​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. 

​For those of you who follow college admissions news or celebrity drama or were just a big fan of Full House, you probably heard about this week’s bribery and cheating scandal. I initially thought that I would write about that in this week’s post, but after talking to a few of my students and families about it, I realized that it’s not really that important to them. My students are mostly thinking about their AP exams, last weekend’s SAT, and maybe the upcoming prom. And my seniors are obsessively checking their email waiting to hear from the colleges they applied to last fall.
 
While my students may feel overwhelmed in the fall, they feel like they still have at least some control over what happens next. They can keep their heads down and stay focused on executing all the pieces of the application from writing essays to searching for scholarships to preparing for interviews. But after waiting for four months, the only thing they have control over now is how they react to whatever news comes their way. Yes, no, or maybe. And it’s so hard to remember in that moment that the decision you get from one college doesn’t actually have a lot of bearing on the way your life turns out.
 
Which is why I was so delighted when one of my colleagues shared this post from actor and singer, Laura Benanti.

Benanti exactly captured the message that I always try to share with my students when they don’t get the news they were hoping to hear: that it’s okay to feel sad about this decision, but it also doesn’t mean that you’re not a good enough student or a good enough person in some fundamental way.
 
Benanti went on to accept an offer from NYU where she studied for a whole two weeks before she got cast in The Sound of Music on Broadway as the understudy for Maria. She would go on to receive a Tony nomination the following year for her role in Swing! before winning a Tony eight years later. She has since had numerous roles on stage and on screen, including returning to The Sound of Music Live! in the role of Baroness Schraeder.
 
The reason I responded to Benanti’s post so much is because she is an incredible example of the fact that college admissions is just one moment in the much longer trajectory of your life. And this seems like the perfect time to remind ourselves that no college - not even the highly selective ones - gets to decide how your life turns out; you do. So if you’re feeling the sting of college rejection, remember that you could be performing on Broadway in a few months, just like Benanti. Or more realistically, you will be having an incredible experience at another wonderful college that said yes to you. 

Rosie Bancroft is a licensed clinical social worker who has worked with middle school students, foster kids, and people with HIV and substance abuse issues. In our interview, she talked about both the work she does in supporting her clients, but also the importance of having healthy boundaries and taking care of yourself, something we could all use a reminder of. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
 
When you were 17, what did you want to be?
 
I really cannot remember what I thought I was going to be. It feels like I was a different person. I just knew that of the available subjects in high school, none of those seemed like a career path for me.
 
I definitely had those kiddie dreams of being a veterinarian or a ballet dancer. One thing I wanted to be was an actress. I did theater in high school and I was also in these educational science videos when I was 11 called The Science Sleuths. It was the worst possible time to be on camera. It was so embarrassing, but I got paid more for that job per hour than I still have yet to make in my life.
 
In high school, I played soccer and I was in the outdoor ed clubs, did a lot of hiking, climbing, and scuba diving, that kind of stuff. I think I did those things because I liked them, but also because I liked doing the different, adventurous thing. If there was a challenging thing to be done, I wanted to do it. So I just thought, “I'm going to go to college and see a bunch of new things and try them out.”
 
How did you decide to attend Colgate University?
 
Oh my god, I can't even believe how arbitrary it was. I applied to all small liberal arts schools on the East Coast. Both my mom and my dad had family on the East Coast, so I had spent time out there; I also just wanted to go really far away and do the adventurous, interesting thing.
 
A big part of why I chose Colgate is that I perceived it to be the most selective school that I was admitted to. The other part of it was that I thought the campus was really beautiful. I really wish I had a better answer than that, but that's truly it. 
 
After about a semester there, I thought, “What am I doing here?” The other students were so white and rich and conservative. I'm not even sure that I knew that I was liberal before I got to Colgate. I just lived in Seattle and I was the same as everybody else. I was as naive as the kid from a small town in Kansas in the sense that I just thought everywhere was like where I came from.
 
The first year, I definitely considered transferring, but I really loved the academics at Colgate and I was so into my professors and the small classes and thinking in a totally different way. I thought, “I'm an exception. There must be lots of other exceptions here. I just need to find them.” So I did, and it was great.
 
How did you choose your major?
 
