Push her or keep my mouth shut?

Parents Forum
1

<p>Academically, my daughter has a great chance of qualifying for a sizable (approx. $15K/year) merit scholarship at one of the colleges to which she's applying. This school isn't the highest on her list, but it's an option she thinks she could live with if her better-loved schools don't give her enough financial aid to be a feasible choice for our family.</p>

<p>However, this scholarship requires an interview with a scholarship committee, and D doesn't believe she can handle that. She's terribly shy and tends to freeze up when put on the spot, so being interviewed by a whole panel of adult strangers is just about the most intimidating experience she can imagine. </p>

<p>It's a lot of money, and she's so far above the qualifications required to apply that I think she'd be a strong candidate if she could just hold herself together in the interview. But that's a big "if".</p>

<p>There's a lesser scholarship for which an interview is "recommended" but not required, so she could probably still get some $$$ from this school. But this top-level scholarship would be $5-10K more per year than the other ones. Not exactly chicken feed.</p>

<p>Should I push her to do it, or keep my mouth shut and let her decide for herself?</p>

2

<p>Can you run a couple of mock interviews for her using people that she doesn't know, perhaps coworkers of yours? That might help her develop her "script" for what she could say in her conversations with the scholarship committee. If they money is an issue, I'd have her do it, but help her prep. Even if this isn't her dream school, it is good to have gone through this once. Helps to prepare for something higher stakes in the future.</p>

3

<p>Push her to do it. If nothing else it is good experience.
Take her shopping and buy her a nice outfit - talk in a relaxed way about some questions that may be asked.
If she hasn't already help her write up a very short one page resume with her achievements - if those are going to be discussed. Break it up into several sections:
Academics, Athletics (if she is an athlete) and Leadership activities.
Have her take this with her so she doesn't forget specifics about herself - easy to do when under stress!</p>

<p>My daughter had to go through numerous interviews to get to where she is - it was daunting at first and she is shy as well but she got through it.</p>

4

<p>Push her because in order to do things like get a job, she's going to have to learn how to handle interviews. The longer she puts off doing interviews, the weaker will be her inteviewing skills when compared to others in her age group. Also, at her age, the people who will be interviewing her still will be patient with things like her being shy. The older she gets, the less patient people will be if she doesn't know how to interview.</p>

<p>There has been research that indicates that the difference between people who start life as shy and grow out of it and those who remain shy throughout their lives are the ones who "grow out of shyness" had parents who pushed them, and also helped them develop social skills.</p>

<p>So, my advice is to have your D do the interview, but before she interviews, have her practice interviewing with you and some other adults. And give her some tips about interviewing. You can find interview tips on line.</p>

<p>Don't have her judge herself on whether or not she gets the scholarship. Have her judge herself on having the courage to go through the interview. Take her out for a celebration after the interview -- no matter how she feels she did.</p>

<p>My perspective comes from having been a very shy kid who grew out of it due in part to lots of parental pushing and my doing everything I could to learn social skills. My younger S also was very shy, and I helped him learn to handle things like interviews by doing the things that I suggest that you do with your D.</p>

<p>He was 13 the first time I made him do an interview. It was for a part time job at the county library. It took him 30 minutes to gather himself together to simply make a phone call to arrange the interview. He ended up getting the job, and then was afraid that he'd have to answer the phone there. He did end up having to answer the phone, and by doing so developed more confidence.</p>

<p>Now, he's 20, and his work study job in college includes solving people's tech problems that they call him about. He barely remembers how scared he used to be about answering the phone on a job. He also has a merit scholarship that he got, in part, by doing OK on an interview.</p>

5

<p>Practice is a great idea. Go in phases. Give her some sample interview questions and let her practice (out loud) in her room. Then have her practice with a parent. Talk to her about who the interviewers are, that they had to have interviews to get whatever jobs they have, that all they want to do is to get to know her.</p>

6

<p>I agree--push her to do it, but make sure she knows that you're just asking her to try, and that you will be proud of her for that regardless of whether she gets the scholarship or not. She might be more afraid of doing a bad interview than of doing the interview itself.</p>

7

<p>I was invited to try for the "Big Scholarship" at my university. The candidates all stayed overnight in the dorm, took a test, and had interviews. My interview was TERRIBLE. I had never interviewed for anything before and didn't have a good answer for even the simplest of questions. To this day I wonder why my parents didn't at least go through some interview questons with me during the 3+ hour car ride to the school....they certainly could have used the $$$ the scholarship would have given.</p>

