Snow day activity: Help your teen identify their passion

If you’re in Georgia or other parts of the Southeast, today’s snow day is a great chance to get your student thinking about what to major in at college.

Share this exercise with your teen to get them thinking—-once they tire of video games or come in from sledding to warm up.

This is the first of my 3 Circles exercise. I'll share circles 2 & 3 in the next post. If you want those now, email me at pam@whats-your-major.com  I'll send you the worksheet.

Circle #1: Stuff You Love.

What is your student excited or passionate about? Use these questions to prompt their thinking.

Where do I spend my time? My money?

• What do I like to talk about, learn about, or teach others about?
• If I didn’t care what anyone else thought, what would I love to do?
• What would I do without getting paid for it?

Compile the answers you get to see what your student might want to study in college.

If your student is confused about what to study in college, give us a call. We help students find the right direction for them.

Pam Scott, 404-248-9475
pam@whats-your-major.com

Communication in a Modern Family At the request of parents, we have added a new offering focused on communication within a family. We explore the different communication styles among family members and how to address problems those different styles create. In addition, we share a format teens can use to make decisions. Call us for more information on how to improve the dialogue in your home. 404-248-9475.

Tips for communicating with teens; Samantha's story

Do you have trouble communicating with your teenagers? The flip response to that would be “Who doesn’t?”

We’ve found some tips from the American Psychological Association on how to communicate with your teens. Here are two ideas; we’ll share more in the future.

• Ask open-ended questions. Ask questions that require more than a yes or no response; this helps
the adolescent think through ideas and options (Hill & O’Brien, 1999).

• Avoid “why” questions. “Why?” questions tend to put people on the defensive (Plutchik, 2000). Try to rephrase your questions to get at what the adolescent was thinking rather than the reason for something the adolescent has said or done. For example, instead of asking, “Why did you say that?” say instead: “You seemed to be really trying to get across a point when you did that. Can you tell me more about what you meant?”

“Can you tell me more?” is one of my favorite questions to use when talking with anyone.

You can find these tips and more on page 16 of the APA’s report “Developing Adolescents.”
http://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/develop.pdf

Meet Samantha and read her story about finding the right major for her.
Samantha's story

If your student is feeling lost or confused, give us a call. We focus on helping individuals find the right major for them in college.

Pam Scott, 404-248-9475
pam@armstrongscott.com
info@whats-your-major.com

Check out ACT's report on picking a college major

The fine folks at ACT headquarters recently released a report on students and how they pick their major. Here are two facts from that report.

62%	The percentage of students who indicated that they need assistance with their educational/occupational plans.
36%	The percentage of students who selected a planned major that is a good fit with their measured interests.

Check out the full report here:
http://www.act.org/collegechoice/13-14/pdf/CollegeChoiceRpt-2013-14-Part1.pdf

Go to page 20 for the executive summary, if you don't want to read all the data and graphs.

If your student is feeling lost and confused, give us a call. We focus on helping students find the right major  for them in college.

Pam Scott, 404-248-9475

Welcome to the What's Your Major blog. We focus on providing you with information that will ensure you don't gamble with your college funds.

"I would never gamble with our college funds," you may be thinking. Stop a minute and consider these two facts, each of which presents a risk to you:

• 40% of college sophomores drop out--because they don't know what they want to do.

• Students, on average, change their majors three times before finding a major they can stick with.

Each of those numbers poses a threat to your college funds. Check back with us next time for information on how you can reduce those risks so that you don't gamble with your college funds.