Preparing for and transitioning into the first year of college involves so many, many details, and it’s easy to get caught up in just getting through what needs to be done. Then the college experience can be taken over by the day-to-day details of classes, assignments, GPA, activities, friends, schedules, career planning and just surviving. While we all know it’s good advice to live in the moment, sometimes it can also help to take a breath, zoom out a bit, and look at the bigger picture. In this episode, Lynn and Vicki suggest why it’s important for your student (and you) to take some time to take a look backward, to look more widely at those experiences available now, and to look forward to the future. Changes of perspective can be illuminating for all of us (And yes, that includes parents!).

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We watch students every day so focused on what they need to do and caught up in all of the small details. That’s not necessarily bad, except sometimes these students are so lost in the weeds of every day that they lose sight of the bigger picture. So we wanted to talk in this episode about some of the ways students – and their families – can widen the focus to look at the past, look more broadly at the present, and also to look ahead toward the future.  Changing perspective and looking at the bigger picture can take some of the pressure off of some of the present issues.

In this episode we talked about how to look to the past to understand where we’ve come from as well as how to broaden our present experiences and how to look to the future – beyond just thinking about career.

We mentioned Harlan Cohen and his book The Naked Roommate.  If you’d like to hear more from Harlan, check out our interview with him.

#114 – Getting Comfortable with the Uncomfortable: A Conversation with Author Harlan Cohen

Lynn also mentioned one of her favorite books: Children Who Fail at School But Succeed in Life by Mark Katz.

We also thought about what’s next for parents as they look forward to the empty nest and how important it is to remember all of the values you’ve instilled over the years. Looking back can help us have more confidence in the future.

Here are a couple of related College Parent Central articles that can help you follow up on this idea.

Does Your College Student Have an Advisory Board?

How a Walk Down Memory Lane Can Help Your College Student Move Forward

Why Your Student Should Think “Outside of the Box” When Creating a College Schedule

College Is a Next Step – That’s All

Helping Your College Student Find Support On Campus

Lynn also talked about how much students – and their brains – continue to develop throughout the college years. If you want to learn a bit more about that, check out our podcast episode where Lynn talked about brain development and executive function. (We promise it’s not as dry as it sounds!)

#075 – Understanding More About Your College Student’s Brain

Don’t forget that you can listen to all of our previous podcast episodes here or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also go to followthepodcast.com/collegeparentcentral to add our podcast (it’s free!) so that you’ll receive each new episode as we release it.

Let us know what you’d like to hear about on future podcasts! Leave a comment below or email us at podcast@collegeparentcentral.com.

Transcript:

Announcer: 1:03

Welcome to the College Parent Central podcast. Whether your child is just beginning the college admission process or is already in college, this podcast is for you. You’ll find food for thought and information about college and about navigating that delicate balance of guidance, involvement and knowing when to get out of the way. Join your hosts, Vicki Nelson and Lynn Abrahams, as they share support and a celebration of the amazing experience of having a child in college.

Vicki Nelson: 1:41

Welcome to the College Parent Central podcast. We’re here again to talk about all sorts of things that have to do with your student who is in college, who’s about to go to college, and what it’s like as a parent, becoming a college parent, how best to support your student Just about you name anything that has to do with being the parent of a college student, and we have something to say about it. My name is Vicki Nelson and I am one of the co-hosts of this podcast, and I am here with my colleague.

Lynn Abrahams: 2:24

I am Lynn Abrahams. I am here both as a parent of kids who have gone to college, gone in, through and around and out. Also, I’m here because I am a learning disability specialist. I have worked with college students for my whole career. That’s me.

Vicki Nelson: 2:38

Yes, it is you.

Vicki Nelson: 2:39

And I should have introduced myself a little more as well and said that, I am also both the parent of, three daughters you have the boys, I have the girls.  My daughters are all out of college. Um, we’ve all survived it, and I am also a professor at a small liberal arts college. So I see and work with students every day and I learn a lot by just watching and listening to my students.