<p>Needless to say I didn't get the scholarship, but I have worked with my kids to help them prep for every interview they've had, from middle school drill team officer to job interview.</p>

8

<p>I think rehearsing interview scenarios will be very helpful. Perhaps help her go over possible questions and answers by researching info on the school.
My S is also shy and can be quite tongue tied with strangers so both of us were dreading the interviews that several of his top schools required/ strongly suggested.
We did mock interviews, and S wrote down some questions that he had about each school and went for his first interview with much trepidation. The interview went very well and he really gained a lot of confidence in his ability to handle himself. </p>

<p>So, yes, push your D a bit. $15,000 is a lot of money, and just going thru the interview process will give your D more confidence in her ability to handle these situations.</p>

9

<p>Say the following: "I promise not to ask you about how the interview went, unless you volunteer it. If you don't get the scholarship, I promise not to say anything about the intereview or anything else that you might have done better to get it."</p>

10

<p>I find it helps to put the issue on the table at the onset of an interview. For your D, she could start the interview off by saying "I'm really nervous and generally shy". It will help her to say it and it puts the interviewers on notice right from the start possibly mitigating any negative impact of her shyness.</p>

11

<p>If it is not too much of a hassle (timing, travel, etc) to go to the interview, I would encourage her to do it. Not because she has to perform well to win this scholarship, but as a practice. Since the school is not at the top of her list, there is no downside to trying….what’s the worst-case scenario? Your D freezes up and absolutely bombs the interview? So what? Then she won’t win the big scholarship. But the practice of going through this interview might help her when she needs to do an interview that she cares about…and that will happen eventually. Whether it’s an admissions interview at her favorite school or a job interview, at some point she will want to feel confident during an interview.</p>

<p>If you can get her to do this one as practice, keep the pressure off. Don’t make a big deal about the scholarship money (hard to do, I know!). </p>

<p>One thing that has worked for me when faced with an uncomfortable task is to imagine the absolute worst thing that could happen. Then rationalize away the fear. For example: D does the interview. What’s the worst that could happen? Everyone on the panel starts laughing at her? They call her “stupid’ or “awkward” or (insert your D’s worst put-down here) to her face? What would be the outcome? D walks out of the room, doesn’t get the scholarship, probably doesn’t go to school there, and never has to see anyone of those rude people again! She finds a better school with compassionate people, makes friends there, gets a degree, gets a job, makes a lot of money and lives happily ever after. Silly, I know, but sometimes over-exaggerating the outcomes helps you realize that you are also over-exaggerating the fears.</p>

<p>Encourage her to do the interview, but don’t push. Only you know where that line is for your D. Good luck!</p>

12

<p>Oh definitely push her. But also provide practice, support and guidance. I have a D somewhat like this in general, but the areas I've made her push through she's very good with now (at a young age I made her order her own food in restaurants, or make her own phone calls or appointments, and now she's old enough, I've encouraged her into volunteer work that involves lots of social interaction). It really works!</p>

13

<p>Practicing sounds like a great idea--I did some of that with her before her summer job interviews the past two summers, and she got through both of those (and got the job both times). </p>

<p>I knew the sort of things that would be asked in a job interview, though, and I don't have a clue what they ask in scholarship interviews...</p>

14

<p>Apparantly you have conveyed the message to your daughter that her college choices have economic constraints. I'd suggest repeating the economic facts of life. </p>

<p>I'd stress that you will work with her on mock interviews, etc, but that if she chooses not to apply for the larger scholarship or to follow through on the interview you view the missed opportunity value to be $20,000-40,000. I'd point out that this is a lot of money NOT to have for study abroad, trips home etc. </p>

<p>Personally, if I had other children in the pipeline, I'd be even more forceful and inform her that she needs to bring $20,000 to the table if she "just can't" manage to do an interview. </p>

<p>I would reassure her that you do not require that she necessarily receive the scholarship just that she needs to step up and try or there will be consequences. Just like if she was on her own and didn't have you to bankroll her.</p>

15

<p>Absolutely do it - and do the prep work before hand. I taught an interviewing skills class in college (I worked in the career center as a work study job). While that was a long time ago, I think that the process we took the students through is still useful - note that this was a 8 segment class:</p>

