<p>He might want to take a few experimental courses or do some interning/shadowing of healthcare and culinary professionals to get an idea of some career options. I have a friend who is a cafeteria manager of a school and another is a caterer. Another writes the food section of the local paper while another is working on a dietetic cookbood, especially baking recipes.
At CC, there may be intro courses in respiratory therapy, EMT, physical therapy assistant, occupational therapy, nursing, and other fields of potential interest. He could try interning in some of those to see how well/poorly they might fit.</p>
<p>If he loves cooking then I would stop thinking about ‘bigger opportunities’. Get him in a restuarant or kitchen. He will be lowest of the low (pot washer, bus boy, waiter, maybe veg prep if he knows how to do this) but there is no job for ‘doers’ quite like catering. It is honest, exhausting, hard work but with real results. And he knows this as he clearly enjoyed the cooking club at college. When he is there, he’ll see the Front of House Manager, or the Head Waiter or the Head Chef in action and then ideas and longer term plans may start to come.</p>
<p>There is always culinary school or vocational culinary classes. </p>
<p>I am taking a culinary arts program at my community college. Because I am a high school student, my state government is paying for it until I graduate high school. If I were an adult taking the class it would be a total of $2500.</p>
<p>I would suggest that anyone take a professional culinary arts program. You might not become a head chef right out of school, but you won’t have to be a dishwasher.</p>
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I was thinking EMT/paramedic training, too. Even if he is never employed as a paramedic, it would be great to be trained as a paramedic. Although if he earlier thought he wanted to be a physician, maybe he would like being an EMT.</p>
<p>Did he enjoy his lab courses in bio and chem? Med tech jobs are nice. He would have to take the training course but having a bachelor’s degree as well as med tech training would make him “promotable” as a med tech at a large hospital or lab.</p>
<p>Not to stereotype, but usually young people enjoy bartender training courses and bartending. This could be a good fill-in job.</p>
<p>so let me ask about the elephant in the room- your ex is really ok with an adult child, with a college degree, who has no plans for the future and no immediate prospects besides sitting in Starbucks using free wireless? Really?</p>
<p>I am very sympathetic to your situation- but I find it hard to believe that your ex is as happy about your son’s lack of energy/initiative/progress as you think. I don’t believe that anyone- besides someone who is truly psychotic- puts their kid through college and then wants the kid to come home and resume their junior high life of sleeping in when they can and sending emails. I think it’s great when parents are supportive during a trying time (unexpected job loss) or are helping out with a roof when a kid is saving money for grad school or to start a business or to leave for the Peace Corps… but really? Your wife never ever once has said to your son during the four years of college, “So if the med school thing doesn’t work out what’s the back up plan?” or “hey, have you asked your professors if they’ll write you a recommendation for med school” or even, “Did you meet with the pre- med adviser to talk about how to improve your chances for med school admissions?” Even the most laid back parents I know realize that at some point the gravy train needs to stop and the kids need a plan to become self supporting. And health care insurance? Your employer allows you to keep an adult child on your plan indefinitely?</p>
<p>Maybe this is an opportunity for you and the ex to get on the same page. Your son is smart- and has figured out the flying under the radar is working at least for now. But your ex really wants an adult child with a college degree functioning as her chauffeur and short order cook on a long term basis??? With no plan, prospects, or source of financial support?</p>
<p>In a nutshell, no she did not ask those questions. I did, but frankly did not do anything about it when I got bad answers. She had issues of her own at that time and was not very focused on the children. They lived with me during high school and on college breaks. As I have recently moved out of the area this is the first time she has had them under her roof full time in four years.</p>
<p>Also, in our world at the time, we compared performance to those around us and typical was considered “ok”. Most of his college peers are back at home as well so he is not “unusual”. Based on all the above, and possibly some guilt over not being around much earlier, I really doubt she will be in any hurry to set deadlines or increase expectations.</p>
<p>My newly found sense of urgency has come from seeing how tough new grads have it, and from being around people who have set higher expectations for their kids and followed through with much better results to show for it. She has had no reason for a similar change of view. As a result, I doubt that I can have much influence over the situation, but yet don’t want to passively watch it all go south.</p>
<p>Elm- maybe it will help if you stop thinking about this as having “higher expectations”… which it surely is not, and start thinking about it as the loving and helpful way that a parent (or both parents) helps a kid make that final and tough transition from dependency to independence. You didn’t have high expectations when you took off the training wheels and watched him fall off the bike a few times, did you? That’s just the next step in bike riding; learning to balance. </p>
<p>I understand why your comments have a tinge of ambivalence and guilt to them. But whatever you did or did not do in the past really can’t be undone- and it’s not helping your son now. I don’t think he wants to be taking handouts from mommy for the next decade, and I don’t think he wants to be a college graduate without a plan for the next 60 years of his life, and I don’t think-- even if he’s not “unusual” that he hasn’t looked around and observed that in the adult world, most people wake up in the morning and do something that is either interesting, lucrative, (sometimes both) or just pays the bills.</p>
<p>So you have to let go the idea that you are punishing him by insisting that he get his life back on track. That’s not a punishment- that’s your job. And you’re not somehow betraying him by having been lax in the planning department until now but all of a sudden coming down on his head- he had a plan- med school- which now seems to be quite unrealistic, even given his MCAT’s. So he had a plan, he’s not executing against that plan (unless he’s secretly applying without telling you- so go ahead and ask, "how are the applications coming?). Like anything else in life, a parent gets to model appropriate behavior- surely you’ve had setbacks in life or on the job, and when it happens, you dust yourself off and get going again.</p>
