Education – Page 3

Judgment or Discernment?

I’m hate to admit this, but I have always been harshly judgmental. I was raised that way and had this skill finely honed through a career in college admissions (did you know that judgment is an occupational hazard of admissions?). Mostly I was unconscious about its toxicity. But in all honesty, it did serve me by keeping others who might hurt me at bay. Ah, judgment is such a great defense…

Judgment seemed to be my friend and ally until I fell and was exposed publically to the judgment of others. As you can imagine, it doesn’t feel good to have strangers judge you. It feels so unfair. Ah, karma…

Once I experienced the destructive power of judgment, I made a promise to change and I have.

I’m careful now to hold my tongue when I want to put others down. I recognize that what I want to judge in others is what I hate in myself.

Discernment, however, is important. It’s often mistaken for judgment but they are very different. Judgment is mean and wants to lash out. Discernment is seeing what you see with no story attached. Judgment creates a one-upsmanship (“I would NEVER do such a thing because I’m a better person.”) Discernment is an awareness of what is and offers the opportunity to make another decision.

So now we have the Paula Deen situation. Judgment makes us want to lash out at her for being bad, wants us to write mean things about her and cancel all of her business contracts to punish her for things she said and did in her past. Judgment spins a bigger story here (she’s Southern, she was a closet diabetic even as she was cooking up food to clog our arteries, she’s greedy, she’s evil, blahblahblah) and wants to see her humiliated. Discernment watches with no opinion, knows Paula Deen is mortal like the rest of us and that all humans are imperfect. We’ve all said and done things that society would not approve of. Discernment knows that ‘imperfect’ does not mean ‘bad’. Discernment offers compassion to Paula even as it reviews and maybe resets our inner compass around our own behavior.

College admissions provokes a lot of judgment.

Parents often judge their children for not being smart enough or ambitious enough or conscientious enough etc etc as they begin to compare their children to college admissions standards. One parent I know literally burst into tears when she heard her daughter’s SAT scores, crying “I thought you were smart.” As you can imagine, this didn’t help her daughter at all. The daughter felt shame for “letting my Mom down and making her cry.” I wanted to hunt her mother down and give her a good slap but that wouldn’t help her mother at all.

I appeal to parents now. Drop the judgment and switch to discernment. Discernment carries no story. It sees what is. If your child’s scores don’t fit a certain college’s profile, look for a college where they will fit instead of blaming your child. SATs tell us nothing of value. Truth. If your child’s rank isn’t as high as you’d wished or if they didn’t end the year well, attend to the cause with no story attached. It is what it is. Judgment will choke off any encouragement for them to do their best. Judgment is the death of confidence and confidence is the single most important attribute your child needs to go into the world every day.

Discernment is your real friend and ally. Time to get to know it well.

Fear Nation

We’re bombarded 24/7 with scary news.

If we listen to the media, or even to our friends and community members, there is so much to fear that we must be hyper-vigilant to stay safe. After all, the food we eat is killing us, the water we drink pollutes us, the air we breathe is toxic. We could get the flu and die unless we get the flu shot. We can’t trust anyone because they could snap and go crazy. We could lose our jobs at any moment. We can’t trust our elected officials because they are all corrupt and in some crazy way are united against us, the innocent general public. The world is unstable and some crazy 3^rdworld country leader somewhere is going to bomb and destroy us. Can’t trust humans. The weather is changing and will wreak havoc on us. Can’t trust Nature.

Oh, and our kid will be rejected from colleges because they are not: White or Asian or Black or Hispanic or male or female or rich or poor or middle-class or an athlete or a non-athlete or from the right school or the right state… ad infinitum.

Can’t trust life.

Really? I’m so fed up with this belief system that does nothing but wear us all down.

Recently I’ve become aware of a small conspiracy movement that believes the Newtown CT shooting was a hoax designed to marshal enough public sentiment to limit our access to guns and undermine the Second Amendment. I’ve personally been working with people from Newtown CT as part of the Tapping Solution Newtown Stress and Trauma Relief Project and I assure all of you that the events of Dec. 14, 2012 were no hoax and no actors were involved. This was one huge human tragedy because so many young children were involved. As with so many tragedies, we’ll probably never know what was in the mind of Adam Lanza, the shooter, because he took the coward’s way out. But how we respond to and interpret this challenge and others like it in everyday life is the whole point.

When we choose fear, fear wins. We lose bigtime.

Folks, this is a fear-based planet which is why we’re all here – to conquer fear. It’s no wonder we’re exposed to it again and again so we can confront and live through the fear.