So we have an interesting topic that we thought we would chat a little bit about today and we’re calling it Zooming out on the college experience. Zoom not having to do with Zoom on the computer that we’ve all learned to do in the last few years so much, but more like you do with the camera, when you zoom out or you know, I use it all the time on maps on the computer and I want the bigger picture I zoom out and I get a broader picture of just my street and I can look that way and really thinking about that when we take a step back, when we zoom out, we give ourself a little distance. We can take the long view of this college experience that our students are having and that we’re having, and that it helps to keep things in perspective a little bit. So we want to talk a little bit about that long view and that is when we look backward and when we look forward and then in the present when we look a little more widely. So it’s zooming out in terms of length and also breadth of these experiences. Sort of makes sense a little bit. I think it helps us not just live in the moment quite as much but to think about where we are now in terms of the bigger picture. And this is really for parents to think about and also for parents to be able to perhaps talk to your student, help your student think about how they can take the broader look, the broader view of things.

Vicki Nelson: 5:01

You know, we all get so caught up so much of the time in the small details. Sometimes I feel like I am definitely living in the weeds. You know, I’m overwhelmed by everything that’s happening to me right now and I lose sight of that bigger picture, everything that’s happening to me right now and I lose sight of that bigger picture. So we like to encourage people to think about that, because when you zoom out you do get more of the whole story. It gives you more focus on the bigger picture and it also takes the focus off you a little bit. You become a little smaller and I think sometimes our students need that reminder that they’re one of many in thinking about that. So keeping in mind that the college experience, the time we spend in college, is really just a next step. We’ve come from somewhere and we’re heading somewhere and we want to think a little bit about that.

Lynn Abrahams: 6:07

You know, it occurs to me that just our role as parents. It’s so easy to get stuck in the minutia with our kids. It’s so easy and if you’re a worrier, like I am I happen to be a bit of a worrier it’s easy to just get stuck there and it feels so good to step back. I guess I’m also thinking about summer and how we’re in summer right now and it’s a great time to step back and see the whole picture and sort of, you know, detach a little bit from the craziness so that you can think about it, so that you can see some of the patterns, so you can see some of the you know, the repeating things, that the opportunities, the bigger picture it’s very, it’s a really helpful thing.

Vicki Nelson: 7:06

And you know, it’s one of the reasons I like vacation, because it takes me. Well, there are lots of reasons that I like vacation, but it takes me out of my everyday routine. It takes me out of my everyday routine. It takes me out of the now so much and I get to step back a little bit. So let’s start by thinking what do we mean by looking backward? We’re so focused on the future, we’re focused on moving forward. We want to be motivated to move forward. That’s all good but, excuse me, sometimes we have to. It benefits to think backward.

Vicki Nelson: 7:44

So for parents, but also parents to talk to students about think back a little bit to your childhood. Think about where you’ve come from. What were the dreams that you had? You know, when you were five, you wanted to be, you know, a fireman and a ballerina and a police officer all at once. But those wonderful dreams that you have when you’re younger that sometimes, as we work on the practical present, we lose those a little bit. So what did you dream about? How did you feel? Looking back and then also thinking about successes and challenges I know that that matters.

Lynn Abrahams: 8:31

Well, you know I spend a lot of time talking with my students about their past. In the way that you know, I’m looking for where the light bulbs went off, where, when I talk to students, their eyes light up. You know I ask often about when they felt really good at school or out of school and it might be experiences like camp experiences or, you know, experiences with their family. All of these things contribute to who my students are and it’s kind of fun to look at. You know where they did well, was it a sports? You know situation, was it art? Was it math? You know.

Lynn Abrahams: 9:25

You just don’t know where kids are going to light up. And at the same time it’s good to look at some of the challenges that some of my students have gone through. Many of my students don’t realize that going through some of their difficulties in school has better prepared them for their college experiences, because they had to bump into walls, they had to figure out other ways to do things, Whereas you know some students who just do well all the way through aren’t sort of forced to problem solve that way. They aren’t forced to think about new ways of doing things. So I think, looking at some of your challenges in the past can help you figure out who you are and where you want to go.

