I began the first day of the Transitions to Adulthood program with a word-association exercise around the concepts of “adult” and “not adult.” Here is what the YC group came up with:
You will notice that, by and large, the column of “adult” characteristics is overwhelmingly positive, whereas the “not adult column, with few exceptions, is comparatively negative. When I asked the group about it, one person made the distinction between “childlike” and “childish” attributes, and pointed out that optimism and idealism are some childlike qualities that are good to take into adulthood. I really liked how one person mentioned having a “conscience” as an adult characteristic (with the opposite being being able to “do whatever you want”), because the concept of accountability came up repeatedly over the next two days of discussions.
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Framing questions « Minds On Fire · July 16, 2012 at 11:06 am
[…] I like to put those questions early on to the group as a way of placing on the table early on many of the major points that will surface over the course of the program. In addition to these two questions, I also asked the group where they got their ideas about adulthood, since for some reason they were reluctant to mention it during the ice breaker/word association exercise. […]