a question mark.
 
Hearing “no” from a college you really care about is disappointing, for sure. But after the initial sting, my students are able to turn their focus to the schools that have accepted them, that have given them scholarships, that have thrown them a virtual parade to welcome them to their community. They choose a school, buy a sweatshirt, and move forward. But for my students that get put on the waitlist, they have a hard time taking that next step. Knowing that there is a fraction of a chance that they might get in makes them hold on to hope. And in this way, they keep one foot in and one foot out, choosing a school but not fully committing to it for a few more months.
 
The challenge of the waitlist is that, instead of a yes or a no, this is a maybe. But the waitlist is also a unique opportunity to practice wabi-sabi. As life goes on, there is less and less of a script to follow, and so there is more and more ambiguity. You can get married and have babies, or not. You can become a lawyer or a doctor, or make up your own job. You can live in the same place you grew up, or move to a new city every two years. And with all of those choices comes uncertainty and doubt. So instead of letting the waitlist get you down, think of it as a chance to hone your wabi-sabi, to appreciate the complexity, to enjoy not knowing what comes next. 

Exactly a year ago, I posted about the first anniversary of the When I Was 17 series and shared all the things I had taken away from the almost 50 interviews I’d done. I ended the post with a glance toward the future, with ideas about maybe turning this project into a podcast or a book or who knows. Reading that now, another year later, I’m laughing because I still don’t know what happens next in this project, the same way my interviewees and I laugh at our younger selves who envisioned this clear-cut path from childhood to adulthood.
 
After two years of doing this project, I believe even more strongly in the hypothesis I started out with: that it’s totally okay not to have a set career path before you graduate from high school. And in the last year, I’ve had the chance to explore some educational and professional alternatives for young adults who don’t feel like a four-year college is the next step for them. Like taking a gap year between high school and college, which I got to learn about from students who were about to move abroad for a year with Global Citizen Year. Or going to a community college, which I learned about in my interview with Kathy Rentsch, assistant vice president of Quinsigamond Community College. Or participating in a vocational program, like a coding bootcamp, which a few of my interviewees have done.
 
I have also become more aware of the reality that a 45-year career is long, and there’s room for multiple pivots in that timespan. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, on average, people hold 11.7 jobs between the ages of 18 and 48. And each of those jobs represents an opportunity to gain new skills, take on different responsibilities, and maybe even change careers. Like my interviewee, Cecilia Mason whose somewhat random job with Georgia’s Family and Children Services inspired her love for the law, which led her to start her own business as a fiduciary. Sometimes those jobs even overlap, like my interviewee, Lynda Deschambault, who served as her town mayor while working at the EPA. And sometimes, like for many of my interviewees, each job guides you closer and closer to the work you care about the most.
 
While I didn’t start this project with a long-term plan in mind, now that it’s been two years, I can’t imagine stopping. Every time I meet someone new, I can’t keep myself from asking them what they do for work and how they found their way to that profession and what they thought they wanted to do when they were young. And the answer is totally different every time, and right away, I get sucked into their story, asking them again and again, “What happened next?” And even though I still don’t know exactly what this series will look like a year from now, I can’t wait to see what happens next.

​One of the things that inspired me to start this blog series was the lack of diversity I saw in the way we talk about our educational and professional paths. As a college counselor, this manifests itself most clearly in the narrow range of schools that students and families will (initially) consider. It also shows up in the small number of students who take gap years, which I’ve written about before. And this same limited range of choices shows up after college as well.
 
One well-respected exception to the typical career path is the Peace Corps, a volunteer program established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. In the last 58 years, Peace Corps volunteers have volunteered in 141 countries, supporting the social and economic development of their new communities. And each year, the Peace Corps publishes a list of colleges that produce the highest number of volunteers.
 
This year, the top Peace Corps colleges included University of Wisconsin, Madison; University of Washington; George Washington University; St. Mary’s College of Maryland; and Macalester College. I was immediately excited to see big, medium, and small schools represented on the list, public and private schools, and colleges with a range of selectivities. As is the case with so many things, there are lots of schools that can successfully prepare you for whatever you want to do next, whether that’s applying to grad school, getting a job right away, or going into the Peace Corps.
 
Reading the Peace Corps’ annual list made me curious about people who have gone through the program and where they ended up. Notable Peace Corps alumni include former Senator Chris Dodd who spent two years in the Dominican Republic where he became fluent in Spanish. Or Reed Hastings, Chairman and CEO of Netflix, who taught math at a high school in Swaziland after graduating from Bowdoin College. Or Bob Vila, well-loved host of the TV show This Old House, who volunteered in Panama where he built his own one-room house that later became the community center.
 
But my favorite story was about Lillian Gordy Carter, mother of President Jimmy Carter. As a young woman, Lillian had applied to serve as a nurse in the Army, but the program was cancelled. She went on to study nursing and worked as a nurse in her community while also raising her four children. Then, at age 68, she decided to join the Peace Corps, spending two years caring for people with leprosy at the Godrej Colony in Mumbai. She even published a book, Away from Home: Letters to my Family, collecting her correspondence from her time in India.
 
What I love about Lillian Carter’s story, and all the Peace Corps anecdotes I read, is that they provide more examples of the creative and unconventional ways that people build lives of meaning and purpose. There is no expiration date for doing something you care about, and no right or wrong way to craft a career you are proud of. And as Lillian Carter demonstrated, it’s never too late to join the Peace Corps. 

Last week, I wrote about the excitement and disappointment of finally hearing from the colleges you’ve applied to months ago. For many students, the waiting is the hardest part, a time fraught with the anxiety of no longer having control over the outcome. But for some of my students, the real challenge comes next: deciding where to go.
 
Some people feel little empathy for kids in this position, kids who have a variety of good choices. And yes, there is an element of #firstworldproblems in this dilemma. But it’s also the first major decision many teenagers get to make, so it makes sense to take it seriously.
 
I’ve noticed that the students who struggle with this the most are the ones who believe that there is some right answer they have to get to in order to live their best possible life™. The reality is, there is no one perfect college, no one perfect major, even no one perfect career for each person. Realistically, we can find satisfaction in a lot of different environments, disciplines, and professions.
 
In guiding students through the process of choosing a college to actually attend, I ask them to consider these things:
 

1. Think about who you want to be vs. who you currently are. Often when we’re making a big decision, we look to where we feel comfortable. But in the case of going to college, sometimes we need to give ourselves the opportunity to be uncomfortable. Not miserable, but challenged in a way that pushes us to learn new things, acquire new skills, and occupy new spaces. By moving away from the familiar and comfortable, we can find an interest we love and want to explore, an internship that feels a little over our heads, or a mentor who can help us reach the next level in our chosen fields. So in deciding where you want to go to college, look for how each college can help you grow over the next four years.
2. Reframe your prospective career in terms of skills rather than topics. This was a great reminder I got when I interviewed Robyn Russell. She explained, “I wish I had been given a structure for how to think about what I wanted to do that was not so focused on a topic. It would have been helpful if someone had asked me, ‘What type of work do you want to do? Do you love to sit in a library and do research? Or are you a super extrovert and love being around people? Or are you a big-picture thinker and you're really good at systems?’" These are the same questions you can ask about your prospective colleges, and think about which school fits best with your style. 
3. Consider your strengths and weaknesses. This is a tough one, and something I challenge my students to think about throughout the college application process. But being honest about what you are good at – and what you struggle with – can help you identify schools that will support you where you need help.