Oh, I just love science.

So... what should someone do when asked for guidance about things like this?

I ask because I had a kid I work with come by to talk to me yesterday. We chatted about college applications, and etc. They're applying to one "safety" school, one competitive state school that's not easy to get into and then five highly competitive private schools (A couple in the top 10, some a bit lower). Unfortunately, when they told me their SAT scores I flinched--smack dab in the middle of average. Even with an excellent GPA and a variety of extracurriculars, I can't imagine they'll get in to any of the competitive schools.

We talked about that a little, and I felt really torn. Do I give them a reality check? Encourage them? What?

Well, the study author said:

Still, Carroll said he doesn’t often use what he knows to bring these students back to reality.

“I’m very cautious about using what I know with students,” he said. “You’re dealing with people’s dreams and hopes, and with that awareness comes great responsibility.

“The dreams of who you could become are a very important part of how you define yourself, yet they are very vulnerable given that they exist only in our mind’s eye as the best possible guesses from current evidence of what we could become in the future,” he said. “We need to learn more about how those career dreams are constructed and revised.”

I do think there's a weird tendency to pretend that students have no academic faults, or at least there was in my grad school. It drove me nuts. But what I'd say looking at this study, is that perhaps it's best to be honest, but not mean, with people who are looking to you for guidance. Because what seems totally silly to me about the study design is that in the first two experimental groups, the advisor basically said, "You're a bit underqualified" and offered no guidance or "I think you're not qualified, but you should totally apply anyway!" and then the researchers seemed surprised that the students were willing to apply anyway.

I'd like to know what would happen if someone said, "You're a bit underqualified, so here are the pitfalls you might face. These are your strengths, so those might help mitigate those pitfalls; these are your weaknesses, which will probably intensify the pitfalls. It's certainly up to you in deciding whether dealing with all of that is going to be worth it for you."

Yeah, luckily the student recognizes the SAT scores are low. I didn't say much other than help them clarify what they wanted out of a school. I don't think the guidance counselor has spent much time with the students individually, and this student will be a first generation college student. I hope all works out.

Tangent: I watched this movie recently (trailer), which is a hilarious deadpan dystopian comedy about a near future where one corporation supplies all possible sources of happiness. (Some of them attach to your neck, covered with little blinking lights.)

In this future, sometimes people randomly explode, and the explosions seem to happen only to people who dream. So when the lead character starts to have dreams, he worries he's about to explode, and spends the movie trying to figure out how to stop dreaming.

It really is funny, in a kind of gallows-humor way.

Oh, I just love science.

But mudpuppie. . .as a girl, don't you think that we should look into other careers? I mean science is hard and I'd hate to see you get your dreams crushed.

Studies like this one show exactly....what?

Seriously, all that time and effort to draw conclusions that if you threaten people enough they will defer any new ideas for the future?

I want to see the publication where they do the exact opposite - set someone up to completely succeed at some impossible task.

This is garbage from the get-go. Proves nothing; goes nowhere. Let's all just cave in to mediocrity and admit that failure is expected of any new path.

Makes we wanna holler.

Clinical study shows that clinical studies can be manipulated to show just about anything under the sun.

I wish some of my high school students would be more discouraged. I realize this is a strange thing to say, but some of them have very unrealistic expectations. There's the 5'2" junior who thinks he's gonna play for the NBA, and the tone-deaf girl who's convinced she's gonna be the next Beyonce. It's a tricky thing, offering them some guidance without "crushing" their dreams. I always tell them, well, you're young, and this is the time to go for it, but it's also really good to have a back-up plan. So when I get the inevitable NBA and rapper star and super model answers to questions about career plans, I always ask what else might appeal, if their first dream doesn't work out. Then I tend to get answers like plumber and nurse and elementary school teacher.

Other times, it's the opposite. Very fine students who might say nurse or mechanic who I say, why not doctor, or mechanical engineer? Not that there's anything wrong with being a nurse or a mechanic, but if you have the grades, why not consider the possibilities?

I was kind of the opposite of the study. I received a C- in my first creative writing class (and deserved it), but I was arrogant enough to still believe I could be a writer. Natalie Goldberg's book, Wild Mind, Living the Writer's Life, helped a lot. But I never would have earned my MFA or published poems or who knows what else in the future (I still intend to write novels, dammit -- God, they're so much work) if I'd listened to that professor. I never earned less than an A in any subsequent creative writing classes. Of course, teaching still pays the bills, not writing, but I'm still young(ish), right? Right?

I don't think the guidance counselor has spent much time with the students individually, and this student will be a first generation college student.

This is kind of a serious issue across the board for the college-bound. There's so much cultural knowledge about college that first-generation kids have few ways to get.

Being realistic and self-aware are great things to encourage people to strive for, and I like occhiblu's example of what honest yet supportive feedback looks like. I believe in being straight up with people about their odds at something. But life itself is pretty good at doing the discouraging when you overreach. We really don't need to do it for one another. Count me as one of those who sat with their guidance counselor senior year, divulged my interests in college coursework, and was told 'you don't have the math skills for that.' How ridiculous that I listened - I thought he knew what he was talking about! (See above re: first-generation college student). In college I was friends with many people who pursued that program and did fine with a similar skill set to my own, and in my adult life, I've met countless people who chose that major and did beautifully - no better at math than me, no more or less motivated or interested, and definitely happy with their choice.

I'm okay with how things worked out, but when I look back it's the arrogance of the erroneous and rather ignorant guidance counselor, not the arrogance of a hopeful teenager with a reachable goal, that really galls. Learning that there are bars to leap and criteria to fulfill, and that they mean something, is one thing, and a good thing at that. But being generally skeptical and discouraging is unecessary and probably pretty damaging to people.

I think people tend to have the most grandiose dreams when they have yet to begin their enterprise. You think you can sing? Awesome. Try out for this play. Learn this piece and come back in a week to solo. Audition for this bad. After enough experiences with the real world, most rational people become much more accurate predictors of their own abilities, and instead of having a grandiose 'dream' that is really a fantasy, come to see that like most of us, they're both better than they sometimes think they are, and worse than they sometimes think they are.