When I was signing up for classes my first semester, I was in the last group to enroll, so I got almost none of the classes that I really wanted. They assigned me to Intro to Psych because it was the biggest class on campus and it still had space. Psychology was not offered at my high school, but I was immediately fascinated; I knew this was what I wanted.
 
Then I just kept taking psychology classes, partially because I thought the material was really interesting and partially because there were a couple professors that I thought were the coolest people ever. And it all started to make sense as I learned about the larger systems of psychology, the institutions, and the social justice piece of it. That eventually morphed into social work.
 
I thought psychology was really fascinating, but I didn't want to be a psychologist. I didn't want to do all the testing and diagnosis, which is what a lot of psychologists do. I was interested in people and how our brains work and how we make decisions, and how we relate to each other. I also got really interested in criminal justice and how we conceptualize punishing people.
 
One of my professors at Colgate focused his research on how we punish people and how our motivations for wanting to punish people really have no impact on their future behavior; we’re just are so stuck in those ideas. I found that so fascinating. So I did an internship one summer at a prison outside of New York City. I was in the psych ward of this maximum security prison running recreational therapy programs.
 
My thesis ended up being in the social psychology wing of psychology about subconscious racism. This was long before people were talking openly about implicit bias or anything like that. I did these studies on freshman psych students with people behaving in a racist way and seeing what they did. It was really fascinating.
 
My parents and my family were a big influence on me. And I have two grandmothers that were social workers, but I’d never really thought about it as a profession. Then, as I was learning about social work, I realized, “Oh, the values of social work, these are my values. That's what we do in my family.” I just didn't really realize it was a job.
 
How did you get from college to where you are now?
 
Well, first I went to New Zealand with my boyfriend for four months and lived in a tent. Then I came back to the US and moved to Southern California with my best friend. She was moving there and we’d been in the frozen tundra of upstate New York for four years, so I thought, “Let's have some sun.” And I spoke Spanish and I wanted to be somewhere where I could use that at work and not lose it.
 
I started applying for jobs. I didn't even know what I was looking for, but they were all social work kind of jobs that didn’t require a social work degree. And then I picked the one that I thought looked like the most fascinating, which was an inpatient residential drug rehab for teenagers.
 
At first, I did admissions, so interviews with prospective kids and their parents or their social workers or their probation officers, and managing the wait list. Then I ended up being a counselor, staying with the kids during the day as they were going to school, going to groups, and working through the program.
 
I was 22 and I got really sucked into it in a pretty unhealthy way. It was residential and I had no life and I had very little professional guidance, so I ended up feeling like I should give these kids everything I had. I wanted to be so needed and crucial to this person's life, as opposed to them feeling empowered in their own success. Not surprisingly, that was not the healthiest thing for them or for me. I had to learn the hard way about professional boundaries.
 
Then I worked for another nonprofit called CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates). I supervised 40 CASAs and helped them pick their kid and helped them navigate being with a foster kid all the time, just figuring stuff out.
That was really good for me. It helped me get a little bit of perspective, find my balance. It was actually perfect for me at that point because I was thinking, “Maybe I’m not really cut out for this because I just get too involved.” It was also a much healthier work environment.
 
I was there for almost three years and then I applied to graduate school and went to Cal State Long Beach. I really liked it. It certainly affirmed that this was what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was also really glad that I had waited. I had all these real-life scenarios to apply the material to as opposed to it all being totally theoretical, because it's so different in practice.
 
After you do two years of school, then you do 4,000 hours of supervised social work, which took me three years to do. I had moved back to Seattle at that point, and I did a couple of internships at a community mental health clinic doing therapy with kids and families, and then at an inpatient psych program, and then at an HIV clinic as a medical social worker. That’s where I was for five years.
 
People came in to the clinic for their medical care and I did everything else. A lot of times, people with HIV have other complicating issues as well, like homelessness, substance abuse, and mental health, along with the practicalities of having a really complicated, expensive disease. Part of the reason that I was drawn to social work is that you can do so many different things as a social worker. I'm someone who gets kind of restless after a period of years. Like I didn't know anything about HIV, but I knew about mental health and I knew about substance abuse, and I got to learn this whole other pocket of knowledge and practice within it.
 