<p>1) Teach them how to develop good answers. A good answer has 2-4 main points that uses descriptive words. </p>

<p>The example we used was silly but effective:</p>

<p>Q: "Describe your hair?"
Good answer: "Chestnut Brown, shoulder length, with a little bit of curl"<br>
Not so good answer "Brown, long" </p>

<p>2) Give them a list of likely questions - and then walk through the questions one at a time, jointly developing the messages. Tons of real sample question examples on the internet - start with a very short list 3 or 4 questions. </p>

<p>3) Role play an interview with the student as an observer. Start with one of their parents playing the role of the student - and the other parent or a sibling asking the questions. The student simply observes how to answer questions.</p>

<p>4) Switch the roles around - have the student answering the 3 or 4 questions and one parent asking. Don't have anyone else in the room - and don't critique during the interview. Do that after the questions are done. Repeat until messages are crisp and committed to memory.</p>

<p>5) Build up to a full interview - with interviewer picking 5 or 6 questions from a list of 20 or so. As the quality improves, bring in audio tape so the student can hear their answers. I would not suggest doing this early in the process since at first things will be really bad and audio tape could cause the student to become discouraged.</p>

<p>6) Now that the messaging is down, try to turn it into more of a conversation - the best interviews are not Q/A but rather a dialog. The student still wants to get her messages in there - but make it a part of the flow. Think 60 minutes rather than a press conference.</p>

<p>7) If there is time - videotape a mock interview - and then watch it for body language. Given that this is yet another thing to worry about, I would not bring this into the process unless there is a major problem - e.g. student is constantly studying the desktop or staring out the window - or if the rest of the above is simply going great.</p>

<p>8) Lastly, have two or three new people do the mock interview - a teacher or a counselor might be good choices - or someone who does interviews as a part of their job (e.g. someone who hires people). Make sure the interviewer knows the focus is a college scholarship (and has time to prepare appropriate questions) and that the intent is to build confidence (so don't ask particularly difficult or tricky questions)</p>

<p>Hope this helps</p>

16

<p>And don't forget the basics-never start a sentence with "ummm", stop talking when you're finished expressing your thought, sit up straight, etc. </p>

<p>Also let her know that she doesn't have to have the perfect answer for everything. She should be able to say, for example, why she wants to major in Biology, but if she doesn't have an opinion on the latest research by some biologist she's never heard of, she can just ask for more info and admit that she hasn't followed his work.</p>

17

<p>07Dad, I honestly believe that piling that kind of pressure on her would kill any chance that she'd relax enough to perform well in an interview. The interview alone is a high-stress situation for a kid like her, even without me lecturing her on the need to bring home the scholarship bacon.</p>

<p>Scualum, thanks for the interview practice ideas--that sounds like a great class!</p>

18

<p>lunitari -- You've gotten a bunch of good advice. I'm going to ask another question. Does your daughter's shyness have physical manifestations -- overwhelming nausea, rapid heartrate, and/or profuse sweating? If so, it might be more than just painful shyness. These kinds of symptoms can be a physiological response to anxiety, caused by the body’s overproduction of adrenalin in response to a stressful situation. I learned this after about half a lifetime of fighting acute nausea when faced with certain stressful situations. (Being grilled by a scholarship panel would have been right up there.) The good news is, there’s a remedy. It’s propanolol, a beta-blocker normally used to treat heart and circulatory conditions, and also prescribed for occasional use by those of us who suffer from adrenalin gone wild. Now, if I’m in a situation that promises to be extremely stressful, I take one pill. It works. (And the older I get, the less it happens.) Please, if this sounds like what ails your D, consult with a good internist. I wish I had known about this years ago.</p>

19

<p>You should definitely encourage her to do the interview. Because if you don't, your D will think they YOU don't believe in her. Your D knows the family could use the scholarship money, and if you still don't tell her "Yes, you can handle this interview", she'll think that you believe she's a bit of a loser. That's how the thought process goes with mothers and daughters. You have to be her cheerleader. It's your job. A little prep work, a little pep talk and a little- "no matter what happens, I'm proud of you" and everything will be fine :)</p>

20

<p>This should be a sticky post--the interviewing skills are so great to have!<br>
I am uncomfortable with the term "push"--"support" sounds so much better. Your daughter will need to have the interviewing skills at some point, so she might as well start now. I liked the point that this isn't the end of the world.</p>