Quick tips for your senior student
The key word to describe seniors entering adult life is anxious. The fact is that ready or not, graduation is approaching and life at Lawrence University will be coming to a close. As with first year students breaking from the home setting, seniors breaking from campus life will feel a range of emotions. On the one hand, they are eager to be independent and try their wings. On the other hand, life in another world can be uncertain, insecure, and frightening. Once again, there can be a push-pull dynamic to the transition.
Stress occurs when there is change and can be a problem when there is an imbalance between the demands of the environment and the responsive capabilities of the student. Impending changes for seniors include: changes in responsibilities, living situation, recreational patterns, vacation time, time structure, and financial status. Stress can also result from personal achievements such as finishing a major project, passing exams, or receiving honors. For some seniors, marriage can also mean change and stress. On top of all these changes, a senior must make career decisions and launch a job search.
Ideally, seniors will be aware that career decisions must be made. They will be making those decisions with varying degrees of uncertainty and perfecting their ideas for the future. Tools they have gained from their liberal arts education, such as the ability to synthesize and analyze information, can be applied to finding answers to their career questions. Typically, seniors will begin to convert their choices to reality by setting goals, making plans, and taking action.
Hopefully, seniors will be able to cope with the stresses that challenge them, but often they can be as undecided, as dualistic in their thinking, and as externally oriented as any first year student. The Career Center does provide the services and information that seniors need to realize their career plans. Our experience had taught us, however, that unless a student is ready to hear and use that information, not much progress will be made.
What makes the difference between a senior who fears his or her future and one who copes is a strong sense of self, purpose, and confidence. Does this student feel assured enough of his or her own abilities to get through what is likely to be a lengthy job search? Job hunting involves taking repeated risks and facing rejections. Even the strongest of egos can sag under such conditions.
Seniors need all the encouragement they can get. While all of the previously mentioned ways parents can be helpful still hold true, your ability to communicate your support is the single most important way to assist your senior. It's difficult as parents not to rescue, which is doing something for your daughter or son rather than giving encouragement to do something for him or herself. The end result of a rescue is that your son or daughter feels less sure of his or her own abilities. When your support enables your son or daughter to reach goals, the accomplishment can be counted as his or hers, building self-esteem. It's often hard not to rescue, especially as it once was entirely appropriate as parents to do so. Switching to support is another way of relating to your son or daughter as another adult.
There are three major ways to be supportive. As a clarifier, you can offer yourself as a brain to pick. You can listen, give feedback, suggest resources, and come up with ideas and options. In a comforter role, you'll be a shoulder on which to cry. Rejections, mistakes, and failures will be part of any job hunt. When your senior is discourages, reassurance that he or she is a good, capable person works wonders. By far, the hardest supportive role is to be a confronter. In this role, you can offer tough support by setting limits and being honest. In all these roles, clear, direct communication will make the difference in how successful you are.
Often problems arise when there is a mismatch between the need and the support offered. Ask your senior how you can help. "You look discouraged. What do you need from me?" is an open invitation of your support, whether or not your son or daughter takes you up on it. In confrontation, it's helpful to confront the behavior rather than the person. Criticizing an individual typically sets up defensiveness and conflict. Name the behavior, own your feeling about behavior, and state what you want. "When you sit around not making any effort to look for work, I get angry and concerned, and I'd like you to get going."
Again, parenting during the college years involves going from a child to parent relationship to an adult to adult relationship. Career decisions fit into that transition. While the Career Center is here to assist your son or daughter with programs, information, and advice, your part in the process is vitally important to your son or daughter's career development at Lawrence University.