In this blog, I’m going to talk about three questions I think every ambitious teen should be asking themselves even though most of them aren’t. Every year the number one question that parents and teachers are asking me is, “What activities should we do to impress colleges?” Or “I’m deciding between these two activities; which one’s going to impress colleges more?” And I want to say that oftentimes those questions are the wrong questions. Not only do those questions make you feel like you’re that kind of college consultant that’s gross and icky and it feels like everything’s contrived and you’re just doing everything to get into college. And though I do help coach people through the process of how to stand out in the college admissions process, I think at the end of the day what’s actually most important is developing who you are and three fundamental elements of yourself. And that’s what these three questions are going to get at.
The first question is a question of vision. What problems can I solve in the world around me? I think there is this misconception that everyone just has to find their passion. But the problem with passion is that passion is all about you. And what I actually find is oftentimes more powerful isn’t who you are and what you want to do but actually listening to the world around you. Seeing problems in that world around you and saying, “Hey, I see a problem, and I’m going to help solve that.” Or “My dream is to help make our world a better place and help save humanity.” You guys, humanity needs a lot of help. I just witnessed a wildfire in a community 15 minutes from me that decimated homes, and 30,000 people lost everything. And it’s not cool, you guys. Global warming is real. We’ve got some issues. I don’t want humankind to go extinct. I don’t know about you. And that’s not the only problem out there. Whether it’s politics, racism, war, or whatever issue it is that gets under your skin. If you want to help solve that problem, I want to hear about it. And I want to know what your thoughts are. So look at the world around you and think about what problems you want to solve or what role you might play in helping humanity solve those problems. That doesn’t mean everybody’s an engineer. We need storytellers. We need people to get the word out. We need journalists. We need writers. We need teachers. We need all kinds of people in the next stage of wherever humanity is going. But I want to know what role you’re going to play and what problems you’re going to solve.
Number two is a question of action. How can I take action in a way that if I don’t do it, maybe nobody else will? One of the features of most of the students that I have getting into the most competitive, most elite universities is that in some way, somewhere on their resume, they’re doing some kind of independent activity where they’ve stepped up and taken action and done something in a way that nobody asked them to do. They didn’t sign up on a clipboard; they didn’t just go to some activities fair, and they’re not just getting in line between 100 other people and doing something that 100 other people are doing. So I want you to take action in a way that stands out. How are you going to do that? And how do you do that? That’s a question I want you to ask.
The third question I have is a question of purpose, and that question is: What matters to me and why? I have some students who are brilliant, who get great grades, who are incredibly talented, and who know what their passion is, but they don’t necessarily know what their purpose is. And what I mean by purpose is why. Do you know how you want to change the world? Do you have a perspective on the world? I have some students who don’t quite know exactly what their big idea is going to be, but they understand the world around them, and they have a point of view on it, and they have something that matters to them, and that could be an idea. It could be the idea of standing up for multiple perspectives, which is one essay theme that I had a student work on a few years back. That was something that really mattered to him, because he grew up between cultures; he grew up internationally, and he really knew how we might see the world in completely different ways, and we might frame the world in different ways, and we might filter it in different ways. That was really important to him because of the way that he was raised and because of how he grew up, so that was part of his voice. Does he know exactly how he’s going to change the world? Well, I don’t know exactly how he’s going to change the world. Maybe he doesn’t either. But he has an inkling as to what matters to him, and what’s really important to him, and what’s probably going to drive him as he tries to change the world. He had a purpose, he had a point of view, and that’s what I want you to figure out. What matters to you, and why? And start asking yourself that early. What matters to you, and why, and why do you care about it? If you are driven by things that you care about, whatever you do with your time, however you spend your time, it’s going to be more valuable and thoughtful than you just sitting back and thinking about what colleges want to hear or what activities you can do to impress colleges. Develop yourself. What matters to you, and why does it matter to you? What gives you purpose? What makes you go? What excites you?
I hope you guys found this helpful!