So when you get scared that your child will get rejected from his college choices, your cortisol levels go up (cortisol is the body’s stress hormone) and so does your blood pressure and heart rate. You go into some version of fight or flight and over the long term, this elegant mechanism designed to save your life actually wears your health down and speeds its demise.

So turn off the news and the scary stuff. Step away from any conversation that revs up your anxiety. It’s all b.s. anyway. Look to what is real and true and not there to sell you anything – look at the sky and the trees around you. Watch the birds and wildlife if you are lucky enough to be around some. Tune into your breath and your heart rate. Smile at your children and spouse. Relax. In reality, there is beauty and wonder and innocence all around you at every moment.

Perception is everything.

I heard a recent interview with the iconic Louise Hay who, when prompted by the interviewer to discuss some plan or other, responded, “Why don’t we just trust life and see how things unfold?”

This is the perfect way to inoculate yourself from Fear Nation, even if it is heretical to our willful way of being in a world where we believe it’s all up to us. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe trusting life is the paradoxical key to happiness.

It’s what I choose.

Trying to Read the Tea Leaves – Early Decisions Are Out

It’s another one of those important life lessons playing itself out in real time all across the country. Most Early decisions are out now and have made many wonderful young people very happy. Congratulations to all of them. It’s a magical moment for sure and one they will always remember. For them, this is a launching point. Yay!!

But for so many, many more, the decisions have left applicants on some spectrum of stunned, heartbroken, confused and deflated. And I can see why, now that I’m on this side of the college admissions experience, where I actually know the individuals involved and have fallen in love with them and their families. I see their beauty and promise and strengths. I feel their talent and desire to serve. And now I feel their grief.

There is the natural urge to read the tea leaves, to connect the dots and make assumptions about why the decision did not go their way. While this is fruitless, there is a certain innocence to it that I do not have.

Because for nearly 30 years, I was one of those college admissions officers who turned so many top students down.

I know well that all decisions depend on who else is applying that year, what the institution’s needs are and the composition of the admissions staff. I’ve seen how a newbie reader or a poor reader can affect a case negatively.

I know that a change in leadership at the college can affect the school’s goals and needs. This is especially true if that school is looking to increase their USNWR ranking… I’ve seen how mistakes happen, and yes, how life happens because we’re all humans.

While I’m so happy for all of those who got admitted to college this month, my heart is heavy for all of those who did not. I know that it doesn’t help, but I still have to say that this is not personal. The application is being admitted, not the student – and therein lies the rub.

So I’m left with the wise words of Eric, one of my favorite friends who is also one of the best fathers I’ve ever met. He’s what is known as a mensch, a good and loving man who speaks wisdom in a kind way. He said, “Sh*t happens. I think that should be the #1 thing that parents teach their children.”

And you know, he’s right. Sh*t happens and life is a paradox. The best things in life most often come disguised as the worst on this crazy planet. The key is to hold on and wait it out to see this truth.

I’m always saying that the college admissions process is really an initiation into the applicant’s adulthood. If your child was deferred or rejected Early, love them all the more now and remind them who they really are. Their self-confidence just took a major hit. This is part of their maturity, part of their initiation. It’s their firewalk, one we cannot share. You can’t stop it. You can’t deflect it. We don’t know why it happened this way, but remind them that everything works for them and not against them. They need to know that you have complete belief in them and in life itself.

Loving Wastefully

I recently had the honor of listening to a lecture by John Shelby Spong, a well-known retired Bishop of the Episcopal Church, who spoke clearly and forcefully about the role religion plays in spreading prejudice. Having been raised Catholic in the ‘50s, and then frustrating my parents by adopting feminism at age 17, thereby rejecting any religion that is not built upon the equality of all humans, I listened carefully with great curiosity, for I’d heard that Bishop Spong was ‘special’. You could hear the proverbial pin drop among the hundreds in that auditorium as the Bishop, a deeply revered and thoroughly modern man despite his position in his church’s hierarchy, spoke to us about the oneness of all human beings. Even I gave him a standing O at the end. It was magic.

He told us that science has proven that we are all one, for humans share 99.9% of the same DNA. And then there is quantum physics and the oneness principle. Yeah, yeah, yeah….I’ve heard that before and didn’t need to be convinced. So I enjoyed his story telling and overall relaxed presentation style. I especially liked how he spoke in full paragraphs. Very impressive.

But the concept that grabbed my attention and literally put me on the edge of my seat was at the end, when he suggested that we “choose to love wastefully”. Huh? Wastefully? Isn’t waste a sin? (hmm…is that in the ‘mortal’ or ‘venial’ category, I wonder?)