Vicki Nelson: 10:17

Yeah, and how you went about facing those challenges. Yes, because I agree, some of the students that I have who have just coasted through not in the terms of lazy coast through, but it’s just been relatively easy for them. When they hit up against a wall which often does happen in college of something new that they have great difficulty understanding or doing, they crumble a little bit more because they haven’t built up those muscles of facing that. So really thinking back to those things is really helpful. You know, the other thing that I think sometimes students forget about is how it felt when they were younger, when it was really exciting to learn new things. You know, I watch my now my grandchildren, who are young and who get so excited when they accomplish something or they want to know more about this. They get excited about the opportunity to take on something new.

Vicki Nelson: 11:34

And, you know, as we get older, it’s not just students. I think. All of us sometimes get a little jaded about that excitement of learning and approaching it. And, as you’re saying, Lynn, what are those things that excited you? The other thing sometimes by the time students get to college, they think of all of these extracurricular things as just extra. You know, it really doesn’t matter. I had to do extracurriculars in high school because it had to look good on my resume for my college application. But now that I’m in college, I don’t have to do any of that anymore. And to really think what fires you up and can you find a way to keep doing that?

Lynn Abrahams: 12:19

You know, I’m thinking about a student that I had recently who figured out that he could actually do something in college that he did as a child that he was so excited about. So he had this incredible talent for creating like well, he was artistic, he could create like video games and he did video game voices.

Lynn Abrahams: 12:45

And when he ever figured out that he could actually study this in college and it was like, oh my God, I can have fun and learn and that’s the field he went into video game creation.

Vicki Nelson:

And it connects to by looking back a little bit to what did I love as a kid and how do I bring that forward, and you know, the other thing in terms of looking back is I think it helps students to think a little bit about who are the people that mattered. I mean, hopefully, hopefully, certainly your parents, but beyond that, who are the people that supported you and who are the people that were your role models? Who are the people you looked up to? Who are the people that gave you opportunities? And thinking about those qualities, why was this person your role model? How did this person help you and how can you carry that forward? What lessons did you learn from those people? So, yeah, what were the challenges, successes, who were the people? What were the activities?

Vicki Nelson: 13:56

Helping students take a little bit of time to reflect on what’s brought them to where they are. I think you know is going to help them. And then we get to the present, and that was fast, and we get to the them. And then we get to the present, and that was fast, and we get to the present. And here it’s really a case of looking more widely, that zooming out broadens the picture and you get more of a bird’s eye view, you know, sort of looking down. And I think one of the things that happens when you do that is you realize that the present maybe all four years of college even are really only one small piece of your timeline. And so, whether it goes well or it doesn’t go well, or maybe it says to you I better take advantage of this because it’s only one small piece of my timeline, but it does begin to put that in perspective a little bit more.

Lynn Abrahams: 14:56

And I think that’s the key. Putting in perspective. I think that if we have conversations with our students about this, it helps to see that what’s happening this moment is a speck, really. I mean, I know I’ve been with students who might fail a test, for example, and just feel like the earth has fallen apart. You know the sky has fallen in and yet it is one test of many, many, many tests. And will it really matter? You know, in five years I’ve had that conversations with students about, you know, not getting a. You know a really good grade in a course and you know, is this really going to matter when you’re, when you’ve graduated from college and you’re applying for jobs? Well, maybe not, you know.

Vicki Nelson: 15:50

Yeah. I’ve never had a job interview where they said well, tell me about that test that you failed in, you know, or I you know? You failed this one course in your freshman year. I don’t think, and you know, even if you think, even if they’re very logical people and mathematically inclined, which I am not, and you go by the numbers, in most colleges students need to complete about 120 credits to graduate and most courses in college are three credits, maybe four. So when they look at that failure, that looks so huge, right now I’ve failed my statistics course. It’s three credits out of 120. And so, again, if you look at that bigger picture of 120, I’m not saying go out and fail a course because you know what is it, it’s only three credits. No, you want to do well, but again, the perspective and keeping it in perspective.

