A.I. Counselor’s Week 3, Video 3 of the College Admissions Masterclass argues students need not lock into a specific major or career before college. Through a personal anecdote about a college roommate who entered pre-med but discovered a passion for hip-hop culture (now a UCLA professor), the speaker emphasizes college as a place for self-exploration, flexibility, and growth mindset. The speaker encourages focusing on personal "mountains" (values/goals) rather than rigid career labels, and reminds students to turn their opening statement into action in college applications.
Chapters
All right, week three, video three. And as you know, the third video of every week is where I really try to get you to do some kind of exercise. And this one I'm really, I don't have a real good exercise for you, but it's just one last one as we, as we try to dispel some of these myths. Believe me, the next three weeks we have very fun exercises for you. But this one is this question I get all the time of do, do I need to know what my major is? You had me do the mountain exercise, but I don't know what my career path is going to be. Take a breath. That's not the purpose of the mountain exercise. Okay, let me tell you a story. So in college I roomed with this gentleman, Hisham Aleem. He was from Brick, New Jersey. I was from rural Kentucky, had a very thick, had a very thick Southern accent. He had a very thick New Jersey accent. And he had a love of hip hop music and I had a love of bluegrass and country music. So we naturally did what you're supposed to do when you have such diversity in one room. We started a radio show and every Friday night at 10 o', clock, as people are getting ready to go out and have a good time, on Friday nights we had our radio show in which we would take turns playing hip hop music and country music. And it was fun. At least it was fun for us. And we'd make jokes and I'd make fun of his music, he'd make fun of my music, and sometimes they would play over each other. And it was just the best time that two people could have on a Friday night at a radio station. And one of the things that happened is that Hiche came to school with wanting to study medicine. He was going to be pre med. And through that radio show and through different activities on campus, his love of hip hop music grew. My love of country music grew, but not to the point of what happened to he. So Penn had this growing love, an entrepreneurial campus, but also a campus that really encouraged people to strike out and do their own things or to, to go out and try to figure out their own path forward. And for Heesch, that meant diving deep into hip hop music, hip hop culture and language. And he took it and he ran with it. And now he's a professor at ucla studying and writing about hip hop culture and language. True story. And it all for him, if you'll talk to him, started out with a little radio show freshman year, 10 o' clock on a Friday night. With somebody from Kentucky with a real thick country accent that liked funny music. So why do I tell you this story? Well, I tell you this story because at the front end, there's no way. If you asked Tiche, he would have told you that my career goal is to be a professor at UCLA and teach people about hip hop culture. That that was not within his vision at the time. Right. And it certainly wasn't in his vision that that was even possible because nobody else at the time was even doing that. And I tell this story because right now, people across this country are going to college studying subjects to prepare for careers that have not been invented yet. That we are preparing now for jobs that are not even in people's consciousness. And it's really cool. So the idea that you're going to college to do a specific career is sometimes at some level laughable because we just don't know what's out there. And that's especially true for people who are incoming freshmen that you just simply haven't been exposed to everything that's out there. You don't know what you don't know. Right. That their courses that are available at universities are so much broader and diverse than you have access to in high school. So when I talk to students and I ask them where they see themselves, I have them do the mountain exercise. I try to steer them away from career focus and to focus more on who they are as a person and how they view themselves evolving as a person as opposed to career mountains as we talked about from my law experience. We don't know sometimes whether or not that's the right mountain mountain for us. That may not be the right career for us. But if we stay true to our principles and what mountain we would like to climb from a personal level, it allows us a great jumping off point to move and evolve and change and go into a career path that is right for us. Who knows, you might be the next UCLA professor studying and teaching about hip hop culture. We don't know. Right. It's just a matter of leaving yourself open and putting yourself in an environment that allows you to grow as an individual and to step forward into the person who you ultimately want to become. Because we just don't know where you're going to be. But what you do want to do is you want to go to a university that allows those options for you. That some of the universities are so rigid and some people like that rigidity. But if you embrace the growth mindset that we encourage and this idea that what is out there is unknown to you, you ultimately might find something that's a better fit. If those are the universities that you're looking for, then you shouldn't pigeonhole yourself into a career too early. And that's what I tell a lot of people as I interact with them. And so the number one question you hear parents ask their child, what do you want to be when you grow up? Right. What do you want to be when you grow up? That's the question I know, I heard lots of times growing up. And it's a good question. And children love to have an imagination, have two young children. And right now I believe my, my daughter wants to do eight different jobs at the same time. And I love it. But the problem is as we grow older and we get into high school, we start thinking that we have to do what we said. And all of a sudden we're in this position where we are feeling like we have to do this to stay true to what we said before. And I talked about my freshman year, right? My 1.7 GPA. So the reason why hich and I were put in the same room together is that we were in a pre med dorm, right? Kind of funny, right? So here is the hip hop professor with the lawyer in a pre med dorm. Because prior to college we said that's what we were going to do. So we were put into this environment where there was this rigidity around us becoming doctors. And what we both explored and learned is that we were there because we had told people that that's what we were going to do. And we thought that's what we were supposed to do because that's what we were told we were going to do. Right? So if you set yourself in this pattern where you're going to only climb one mountain because that's what you've always said you're going to do and you have blinders on that prevents you from exploring other options that might be available to you. You're going to miss out. So what are you going to do when you grow up? The answer I tell kids is we'll find out. And college is one place where you can do self exploration and see all the different options that are available to you. So my argument and encouragement to students and to parents is to not press too hard on that button of what do you want to do when you grow up? Instead, where do you want to go? Where you're going to have an endless amount of opportunities that are consistent with your opening statement with how you want to present to the world. Okay, just my little warning. It's something I've learned the hard way over the years, and it's something I want to pass on to you going forward. The last thing I'll leave on this point, and it's a short video for you, but I thought it was very important. As we talked about the mountain exercise in the opening statement, a lot of people do that. They spend a lot of time putting thought into that, and they come out with this beautiful opening statement. That's half of it. What you got to do now is put it into action. You have your opening statement. Now you must use that and put that into action to generate a college application that reflects your opening statement. And open ultimately will pry open the doors of the college where you want to go. And that's what we will talk about next week on week number four.