<p>I don’t think you need to apologize that his peers are in similarly amorphous states. Half the kids in my neighborhood are now living some freakish existence at home, being supported by a fraying safety net of the bank of mom and dad, while the contents of their college dorm rooms sits in the garage. The other half are launched- no, nobody is winning Pulitzers or starring on Broadway, but they are working as production assistants in network television, or financial analysts at insurance companies, or studying for the CPA exam and starting at one of the Big 4 accounting firms- or in grad school. One of the med school hopefuls is taking a year off while he finishes applications, and is working as an EMT (for pay) and volunteering for the local fire department.</p>
<p>I don’t think these kids think the bar was too high. And yes- it’s hard work finding a job and keeping a job (no flip flops, and you have to wake up early every single day!) But their parents did them a very loving favor by making it clear that it’s ok not to know what you want to do with your life- as long as you are doing something productive with your time while you figure it out.</p>
<p>I feel pretty confident that you can get your son moving. Because I work in corporate HR many of the parents of the kids living on the couch have asked me to talk to their kids to try and give them some ideas for getting launched. Although most of these kids are beyond clueless about how the adult world really works-- none of them are happy having graduated from college and being unemployed with no plan for moving forward. And so their “ideal job” is like the imaginary friend they all had when they were 3. Magical thinking. You want a career in television? Do you really think ESPN is going to reach out to you from behind the screen and offer you a job? Have you put together a sample reel of the stuff you did in college? No. Have you updated your resume? No. </p>
<p>The kids have bought the kool aid that everyone gets a trophy even if all you did was sit on the bench and cheer on your teammates who are out their sweating. So you need to be the reality check. The person who started Doctors Without Borders had to start somewhere- as a med student. The person who invented Google started somewhere- an entrepreneur in a garage with an idea who then tinkered 22 hours a day. Nobody stars in a movie without having been turned down at endless auditions for years. </p>
<p>I bet your son would welcome your intervention. I bet he’s frustrated and embarrassed that he’s not moving forward on Plan A, and yet doesn’t have Plan B.</p>
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<p>After seeing the experiences of my two (now graduated) kids and their friends, I would be very hesitant to set such a specific condition.</p>
<p>Sometimes, kids find excellent opportunities that happen to start more than 90 days after graduation. Case in point: One of my kids found an excellent job through on-campus recruiting at a company where half the new employees start in late June and the other half in late September, and candidates cannot be guaranteed their preferred starting date. Would you want your child to turn down a good, career-track job because of the need for four months of parental support after graduation, rather than three? (As it happened, my kid turned down the job for a different reason, but the starting date was a non-issue.)</p>
<p>Even more commonly, kids may need financial assistance from their parents in order to take jobs far away from the parents’ home. They often have to travel to the new city to find an apartment, pay the first month’s rent and security deposit on that apartment, buy at least minimal furniture, buy business clothing, and buy a car – all before they earn a dime. In some instances, some of their expenses will be reimbursed later (if the company pays relocation expenses) or defrayed by a signing bonus, but the kid still needs a great deal of money up front – and in most cases, parents are the only source. We’re talking about amounts in the thousands of dollars here, and many students do not have enough money left at the end of college to absorb that kind of expense on their own. They may have to borrow it from their parents, and it may be quite a while before the parents get the money back.</p>
<p>I don’t think it helps to beat yourself up over things you might have missed or might have done in the past. ADD or not, your son went to college, did well and graduated! Congratulations to him!</p>
<p>He doesn’t need to have a career plan at the moment, what he needs is a job! Any job! Starbucks would be great! So would being a waiter, a bus boy, a stocker, a ditch digger, or a clerk at 7-11. Nothing clears the mind quite so much as working the early morning shift at McDonalds for a few months. Life goals become a lot clearer when you realize that mopping the floor for minimum wage just isn’t working for you. And while he’s busy learning that particular life lesson, he’s at least gaining some kind of work experience to put on a resume.</p>
<p>If I look back at the journey of some of my own friends and family, the jobs we took as 20something new college graduates were varied, often had nothing to do with where we ended up 30 years later, always taught us something of value (even if it was that I don’t want to be doing THIS for the rest of my life!), and paid the bills.</p>
<p>Marian, of course we would not have denied our kids transitional support- and yes, all our kids took jobs out of the area and needed help with security deposits, etc. The point was not to punish them for taking a good opportunity outside the window- the point was to make them realize that life is not a choice between the perfect job and any job. Sometimes you take what’s in front of you while you wait to figure out your long term goal. You don’t stay home eating the contents of mom’s fridge while you ruminate on your long term goals, and “networking” with all your other unemployed friends all day is less likely to yield a good job then working at a real job.</p>
<p>Want to work in advertising? you’re better off as a receptionist at a well regarded ad agency vs. sleeping late and bemoaning the fact that you have no contacts in advertising. </p>
<p>My point was not to dictate how long the OP should allow his kid to look for a job- but to make the point that in the absence of a clear deadline, this kid is likely to continue on his present path.</p>
<p>Congrats on your kids successes.</p>