I was working there when I had my son, Ryan, and then I went back. Then, after I had my second son, Jake, I took some time off and became a stay-at-home parent for almost two years. It just felt too complicated to have two little kids and two full-time working parents. I was overwhelmed by the logistics of that, and with the cost of childcare, being a social worker comes out to basically zero money.
 
Staying home was very challenging for me. I felt much more comfortable as a social worker than as a mother. But I also could not fathom adding a job on top of being a mom. I felt like there were a lot of options, but I didn't really love any of them. I felt like I lost a lot of myself, like what do I even like to do? How do I relax when I have the opportunity?
 
Now that they’re a little bit older, it's kind of evening out. And I started working again two months ago at a part-time job in a middle school as a mental health counselor. I've only been doing it for a couple months, but it's been really great. Middle school is a terrible time, but it’s also really fascinating and they’re so malleable - in a good way; it's really interesting.
 
Looking back, what seems clear to you now?
 
One thing that would've been useful is having more ideas of what the options are and what the steps are to get there, having more knowledge of these interesting, nuanced kinds of jobs, not just a firefighter or a doctor or something really concrete that we already know exists.
 
Also, I love that whole idea of connecting the dots in reverse. After I had that experience in my first job out of college, I just felt like, I love this but can I even do this? And someone said to me, “This is going to be the story of your first really shitty job.” It gave me that perspective of knowing that, for most of my life, I'm going to look back on this.
 
Even though your career is a big deal, you can also try things, and if you don't like them, you can change your mind. That's not how we talk to people about it. We just ask them, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” That's just not how almost anyone's trajectory goes. You’re not just going to figure it out one time, or read some inspirational quote. I very much had that concept when I was 17, but it's just a long process of figuring it out.

​Susan Gallo is a producer for the TV show Building Alaska on the DIY Network. In our interview, Susan explained how her job is the perfect blend of her background in business and her love for the arts. And I loved getting a peek behind the scenes at everything to goes into my latest Netflix binge. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
 
When you were 17, what did you want to be?
 
When we're younger, we think, "Oh, I'm gonna be a teacher, I'm gonna be a doctor." And then, as we get older, we realize there are more and more possibilities. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I really liked math; it always came naturally to me, and I enjoyed it, so that made me think about pursuing a business degree.
 
I also had a lot of different hobbies. I realized quickly that sports weren't for me, but I really liked the arts. I played violin and I was in the orchestra. I was in all of the honor societies, and I did some math tutoring. And I got very involved in the theater department. I was building the sets, I was tech rookie of the year my freshman year, I was doing lighting and stage crew and also acting. And my senior year, I was the assistant director for our big musical, kind of overseeing everything. I really liked that a lot.
 
But in high school, I didn't have a specific job in mind. I mostly thought, "I'm going to college, what should I study?"
 
How did you decide to attend SUNY Binghamton?
 
I was deciding between NYU and SUNY Binghamton. It was a tough decision for a teenager to make. My parents told me that they would pay for half of my tuition. I have two older sisters, and my oldest sister went to Cornell and my other sister went to MIT. I saw that they had all these bills piling up, so that was definitely something I took into account.
 
This was also right after 9/11, so the climate in the city was definitely different. I visited SUNY Binghamton, and I really liked the campus. I thought that when I graduated, I could move to the city without any student loans. And Binghamton had offered me an academic scholarship, so I decided to go there.
 
I feel like I got a very good education, and the school was fantastic for networking because everyone there is from New York. When you graduate, you have this amazing network and you know so many people.
 
How did you choose your major?
 
I thought business would be my major, but I didn't want to lose the arts so I decided to do a minor in theater. I really liked the business classes, but I wasn't crazy about the theater classes. It was a lot of theater majors, and we had different goals - I wasn't looking to be a Broadway star. And then I took this really interesting class, Marketing for Theater.
 
That teacher helped me get an internship after freshman year for this Broadway marketing group. It really opened my eyes to the way that Broadway works. I was going to their box offices every day, running around Times Square, going to all their events, and chilling with Rosie O'Donnell. It was really good hands-on experience in that industry, but it made me realize that I didn't want to pursue theater as a career. So I dropped my theater minor.
 