He recommended that in these times of turbulence and fear we generate love for all living things, greeting the details of our worlds with love and compassion, regardless of where the love lands and whether or not it is returned. He used the word ‘wastefully’, I think, to suggest another meaning for the term ‘unconditionally’, because so few of us really understand that idea, having been raised in a world of duality – right/wrong, up/down, yin/yang, etc. This is not a planet of unconditional love. We must create it.

How, exactly, do we love without the promise of it being returned and why does that matter?

Even more importantly, why am I writing about this now?

When our children apply to college, our parental claws come out to protect them from the process of judgment and possible rejection. We don’t want them to be rejected. We don’t want them to be hurt. So sometimes in our zeal to protect, we contract and move into a less loving stance toward everyone in our world. We may envy other people whose children are admitted to dream schools or resent the ones who seem to breeze through the college process without so much as a hair out of place.

This contraction is exactly the opposite of what our children need at this moment.

They need as much extravagant, wasteful love as they can get while they are being exposed to the judgment of strangers who do not know how precious they are.

So this holiday season, join me in my plan to ‘love wastefully’. Give it away. Love anyone in sight. Give them your respect and your care, a smile or kind gesture.

For we also know from life that what we give out comes back to us. Love begets love.

Amen.

Are College Admissions Directors Out Of Touch With The Rest of Us?

A new survey of 576 college admissions directors about the state of student indebtedness gives us a sneak peek into the beliefs of those who create financial aid policies at both public and private colleges and universities in America. And spoiler alert – the news isn’t good.

This survey, developed jointly by Inside Higher Ed editors and Gallup researchers and consultants, takes the pulse of key university administrators about issues regarding average student indebtedness. According to the Project on Student Debt, the average loan debt accrued after four years of a college education is now $25,250., an all-time high. These loans come from all sources: government, university and private sources.

Not surprisingly, when asked to identify the most “reasonable” debt range for a four year program, 42% of surveyed admissions directors chose the current $20K-$30K range. More importantly, though, a full 28% of private college admissions directors and 12% of public college admissions directors chose the $30K-$50K range as a reasonable debt range. This leaves the average person wondering what these people are thinking because their opinions are very much at odds with public opinion.

The reality is that a full 53% of college graduates under the age of 25 are either unemployed or under-employed, way up from 41% in 2000. According to the Oraganization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), these figures suggest that new college graduates actually fare worse than other sectors in the job market.

So what are these college admissions directors thinking?

Having been a college admissions dean for many years, I understand the ‘silo effect’ created by working within an organization, and the pressure to enroll a class while meeting all of that institution’s needs. You can only do what you can do within the culture of your university. There is a financial aid budget allotted annually that must be spread around to cover as much student need as possible, but often it just is not enough. Most private colleges use the policy known as “gapping” – offering aid but not enough to meet the need of the admitted student who must then make up the difference with loans or sources of income outside of the family income/asset stream. Private loans usually carry a higher interest rate, making the cost of college more than originally estimated. Most applicants are unaware of this when they apply.

While I can understand the opinions represented in this survey, I fundamentally disagree with the entire way we support education in this culture. We seem to have no national consensus about what education should be now, how it should serve the citizenry. There is currently little connection between the degrees students earn in college and available job opportunities. No one is driving this bus.

When I went to college back in the Baby Boomer days, education was a mind expander designed to open the world and help us think critically about the great issues of the day. In that very different world, is no surprise that this happened coincident with the Civil Rights, anti-war and Feminist movements. Today, however, with the world moving on at astonishing speed, admissions directors are reporting that 96% of parents and 84% of students are focused on that gold ring of employment at the end of a 4 year degree.

And herein lies the disconnect.

Once again, we are looking for the leadership within the college/university community to help structure a Deep Rethink of the whole process. What are we actually doing when we charge $50K+ annually for a rite of passage with just the vaguest of promises of employment, when so many graduates often have no way to repay those borrowed dollars at the end?

How much do we really value education in the US anyway?

First Aid for College Applicants: Esteeming

Another cycle of college admissions has begun and I’m so struck by the deep fear of students and their parents in the runup to the application deadlines. I offer the usual excellent advice (take it slow, one step at a time, get lots of sleep) but see how often it goes in one ear and straight out the other. Yeah, no kidding. I get it. I’ve been plenty scared in life myself.

So I’ve hit on an important concept I want to encourage you to use as your child is in the throes of applying to college. I call it ‘first aid’ to stop the hemorrhaging of confidence that is inevitable this time of year.

