Lots of inspiration the past two days! For the past few days, I’ve been inspired by the students in my HHS125 classes as they share their statements on how they will live their truth!
Today, I had an interesting chat with one of my colleagues this morning – and she asked me why wasn’t my work embraced by other people and/or units on campus (University of North Carolina at Greensboro). And I decided to respond in a much different way this morning, inspired by one of my favorite writers, Jeff Goins. My response to her this morning was, “My work isn’t for everyone.” And it made me realize that I’m not doing this work for the faculty, staff, and administrators on campus – it’s for the students. And that works for me.
So, if you have 5 minutes, check out Jeff’s article:
- Your Work Is Not for Everyone – https://goinswriter.com/not-for-everyone/
Think about what you do and why you do it as you read the article. Might provide a different frame for you and future conversations.
The Dream Dean 
Dear Bill,
How do you help coach international students (and domestic students) who have a strong cultural pressure and/or family pressure to declare certain majors, and the doesn’t like that major or isn’t willing to look at other majors?
Hi Harriet. In our HHS125 course, we have first- and second-year students create a Major/Career/Calling Exploration poster that outlines the different paths to take. They actually come up with two different “majors” to pursue; for your example, a student could explore the major that is the “family-intended” major, the second is the personal choice. We also look at a variety of other characteristics that might help the process, such as entrance requirements, degree requirements, etc. We’ll also have them examine pay scale info, typical employers and strategies, graduate school possibilities, and internships. The goal is to be as prepared as possible with information on both the first (family choice) and second (personal choice) majors, And sometimes, students just have to suck it up and go with the major that the family will support, unless they are willing to go at it on their own.
One of the things we really try to address in our group coaching classes is a strong foundation of knowing yourself – your personal core and lifestyle values, your character and engagement strengths, your personality type, etc., so that they develop a strong sense of self. That way, decisions that are made can be made with conviction. Every now and then, I have conversations with parents, but I guess we address what we are doing at our summer orientation program, so both the students and the parents know what we’re trying to achieve. We deal with this a lot with our students pursuing nursing and graduate school in the health professions.
Hope this helps!