Lynn Abrahams: 16:55

I think it’s also important to keep something in perspective when it may not be an academic thing, but it might be an issue with a roommate or an issue with a friend and you know we often talk about the 24-hour rule, which is when something really intense happens. Take some time to stop before you react and sometimes in 24 hours it can, you know, fix itself. But you know, the idea is to stop and to pause before you react can give a lot of perspective and sometimes our students need to learn that. Actually, sometimes we need to learn that as well. We need to learn it too.

Vicki Nelson: 17:44

Absolutely yes, yes. So when the student calls with their crisis and you say let’s sit on it and let’s talk tomorrow and that might help. You know, Lynn, I know you and I both heard about the 24-hour rule many years ago from Harlan Cohen, who wrote the Naked Roommate. We can link to that in the show notes and we just did an interview with Harlan not very long ago.

Vicki Nelson: 18:20

So if parents are intrigued by this or have heard of Harlan Cohen and want to hear more.

Just a couple episodes back I can’t remember the number right now, but check it out and it’s a great conversation with Harlan Cohen. But it’s such good advice, you know, when whatever seems to be happening at the moment, just say let’s give it 24 hours and see how we feel about it then. And that’s not always easy to do, especially when you’re a parent and it’s your child that’s in crisis.

Lynn Abrahams: 18:49

And especially if you’re a worrier.

Vicki Nelson: 18:53

Yeah, like we are.

Lynn Abrahams: 18:54

Yes, it’s hard, it’s hard to do it, but it’s so useful.

Vicki Nelson: 18:59

And you know it’s related to that. But I think another thing, as students are thinking about taking that broader view and thinking around the now in a broader perspective, is for them also to think about who is their circle of support. Who are the people in this broader now that can support them? And it’s related to the 24-hour rule, I think, in a little bit, because, as parents, when my student calls with whatever the crisis of the day is, I might want to say, well, you have people there that can help you with this. It’s nice as a parent to know that my student maybe has a circle of support, but that circle of the student may have to work a little bit to create that circle of support.

Vicki Nelson: 19:55

I know on our website, on the College Parent Central website, we have an article about students having an advisory board and this is sort of like a board of directors and it’s not that the students are going to call a meeting and they’re all going to sit around a big table with the board of directors, but for students to put together, you know, maybe make a list of five or six or seven people who are their go-to people, who are their advisors, advisory board, different kinds of people, multi-generational, you know, maybe some older, wiser people and some friends, maybe a family member, maybe a relative, a neighbor, a mentor, a coach, a professor, an old high school teacher, but people that they can turn to for support when they need it. And so thinking about in the present, thinking broadly, who is that circle of people that I know that I can count on, and I think that’s helpful too.

Lynn Abrahams: 21:04

I think also, when you’re looking at the bigger picture of now, it is good to think about the variety of experiences our students are going through, you know, in the college environment I mean, there are so many, it’s not just in classroom experiences, you know. We we, you know suggest that our students do internships or that they go study abroad or they volunteer or become part of a group you know of like-minded students.

Vicki Nelson: 21:49

And become part of a group of non-like-minded students. One of the things that college provides for students is so much diversity of kinds of people, and if they only ever seek out and spend time with people who are just like them, they’re missing such an opportunity to broaden their experience and to find people who are different but find out what they have in common as well. S this zooming out, then, is not just about taking the long view, looking forward, looking backward, but also the broader view of the world in terms of places and experiences and all that’s going on right now.

So we’ve looked back and we’ve looked at the broader, the wider view of the present, and what’s left is in that long view is looking forward a little bit, and sometimes it’s interesting as I talk to my students. Sometimes it’s short-term looking forward and then longer-term looking forward, but it’s looking past that, that amount of things that’s dumping on me right now in the present, and sometimes students feel overwhelmed with all of that. I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do this. But taking the long view could be as simple as have I planned out my week? Do I use a study planner to plan what I’m going to do for the next month, to take my assignments and say I will do this on Tuesday, I will do this on Wednesday, I have this test on Thursday.

