There is something especially touching about the earnestness of a young person’s search for purpose. I have the great fortune of knowing young adults in their early twenties who hunger with every fiber of their being to express their unique essence and be of service to some particular corner of Read more…
I can check another item off my bucket list: leading a workshop at a staff retreat! (Old readers may remember when my dream of leading workshops at a youth retreat came true.) And what’s even better is that I just found out that the audience will be a mixed group Read more…
(Jermaine will be very pleased to see that I’m not reposting the same old photo I kept using of him from last year’s YAB retreat.)
Jermaine and I first met in September 2012, when New Yorkers For Children engaged me to work with their Youth Advisory Board. This past September he and I began working more closely through Emerging Leaders and together we determined that he would work on three areas for the 2013-2014 school year. Specifically, Jermaine would make an effort to:
Believe it or not, he hit it out of the park with all three by the end of February. This year he has been a strong and consistent voice in Emerging Leaders (you can read about that here), and he also brings that same presence to his work at YAB.
Jermaine has also put a lot of effort into bringing together his great respect for the creativity of young people (including his own interest in music) with his commitment to finding meaningful work and gainful employment not only for himself but for others. He has honed his vision for a program that will help launch young people into creative careers. He also took full advantage of the connection I facilitated to a youth development organization called Building Beats. The folks who run it couldn’t be more thrilled with the operations work he is now doing for them.
Let’s talk about goal number three, though, because learning to ask for help is no small feat. (more…)
I’ve been in transition for so long now that uncertainty and discomfort had become my life’s norms. How strange to be able to look back on a year and notice the extent of my transformation. Where once was a void, there now is a path. No doubt, I am still trailblazing (can I say trailblazing even though it still feels like bushwhacking?), but now I can clear the way for longer stretches at a time. If I had to distill 2013’s biggest lessons into pat formulas, I would say they were:
1. When facing your fears, the immediate objective is not to become “good” at something, but to become better at being a beginner. (more…)
While I agree with the significance of taking small steps towards a large goal, I wonder how we can lay out a larger map for our young adults to understand the short and long term processes of pursuing passions and earning a living.
For those of you who have been looking forward to Steph’s post (I know I have!) I wanted to reassure you that it’s in the hopper. It’s taking a bit longer because she has a lot to say, and I recommended that she break her piece into installments. I was Read more…
I met with one of my young people today to talk about a business idea he had and to design business cards. When the words “network marketing” came out of his mouth, however, I admit to having to restrain myself from reacting strongly. He said a lot of people had already advised him to be wary of scams and pyramid schemes, but he had friends and family members who were making a tidy amount of residual income through a certain program. I asked him what the root of his interest was, and he said that he wanted a fulfilling career. He didn’t want to be stuck behind a desk for forty years in a job he hated. Whenever this phrase comes up (and it often does) it’s really important to dig into what a person means by “desk job.” As a child I hadn’t the foggiest idea what my parents actually did in the office, and that honestly didn’t change much when I was a college student and still had a very limited notion of the range of work that people did in the world. Sure enough, what my youth had in mind were clerical jobs—”being someone’s secretary.” When I asked him where he got his ideas about work, he said it was mostly from movies and TV, where people push paper around in tiny cubicles. Who wouldn’t be despirited by such a vision of work life?
We were having this conversation at AlleyNYC, so I took the opportunity to point out that everyone here pretty much has a “desk job,” but that most of us were working for ourselves. That gave him pause. I took the opportunity to return to the word “fulfillment” and asked him what exactly he meant by that. He said to him it meant not having to wake up and go to a job that he disliked. So I gave him a scenario: What would you do if money were not a concern? (more…)
I am very excited for my next guest blogger, who promises to post her thoughts within the next couple of days on work development programs for young people. Steph Cowling is a very dear friend who goes about program design in a thoughtful manner. A strong moral compass guides her Read more…
[For Dale—again—whom I miss something fierce] So today is a bit unusual (though I wish more days were like this) because I’m spending a good portion of it with a bunch of young adults. I have five people coming in (and one person Skyping in over his lunch break) all Read more…
Guest post by Lindsay Adamski: “The best way for a young person to build character is for him to attempt something where there is a real and serious possibility of failure.” (Paul Tough, p. 85). All of the reading that I have done these past few weeks has made me Read more…