How can students follow their passions when deciding on their futures?
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Scott LaMar
Airdate: May 4th, 2023
In our childhoods, most of us were asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Then a year or so before graduating high school, questions arise about what we want to major in or college or what career path we want to take.
Many of us will follow our passions to answer those questions – what we really like. Maybe, others won’t be as passionate but decide on something they are really good at.
Our guest on The Spark Thursday is an educator who has advice about passions and deciding on the future. Matthew Jaskol is the founder and program director of Pioneer Academics in Jenkintown, who talked about why passion is so important when making decisions about a young person’s future,”I think that is the thing that really drives our intrinsic. Accomplishments. Right. When your accomplishments are something you’re pursuing for the purpose of having an accomplishment that’s really different than something that you are interested in because it lights you up, it makes you excited and it makes you want to pursue that more. And that is a natural way where we actually accomplish things. And so I think that the the difference where we think about this is that in one case, you’re asking yourself, what should I be doing and what will that look like? And in the other case, preferably people are starting a little bit younger. You’re saying this is an exploration process and I’m not supposed to know. And actually, a really big thing that I think is important is that 15 year olds and 16 year olds, they can have a lot of interests. They don’t have to have found their one thing like like in the City Slickers movie. Right. It’s it’s much more about. About saying it’s okay for me to be interested in a couple of different things. And I don’t have to know my purpose in life. But I’m going to actually choose a couple of things and take them a couple steps further. And that’s what parents probably should be helping their their children to do. And that’s what students really should feel comfortable with, that life is a great exploration. High school can be a great exploration. And in fact, I think we’re extremely lucky that we live in a country where college is an exploration. I’ve lived outside of the country for a long time, and in a number of different countries you have to choose your major and you don’t get to take classes outside of it when you go to college or you need to. You know, your choice of your major determines where you get into school. We’re really fortunate to live in a country where the higher education system enables people to say college should be an exploration where you’re going to get both breadth and depth, and that’s expected. And that, I think, is part of what drives the spunk or the spark to choose our topic today. Right. Or of of the innovation of our economy is that we expect people to be able to explore and to be able to have depth and to then be able to see connections between things rather than be siloed in particular majors that they chose before they really knew what they were.”
