Maybe it’s my age – I just had a birthday – but I’m thinking how absurd it is to expect all teenagers applying to college to have a well-developed passion for something. College admissions officers speak this word a lot. It’s imbedded in college sites. Passion. Passion. What is that exactly and why do they keep talking about it?
There is a certain wildness to this concept of passion, an imbalance that fits well with teenage temperament (which is all imbalance after all), so you’d think this topic would be so easy for college applicants to articulate. Except that it’s not. It’s really not.
Because let’s face it. On that great middle of the Bell curve, where most kids live, teenagers mostly have passion for just two things – food and sex. They’re kids, like puppies growing into their paws. Their brains are growing, They aren’t finished yet. Most have no idea what adults are talking about when they get asked the ‘P’ question, but they know they need to get some if they are to be admitted to most private colleges. And so the stress begins…
And despite knowing that most kids are just kids and not members of The Master Race, admissions officers still keep expecting teenagers to have this thing called ‘passion’ and seem to rate it highly on college applications.
So what’s going on?
Let’s be honest. For most adults, it’s way too scary to tell a stranger our deepest desires and share our deep emotional juice in the face of judgment. Could you speak and write about your ‘passion’ in life? Do you even have one? Now tell that to a potential boss in a job interview when you really really want and need that job. Feel the pressure to make something up to make a good impression? This is how children get separated from themselves and lose their authenticity. This is how it starts.
As the Warden said to Cool Hand Luke, what we have here is a failure to communicate. Permit me to translate a bit because the issue is actually pretty simple.
Admissions officers are looking to select students who best match their school’s culture. They want to take students who will be happy, eager learners open to the adventure of college, who will take bold intellectual risks while limiting the social ones. 
They define passion as a desire to move more deeply into curiosity, to express delight in original expression. Passion actually is focused intent coming from curiosity.
I stopped asking students about their passions long ago, after staring for the Nth time into blank, insecure eyes, and now I just ask “how do you like to spend your time when you aren’t studying and have control of your time?” or just plain, “what do you like to do?” This always elicits a good response because it’s normal for young humans to ‘like’ something.
So if the topic of passion is a topic of conversation in your house, you can reframe this for your child. They don’t need to cure cancer to get admitted to college. They don’t need to have received a Nobel Prize. They just need to know that it’s OK for them to like things large or small. They are fine just the way they are. And there is a college out there that will love admitting them even if they just have likes and not burning passions.