<p>Carolyn - I always enjoy your commentaries and advice. My older son is now a junior in a state university and I am encouraging him to get started on the job/career hunt process (beginning with an internship search) with little success thus far. As parents we want to help them avoid the biggest bumps in the road (especially when we have a pretty good idea of what they are since we hit them ourselves). </p>
<p>In my case, I told both my sons that I had no close relative to give me job hunting advice when I was in college. As one result, I told my sons the story of how I wore well polished handsome cowboy boots to an all-day set of interviews at a big Chicago bank. Guess who didn't get the job. In my senior year I wore the good regulation attire (with black polished shoes this time) for another day of interviews at a competing bank and did get a job offer. I have offered to be a career/job advice coach to both sons and encouraged them to use their career centers at school extensively. My younger son has taken several solid steps in this direction, but son # 1 says some of the right words, but with little real action on his part.</p>
<p>Well, as you have stated so eloquently in other posts, it is their life with the great highs, the mundane, and inevitable lows. We just have to "be there" as parents for whatever happens.</p>