I’m hoping this is his year off. The problem is…that college degree will open doors. I see it as a necessary evil. And my son will hopefully be able to use it and won’t stay in his waiter career very long..

Our alternative education plan started when I began homeschooling my oldest. His preschool teacher told me he wasn’t ready for kindergarten since he could not color in the lines or cut straight. He’s 24 and still can’t.

After high school, he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He had a choice: get a full time job and pay rent or go to community college as a full time student. He chose the latter. He took classes to fulfill the GE reqs, but also took a class he was interested in. I didn’t care if it transferred. He needed to find out what he liked. It took him three years, and then he took a couple of years off. He spent part of that time traveling. He just graduated from University (on his own dime ).

The second son will graduate from a state school next year. He’s always knows what he wanted to do and went after it.

The third one graduated in a month and will get a technical certificate from the community college. His area of giftedness is hands on.

I want them to find an area that they can feel accomplished in. This may make them happy, or it may not. I’m happy to put food on the table. Work is the way to do that, even if I’m not happy at work. With today’s economy, if you have a job, you should be happy.

Sometimes it does work. I’m glad I was prepared for college.

There are two aspects to the exploration of identity and one of them, the value of developing a sense of personal passions, has been well discussed here. A continuous commitment to development of a personal ‘portfolio’ is equally important as a person builds out a life. Whereas the pursuit of passions is the road to ‘fulfillment’, the development of a portfolio of assets is the path to personal ‘sustainability’. Encouraging young people to build a diversity of high demand/low supply skills, credentials, experiences, and personal networks through active involvement in life is the ticket to survival in a job market that keeps shifting and changing at a rapid pace.

When you talk to Tess and Tucker, don’t forget to encourage them to get involved with everything – examining their interests while developing personal assets. Teach them to keep and continuously update a portfolio of skills, credentials, experiences and networks – ones they will use throughout life to access various types of financial aid, post-secondary instruction, volunteer opportunities, and work. Their capacity to adapt within a changing living/learning/working environment is as important as the appreciation of things that matter to them.

It is now 20 years later. My passion has evolved to technology and learning environments. To that end I now have a Master of Science in Education and a Can in Educational Leadership. I am Director of Technology in a small school district and am passionate about my work and earn a living.

I had no idea when I started college what I would discover but I can assure you without it I would not have found my path. Does that mean college is the pat? I don’t think so. There are many ways I could have arrived at the same or a similar place. I would agree that what we need to be looking at is finding passion. Figuring out what we want as individuals does not mean following a prescribed path. Affording our children the opportunity to find that path is where the focus should be regardless of whether that means college, travel, internship, service, or any other path.

Unfortunately we continue to work in schools that operate under the mandate that our goal is to get them to college, all with the same skill set, all without passion for what awaits them.