Vicki Nelson: 23:34

That’s taking a longer view for some students than they ever do, Because they so often each night they look at what do I have to do for tomorrow, I’ve got this class tomorrow, what do I have to do? And then they discover, oh, what I have to do for tomorrow is read this chapter and write a two-page summary. And now it’s 10 o’clock at night. So they’ve been living so much in the present that they haven’t taken that slightly longer view. So that’s a longer view that helps.

Vicki Nelson: 24:10

And then sometimes it’s the longer view of I have to plan my next semester classes. And here it is the middle of fall semester. Now is the time when I have to register for my classes in the spring. Maybe I want to look long-term at the requirements that I need to meet. This class is a prerequisite for that class. So I have to take this class next semester so that next year I can take this other class. So that’s a little longer view and that’s sort of planning ahead. And then there’s even sometimes planning ahead okay, it’s January or February, this is the time I should be looking for my summer internship, or this is the time I should be looking for my summer job. And then, of course, you look into the further future. What kind of job do I want? What’s my career going to be? What kind of internship should I take for that job? And looking that way.

Lynn Abrahams: 25:17

You know, it occurs to me, Vicki, that you know, when you look at a bigger picture, it makes it easier to make some of the decisions that need to be made as well. I think that sometimes, parents and students, we all get stuck in terms of thinking. It has to go a certain direction, a certain way, from one next to the next to the next. For example, a student may look at the future and say I don’t know what I want to major in. I think I’d like to take a semester and do a part-time job. You know doing something to figure that out. In other words, it doesn’t have to be so linear and if you’re looking at the big picture, it’s easier to be a little more flexible and know that it’s all going towards that goal of figuring out, having our students figure out who they are, how they want to give to the world and you know who they want to be in this world.

Vicki Nelson: 26:31

And that who they want to be is so important and sometimes gets buried in the job. What’s your major going to be? What career goal do you have? What internship are you going to get to get that career job? And I’m constantly reminding my students that their job is going to be important and they want to be in a career that they like, but hopefully they’re going to have some balance in their life and their job may be. I don’t know if anybody works 40 hours anymore, but 40 hours, or it might be 30 hours, or it might be 60 hours a week that you’re going to work on your job, but there are 168 hours in the week. Who are you going to be in some of the rest of those hours? What’s going to matter to you and what do you want to do with your life beyond just your job? And we put so much emphasis now on students going to college and choosing the right college, choosing the right major, choosing the right internship, getting the right job. But who are you also and that’s where some of those extracurriculars and things that we were talking about earlier matter that you maintain some of those interests in things beyond just the academic things that you have to. So things like a gap year or a gap semester, that can be really important,

Lynn Abrahams: 28:01

And you know when you talk about like who you are, those values deep inside can often propel students into multiple careers. You know, it’s not just one thing. I think a lot of students are more flexible than we were when we were that age. In a way, you know where they can change their ideas of what they want to do a little bit easier than we did. I know I used to think, you know, it was one job and one career,

Vicki Nelson: 28:41

and then you would retire and get the gold watch and you’d be done

Lynn Abrahams: 28:52

Right, and most people I know are not doing the work that they trained for in their undergraduate degrees, so there’s a lot of room for change and that can be exciting. There’s a lot of you know hope of good jobs and you know new things.

Vicki Nelson: 29:16

And they don’t know where the path is going to lead. It winds around, sometimes winds back around itself and then moves forward.

So I think the one last thing we wanted to talk about is a little bit. You know we’ve been talking about students and we talk about that because we think parents having the conversation with students can help students think about these concepts and these ideas. but also to think about that zooming out and that longer view for parents themselves, because they’re going through transitions, just as their students are. When the students go and things are changing, and while it’s important to help the students look backwards and look forwards and look wide in the middle, it’s also important for us to do it as parents, especially as our students head off to college and we look back a little bit at. 