I encourage you to amp up your esteeming of your child.

Esteeming?

You might feel resistance at first. One parent rolled her eyes when I gave her this advice and said, “Oh brother. Aren’t they esteemed enough?” Made me smile. But here’s the thing…actually, no. They aren’t esteemed enough right now.

You can’t possibly understand the scary nature of your child’s world during this moment in time.

They are expected to master the most rigorous curriculum ever offered in the US (thanks to confluence of the knowledge explosion afforded by the internet and the accountability movement of No Child Left Behind). They are expected to provide evidence of leadership sustained over time for college admissions officers who are partial to that kind of person. These same admissions officers expect to see full-blown, highly-perfected humans among their applicant pool of teenagers who, for the most part, are far from it. Students hear snippits of information about admissions that scare them and then, like all people, they connect the dots and make stuff up about how college admissions works. Except that it doesn’t work that way and they are working off of bad information. They are connected to each other 24/7 through technology in ways we aren’t. Social media sucks them into mob mentality. As teenagers, they want to fit in and be accepted for who they are all the while they have yet to grow into social confidence, like puppies who are growing into their paws. They have pimples and body issues as they transform into adults. Their hormones are fluctuating, causing moodiness and angst and a general sense of careening out of control. They are trying to please everyone and to be seen as special when they really don’t feel special at all.

In short, teenagers aren’t finished yet.

So I am urging parents to offer your children ballast. Be extra gentle with them now. Praise them for what they do right and bite your tongue when they screw up. Ease up a bit. Love them, even if you have to take out their baby pictures to remind yourself how perfect they were then because as teenagers they are sometimes a pain in the butt. 😉

This is their initiation into adulthood. It is hard to put years of your life on the line to be judged by strangers using rules you will never understand in such a public way. We adults have never been where they are because our world was so much safer.

Amp up the esteeming and you will see how they relax back into you. It will change everything.

How To Create Peace At Home During the College Application Process

Well, we’re now full-blown in the holiday season again (didn’t we just do this a few months ago?) and if you are the parent of a high schooler applying to college, you probably aren’t singing songs of joy and peace right about now. Chances are, your child is having the usual teenage mood swings and rebellion compounded by all the additional stress of applying to college and the ultimate fear/Nirvana: leaving you for college come fall. If your home is peaceful, please write and tell the rest of us how you’ve managed that. If you are typical, though, you probably need a breather from the increasing tension.

I know a lot about such things because I’ve been through that minefield. And if you think it’s hard to parent a 17 year old, wait until you have to parent a 20-something, which is where I am now. 24 is the new 17. Yikes! So here’s my holiday gift to you…

My surefire recipe for creating peace at home in stressful times

Step 1. Lock yourself in the bathroom and breathe. Breathing is very under-rated. It calms the nervous system and slows the heart. The goal is to get centered in what is happening around you and how you feel about it. In other words, locking yourself in the bathroom gives you some distance, and distance is good when your nerves are frayed and you are about to say or do something stupid that you’ll later regret.

Step 2. Accept the fact that you are not applying to college. Your child is. This is not your firewalk. You don’t have to stay up all night making applications to school. Your academic performance is not about to be judged. You are not about to be accepted or rejected by strangers. It isn’t happening to you, though it sure feels like it. Breathe some more and feel a tiny bit of relief as you meditate on this thought: aren’t you glad you’re not your child?

Step 3. Remember that your role in this college application business is to be your family’s grounding cord. You’ve lived through harrowing times before and have came through them OK. You know that life ebbs and flows, that it brings great times and tough times. That’s what we signed up for when we decided to be human beings. So breathe again and ask yourself how you can ground the rest of your family and create a peaceful home. Breathe in some of that peaceful feeling that you’d like to inject.

Do What Only You Can Do

Step 4. Commit to yourself that you will be unflappable in the coming weeks. You will listen and empathize and go on with your life without trying to fix anything, because you are doing what only you can do – modeling healthy adult behavior during a tough time. You are literally showing your child how it’s done. Matching their own anxiety doesn’t help them. It just makes everything worse.

Step 5. If you want to clear your anxiety and frayed nerves, there is nothing like tapping (EFT). Here is a great script for that. If not, there are many other ways to stay calm in the center of a Category 5 storm: breathing; meditation; reading; going for a walk; talking to a friend or a “paid friend”. Remember what flight attendants tell us upon boarding a plane: place your own oxygen mask on before helping others. Your child needs you to stay strong and relaxed now. Your family needs you to create peace. And you need to enjoy the holidays.