the perfect degree?

reflecting on college options

The sunrise was truly spectacular this morning. The attached was only the beginning of a great week

For the better part of a decade, I have been speaking with high school students aspiring to foreign policy careers as they begin a week in the nation’s capital on an organised program. It’s both exciting hearing that this field could get new blood as we older types truly rotate out but it’s also fascinating to see their faces as one punctures some of their cherished assumptions.

The sponsors are well-organised in providing various aspects the kids need consider in their forthcoming choices. The students are often rising seniors in high school but not exclusively. The sponsors run comparable programs in medicine, law (isn’t everything law these days??), and a couple of other fields. The students I meet usually have the chance to go to the Hill, to visit some workplaces in the Executive Branch, and discuss their questions with seasoned folks in the relevant field.

The students dress appropriately (obviously must be a part of the company’s instructions because young folks meet ‘appropriate’ attire far more often than many I come across in various work places) even if it meant they sweltered in modest dresses or long-sleeved shirts with ties through stiffling heat. The particpants clearly receive instructions on how to ask a question effectively (some times that works but not always). Anyone queuing to snag a business card or say thank you is patient. The designated group ‘thanker’ is often nervous but ready to go with a decent speech. (I do notice we are not getting goodie bags this year but that is ok as I have more canvas bags than the population of Indonesia)

My remarks, sadly, often seem to stop them dead in the water. It’s my standard advice to use college to secure a broad education because that teaches analytical skills. They don’t really want to hear that (but no one does).

Last time I did one of these sessions, an Asian American young lady wanted to focus instead on the fact she speaks Cantonese and Japanese, along with English, so wouldn’t that more than compensate for basic (read: boring) analytical skills?

Uh, no.

She reattacked by asking the five of us on the panel what languages we spoke. Since 3 of the others were with the European Union, they all spoke French, German, English, Spanish. I speak poor Thai (probably could still barter with taxi drivers if they even do that these days in Bangkok) which sent her on to a new question.

Well, isn’t speaking a non-Latin language more important than analysis?

Uh, no.

They were less resistant to my basic assumption that we are de facto a bilingual English-Spanish nation so they should be sure they are comfortable in that tongue.

The other thing that baffles them is the idea that no single college matriculation guarantees they will be successful—not the school or the major. High school students sadly have been led to believe a single place may be all it takes to be a rip roaring success in life; I too fell prey to years ago. If one goes to the right school, that school’s diploma on the wall automatically leads to something else (Actions create consequences, no?) I was heartbroken not to go to Radcliffe; i laugh now at the idea of me on Harvard Yard. Oy, vey. But years ago it wasn’t funny at all, no matter how people tried convince me (of the truth).

As the entire legacy admissions debate reminds us, college is not merely about the lecture hall but about networking with people who can have a major influence (good or bad—which too often we forget) on lives or certainly careers. College is about education but too easily we focus on some mythical ‘peak’ place as if all learning and mastering thought processes are linear.

It’s a process rather than an end.

Life isn’t linear nor are learning processes. The variable that matters is the person about, for, and of whom we are speaking. If that person wastes a superb education at the University of Bizzap, then it’s a loss. And there are phenomenal teachers and mentors at all schools, by the way. If someone is brilliant but not affluent enough to attend the finest institution in the land, that person may utterly excel by attending community college, then using a lateral admission program to enter the Minnehaha College if a professor lights that student’s intellectual curiosity. Or, a person may have a full scholarship to the best place on those stupid annual lists but blow it by spending all her time playing bridge instead of going to class.

We rail on endlessly in this country about individual responsibility but what we mean far too often is that it’s someone else’s obligation to do the right thing while we give ourselves (or our kids) a pass. Rather than empower ourselves to learn in any institution or environment, we prefer finding a niche which will assure we can expend the minimal amount of effort to achieve the maximum outcome. And we have too often passed it to our kids on the philosophy of education.

Networks, lectures, sports teams, libraries, and many things matter but it’s how we use them that matters rather than some inherent importance of their own.

We also forget that education is a long process, the true value of which may be unclear for decades. For a 16 year old, that is utterly incomprehensible (since they will surely be old by age 19) but true.

However, they have to figure that out like so many other things.

What I have seen most relevant for students in my 38 years of teaching, especially the 31 in national security strategy, is that students need cast the widest net for topics they learn about, refining them by interests and opportunities as the progress. They also need communicate, particularly in writing, as fluently as possible.

No single major, language, institution, or view point is the key that being analytical, open to new ideas, and communicative can’t top. Some of the best known successes in our system followed that path rather than simply relying on their network of associates to boost them along the way. Those boosters can become adversaries some times, as well, while ingrained skills are ours.

The other thing I have to mention to kids today is that their personal behaviour matters a great deal along the way if they want to get a foothold in this community. In an era of seemingly ubiquitous belief that person rights outweigh any regulations or responsibilities linked to others, the opposite is true. Not every job will welcome someone shown as inflammatory on social media. Marijuana use may be increasingly legal from coast to coast but if one hasn’t studied history, one won’t necessarily understand that shifting drug laws rise and fall coincident with the periods of higher and lesser drug concerns in the United States. Current more lax laws don’t pertain in the federal system when it comes to applying for security clearances.

Life is a series of individual choices. Actions create consequences in all aspects of our lives.

In short, when I speak with these kids, I welcome their interest, their passion, their excitement, and their questions. Sadly, many of them will encounter obstacles along the way which may deter them from becoming fully involved in foreign affairs. Too many have never had to struggle through something with too many folks doing hard stuff for them. But, the list of opportunities in the field is almost endless and growing so I hope they see that.

I also hope many consider military service. We need a military brimming with the officers and enlisted from across breadth and width of this country. One of the reasons the World War II generation was so remarkable was that it was such a complete manifestation of this nation. The protection of the American way of life, with its multiplicity of languages, histories, religions, and culture was what those men (and fewer women) fought so tenaciously to secure.

If the threats to us are as all encompassing as we think, we need a similarly diverse military to harvest its intellectual power and creativity born of different experiences. We desperately need keen thinkers about where and how we apply the military and other tools of statecraft. As a loyal reader reminds us, ‘measure twice, cut once’ which relies on the brain twice as much as the brawn.

Perhaps the last time I speak with this year’s cohort, I will get radically different questions but I doubt it. I do hope some of these kids follow a foreign affairs path because, as I learned at Foggy Bottom in the summer of 1970, ‘95% of the world is foreigners’. I prefer stressing the 95% in the sentence as we benefit from helping understand that rather daunting number rather than focusing on the fact they are not like us.FIN