Lynne S. Gots, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
Getting into College: the Beginning, Not the End
By Lynne Gots, posted on April 21st, 2012.
It’s that time of year again. Spring pollen and college rejection letters are making lots of folks around here feel miserable.
“Gone to find God’s greater purpose” was what one high school senior Tweeted when he got rejected from Princeton. Since when did being denied admission to the Ivy League become fodder for an existential crisis?
Gaining entrance to one of the top-ranked, elite institutions is like winning a place on the Olympic team. They’re both extremely long shots, even with the most single-minded dedication and drive. And here in the DC metro area, which lays claim to the most highly educated population in the country, it’s sometimes hard to know who has more at stake, the teens or their parents. Many mothers and fathers who’ve made it to the top of their own careers treat parenting as one more arena where besting the competition means success. The gold medal is a decal from Ivy U. on the rear window of the Prius.
Yes, the university admissions process has gotten wildly out of hand. I’ve seen up close the damage caused by intense parental expectations—college dropouts who had great promise but couldn’t handle the pressure, high school valedictorians who swallowed bottles of Tylenol rather than face telling their parents about failing grades, former premeds who cut off all contact with their families because the weight of unfulfilled expectations were too much for them to bear. True, most young adults don’t buckle under the strain in quite such dramatic ways. But far too many have trouble maintaining their emotional equanimity and motivation after they leave home. College retention rates (only about 55% of students entering four-year undergraduate programs actually stay in school and earn their degrees in four years) testify to this disturbing trend.
A college counselor once shared with me his advice for making a student an attractive candidate for a selective university: “Be pointy.” He tells his clients to develop a talent that makes them stick out and then build the ever-important college resume around it. Having too many varied interests can seem dilettantish, which the consultant would say isn’t a sound marketing strategy in today’s hyper-competitive climate.
As a result, kids can’t just be kids these days. Those who show athletic promise are playing on travel teams before they’re out of elementary school. Their musical counterparts are competing for coveted seats in youth orchestras. Even the class clowns are refining their talents in summer theater camps with an eye on creating a compelling college admissions package.
In response to the push for teenagers to brand themselves as specialists, middle and high schools have created “signature” programs in the humanities, arts, science, and technology. While concentrating on one area of study may appeal to the highly directed student, pressures to choose a career path by the end of fifth or, at the latest, eighth grade may discourage the youngster with less defined goals from sampling a broad range of electives. I’ve known many kids who’ve enrolled in specialty programs not because they have a clear direction, but because they’re afraid if they don’t sign up, they’ll appear unfocused, unmotivated, or just plain uninteresting when they apply to college. And when they finally get there, they worry about their lack of passion in their chosen area of concentration.
It’s no wonder. Pursuing the carrot at the end of the stick is an example of “extrinsic motivation”—doing something for a tangible reward rather than for the pure pleasure of just doing it. Research has shown that this type of incentive isn’t as lasting as the internal, or “intrinsic,” kind. If you take away an extrinsic payoff propelling a desired behavior, the urge to continue working at it often dissipates.
Too often, kids who are engaging in activities primarily to amass accolades for the college resume develop a “What’s in it for me?” attitude at the expense of true intellectual curiosity. One young acquaintance of mine, a highly gifted student who devoted a senior-year biology internship to a biomedical research project that won him a prestigious award in a national science competition, has no plans to continue his scientific pursuits at the Ivy League school he’ll be attending next year. He doesn’t even take particular pride in his accomplishment, dismissing it as something he did just because “ it looked good for college.”
So pushing children to specialize at ever earlier ages can erode self-direction and lead to burnout. About seventy-five percent of college students experience uncertainty about their occupational goals at some point during their undergraduate education. Nearly half switch majors at least once. Shouldn’t we be encouraging adolescents to explore a variety of interests—to dabble, even—during high school, when their brains are still developing and their personalities still forming?
We’re asking too much of our kids. Few of us, even if we’re successful, ever achieve true celebrity status. Yet we expect the high school equivalent of superstardom from our progeny. It’s time to step back and get some perspective on the process of raising a competent adult. College admission is only a first step on the way to maturity and a fulfilling life, not the end of the road. And, hard as it may be to believe for all the high school seniors (and their parents) whose hopes have been dashed this month, a rejection from Harvard or Penn isn’t the end of the world, either.