You know, I was not the parent when my kids went away to college. That I was 10 years before that, when they were eight years old. I learned a lot. I was not the person, I was not the parent. I was earlier. But it helps to look back and say you know, what did I teach my child? That they’re going to carry forward. One of the things we worry so much about for many of us when our kids go to college is, you know, will they know how to behave?

Vicki Nelson: 31:06

Will they know right from wrong? And when I stop and think about what are the values that I raised them with, that I instilled in them, that reminds me that they’re going to carry those values. At least some of them they’re going to carry forward. And I think it helps me when I look back to who was I as a parent, who am I now as a parent, also as a person. And then what’s going to happen next?

Vicki Nelson: 31:41

I said to you, Lynn, before we started recording, I was typing up a few notes to think about things we wanted to talk about, and one of the things I you know, as we look forward for parents, I wanted to talk a little bit about the empty nest, because you know what’s it going to be like for us when we have this empty nest. And I did a typo, which I think I do fairly often, and instead of writing nest N-E-S-T, I typed next N-E-X-T, and then I kind of liked that we’re talking about the empty next, but for parents to think about what’s next for me? As I, it’s sometimes it’s a little heart wrenching as I send my student away to college. But what’s next for me is also looking forward, and it takes a little of the pressure off the now, I think, as we worry about admissions and we worry about GPAs and we worry about our student choosing their major, not only do we want to remind them to keep it in perspective, it helps us remember that too.

Lynn Abrahams: 32:49

I think that’s really healthy for parents to do that, to look at that, I also think It’s good to remember that not only are we changing and move you know we’re in a process but you know our kids are really growing and sometimes, sometimes we don’t realize that. You know it’s not like they go away to college and they’re done. You know their brains are growing and growing and growing and into their 20s and even early 30s, our kids are really changing and we know this now in terms of studying the brain, and it’s a relief, in a way, that they’re moving along and changing and that they’re going to be a different person, different people when they graduate than when they started.

And so it’s a process for all of us.

Vicki Nelson: 33:49

Yeah, I certainly see that in the students that I teach because I teach a lot of them in their first year and then, especially those that are in our major that I continue to have contact with, I see them when they’re graduating and walking across that stage and oh my goodness, what’s happened in those four years. And so I think it helps for parents to remember too that the student who walks across the stage at graduation is going to be very different from the student that they drop off on move-in day.

Lynn Abrahams: 34:24

That’s why we love graduation day so much. We all cry.

Vicki Nelson: 34:30

I know, we do, we do. It’s wonderful to see so. There’s hope and it’s exciting to watch the process. It’s important to know that the process is going to happen and to keep everything in perspective, to zoom out a little bit, pull the camera back at the wider view of where students have come from, where we have come from, what’s going on in the wider view of today and then to you know, we can only look so far in the future, we don’t know what’s out there. But to know that some of the things that happen now will impact what happens in the future, lots to think about.

Lynn Abrahams: 35:15

Lots to think about Vicki.

Vicki Nelson: 35:17

Yeah, Hopefully lots to think about for parents as well. Hope this gave you a little food for thought, some ideas to think about and talk to your student about and see what goes from there. Harlan Cohen, that’s a great one. You don’t want to miss that. And you had a book, Lynn. Just real quickly you had a book you wanted to talk about when we were talking about keeping those failures in perspective and all.

Lynn Abrahams: 35:51

I keep coming back to this book. It’s by a guy named Mark Katz and the name of the book is Children who Fail at School but Succeed in Life. And I love this book because it’s a positive look at some of the kids who have struggled in school and how amazing they’ve been doing in the world and it’s sort of looking back. And it’s it’s just, it’s a very positive look at you know some of the struggles our kids go through Right, so we’ll list list that in the show notes too.

Vicki Nelson: 36:31

Great, so thanks for being with us. We hope it was helpful and we hope that you will join us again another time. Thanks, bye-bye, that you will join us again another time, thanks.

Lynn Abrahams: 36:45

Bye-bye.