Ask high schoolers "what are your plans?" not "what college?"; his father asked for a…

Can we please start asking high school kids “what are your plans after high school?” vs “what college are you going to?”

There are kids all over the country right now being asked to decide their future at a very young age. Sadly most of this is because of societal pressures.

I didn’t go to college. (I took a few community college classes once, but that wasn’t for me). My parents and I decided that college wasn’t going to be the best path for me at 17 years old. My Dad dropped out of school in the 8th grade to start working, so college was a hard concept for him to wrap his head around. His biggest request to me was to show him a plan of what I wanted to do as a career and we would build a plan to get there.

My entire senior year of high school was terrifying as all of my friends announced where they were going to school. Then there were the other parents who would ask me the question… “where are you going to school next year?” It was paralyzing to a kid. One dad actually to my dad, “you better get him to college or he will be a loser” while I was standing right there!

All of this leads me to this week and my focus to share the lessons that I learned as a DJ while everyone else my age was in college. I hope that if you have a kid that may benefit from a “non-traditional” path, that you are open to it for their benefit. Or if you are a kid who is going through that senior year of having to answer that question with a response that doesn’t feel acceptable that you realize it’s going to be ok.