Tags: college admissions, Parenting, stress
Posted in College, Parenting |
Overweight Dog Makes Owner Look Bad
By Lynne Gots, posted on April 12th, 2012.
My dog Freddie needs to lose weight.
I discovered the fact of his avoirdupois last week at his annual vet checkup. At almost fifty-three pounds, he’s only slightly more than five percent over the ideal weight for his medium-sized frame. Just a little chubby, and certainly not porcine enough to win us an appearance on the British show, “Fat Pets, Fat Owners” (to make the cut, I’d have to beef up quite a bit, too), where clueless, overweight denizens of the UK express bewilderment when they discover their dogs and cats are dangerously obese. The featured owners sit in front of the telly every night sharing packets of crisps and Cadbury chocolates with Nigel or Jemima. Their dogs need to be wheeled around the block in prams because they can’t ambulate on their own. Why, then, does it come as such a surprise to discover their pets have packed on a potentially lethal percentage of body fat?
But I digress.
If you saw Freddie, you might not know he’s carrying a little extra weight. He’s a handsome boy (such a pretty face!), well muscled, with a thick, lustrous coat that hides the excess poundage.
And does he care? Not a whit. Lacking the cognitive capacity for self-awareness, he doesn’t look at himself self-critically in the mirror. In fact, he doesn’t recognize himself in the mirror at all. If he does catch a glimpse of his reflection, he barks at it. (Translation: “That big guy better not come near me! Stay away! And, by the way, shouldn’t he cut down on the kibble?”)
So Freddie’s weight doesn’t damage his self-esteem. But it does have a negative effect on mine.
You see, I pride myself on being an informed, devoted pet owner (Sorry, PETA, but I can’t quite get on board with being my dogs’ guardian. They’re chattel.) I’m careful about what I feed my pets. I’d never give them grapes or chocolate or onions, and I panic if Baxter scarfs up even one errant raisin from the floor. Their meals consist of a high-quality, grain-free kibble with no animal by-products—purchased from a pet store subsidiary of an organic supermarket chain—which I flavor with crumbles of hamburger or hard-boiled egg, dollops of yoghurt or canned pumpkin (a digestive miracle food for dogs), and steamed green beans. As a proponent of positive training, I use food liberally to reward my dogs for desired behaviors, but the treats don’t add many calories. A single, one-centimeter square piece of doggy beef jerky can be broken into as many as ten teensy morsels, each sufficiently enticing to keep them working for more.
I also try hard to exercise my dogs, aiming for at least forty-five minutes, and preferably an hour, of walking a day. If I don’t have the time, I’ll substitute with a shorter run or a game of fetch in the yard.
One challenge, however, has been overcoming their reluctance to engage in sustained physical activity. Baxter is now considered a “senior,” but even in his youth he lagged behind on walks, intent on sniffing the ground in search of the occasional banana peel or goose dropping. Who’d have thought, though, that I’d have trouble getting Freddie, a young and energetic Australian Shepherd, to keep up on my slow runs. He’s so balky I end up towing him behind me at the end of a six-foot leash.
And he’s not too enthusiastic about running after a Frisbee, either, despite his breed’s dominance in the sport of Disc Dog. It’s not that he can’t. He’s perfectly able to catch a flying disc with an over-the-shoulder twist at thirty yards. But when I try to engage him to play with me, he’ll snatch the Frisbee from the air on the fly and then gallop past me to a far corner of the yard, where he likes to graze on the new shoots of grass poking through the fence. (At least they’re fat-free and low-cal.) The only way I can induce him to hold up his end of the game is to reward him with food when he brings the Frisbee back to me, which, I think, kind of defeats the purpose.
As if finding the time and motivating the dogs to exercise weren’t enough, I also have to contend with my husband, who can’t resist sharing his evening snack with Baxter and Freddie. No matter how often I tell him not to slip them bits of food under the table, he always ends up giving into their soulful gazes. At least I’ve finally convinced him to substitute pieces of apple and asparagus for peanuts and pretzels.
So for all the reasons I’ve explained, Freddie’s weight isn’t completely within my control. But I still take it personally, as if somehow I’ve been derelict in my duties as a pet owner. When the vet said Freddie needed to drop a few pounds, I felt embarrassed.
OK, let’s be honest. He may be carrying some extra weight, but the excess baggage is all mine.
Tags: diet, dogs, pets, weight management
Posted in Dogs |