At the same time, I was working at the TV station at my college, and I loved that. I had my own show with a friend called Culture Club where we did different sketches and stuff. And then I had another show where we did all sorts of different things, from going out to the courtyard and doing “man on the street” interviews, to doing live studio stuff. We even had a band and a theme song. It was very low production value but really fun. So I decided to put my energy into working at the TV station.
 
While I was in school, I did another summer internship at MTV. I was paired with a production intern on the team that does a lot of the music specials and the Movie Awards and the VMAs. I absolutely loved it, and I thought, "Yes, this is what I want to do when I graduate.”
 
How did you get from college to where you are now?
 
I graduated early in January, and then I did my executive MBA with Binghamton’s program in New York City. That way I was able to look for work while doing my MBA. I got a job right out of college with this big media agency, but I didn't last a month. It was too much on the business side of things, and I didn’t want to be at a desk every day. It just wasn't right.
 
That was an important lesson for me to take some time and get a job that was right for me. Then that summer, I got my first job as a production assistant for MTV. I worked on the VMAs, and then I worked on the Hip Hop Honors, and then I connected with this producer and worked on an episode of Unplugged with him.
 
That producer was starting his own company, so I went and worked for him for a while as an associate producer. He did a lot of music and specials like Unplugged and this amazing series for the Sundance Channel called Spectacle. I did two seasons of that, which was amazing.
 
The production world is interesting, because you can be a camera operator, or you can be an audio engineer, or you can be a producer. As a producer, you're the one getting it done. At the very basic level as a PA, you're out getting coffees. And, at the executive producer level, you're calling the shots and completely designing the creative of the show. And the producer role can be defined very differently depending on the production.
 
After that, I worked for this production company that did that Russell Simmons’s reality show. That's when I started getting into reality TV, which is a very different genre, so there are different challenges. Then I worked on Love & Hip-Hop for a while and I also worked for Sony for a little bit, and then I went to National Geographic. I was there for three years as a post-production supervisor.
 
A post supervisor oversees everything from the hiring of editors to the schedule and the budget, basically everything from the moment the footage is shot until it's delivered to the network. It's also a very technical role, making sure that all of the technical specifications for the network are adhered to. And a lot of the deliverables now are digital, instead of tape. There are a whole bunch of other things that need to go along with it, like behind-the-scenes moments.
 
I worked on a bunch of shows at Nat Geo. I did three seasons of Brain Games, and I loved that because it was science and fun and educational. And then I worked on a show called Continent 7: Antarctica, which was really interesting.
 
After a few years, I was just looking for something different, so I left my job at Nat Geo and moved to Denver. In my line of work, you can find work everywhere. There are a lot of production companies making television, and there's a huge need for content right now.
 
I like Denver a lot, but after moving here, I realized that I didn't have that same network that I’d had in New York. In my industry, most people are freelance contractors, so it's really important to have a good network. I belong to the Producer's Guild of America, and there aren't a lot of producers here, so they didn't really have events here in Denver. I was used to going to a lot of big events on the East Coast, so I started a networking group for women in Denver. That's been really important for me to have here, that community.
 
Since I've been in Denver, I have been working for Dorsey Pictures on the same series called Building Alaska, and now we’re working on the third season. We follow three builders in Alaska, building everything from the foundation all the way to seeing it fully furnished. And you get to see all of the challenges that go along with building up there. Like last season, we had a build in Cordova that was like a fly-in, fly-out remote location outside of Anchorage.
 
I get to go to Alaska at least once a month for the show. The best day is always our last episode when we get to show the finished product to the viewers. It's such an awesome feeling after being in it with these builders for months and months. They want to show it off to their family and friends, and we want to show off their work.
 
Looking back, what seems clear to you now?
 
I think something I still struggle with is whether to take a job because it's your passion, or because it's practical for whatever reason, money, location, hours, etc. I’m still trying to find a balance with that. I think that that’s something to start thinking about when you're young, so that you have your values and your priorities, and you can start building your career based on that. And I'm not saying that you should always choose passion or that you should always choose practical, but you should find the balance that works for you.
 
And then the other thing is that it's so important to do internships, and to do them when you're young. Your friends are going to be hanging out at the pool and going to the beach all day and posting photos of it on Instagram, but it's so important to figure this kind of thing out early. For me, it took one internship to figure out what I didn't want to do, and then I was so grateful for my internship at MTV because it made me realize that that was exactly what I wanted to do.