Four-Year Plan

My daughter is putting together a four-year plan for her Advisory hour in high school. This involves a strengths finder, interest test, articulating your post-high school career plan, college major (if applicable), ultimate career choice, and, of course, identifying every single high school class for the next four years.

I love this kind of planning. I toyed at one point with the idea of becoming a university academic advisor simply so I could help people make schedules. So this assignment seemed like perfect mother-daughter bonding time.

Well. My daughter found this whole exercise very panic-inducing. She is a very literal thinker - and the idea of needing to commit to a plan, on paper, was quite stressful.

"But I don't know what I want to do for a career."

"Just write down something. It doesn't matter. Don't you want to do something medical? Just say, 'something medical.'"

"Mom, 'something medical' is not a career."

The same pattern followed with course selection. I tried to convince her that this was fun, a puzzle, a plan that could always be changed. She found it monumental, heavy, burdensome. Every course she was writing down was locking her into a one-way journey.

I remember doing similar four-year plans as part of the IB program in high school. My own high school path was very lockstep and there were fewer options. Somehow for my daughter, at one of the largest high schools in the state, with a plethora of options, the wide-open spaces seem paralyzing rather than freeing.

I wonder how many people find the exercise exhilarating, as I did, and how many find it paralyzing, like my daughter. My daughter has a good deal of anxiety about growing up and the future. She may not be alone. And sometimes I wonder if we spend so much time raising our kids for the "next step" that we forget to meet them where they are right now.