In December of 2019 I was  invited to talk about Test Drive Your Future on School Sucks Project podcast!

If you’re unfamiliar, the School Sucks Project – founded by Brett Veinotte – strives to provide young people with the building blocks of intellectual, financial and lifestyle independence.

I have been a fan of Brett’s work for many years and it was an honor to be welcomed onto his show.

Our conversation was centered around a free mini course we are offering called 6 HUGE Mistakes We Made in College. You can actually enroll for free in our Career Choice Crash Course in our academy.

Well, in this 1 hr, 15 min interview I dive deep into the 6 big mistakes that my wife, Beth, and I made in college (and how to avoid them). Brett’s personal experiences and advice on these subjects helped to make this a very rich conversation.

I also talk in-depth about the Test Drive Your Future Experience, and how to get involved.

It went so well that Brett has invited me back for a monthly interview! 

Check it out here.

So there we were. Graduates.
Full of life. And dreams.
We had our degrees. We had jobs in the city. We had ambition. We were loving life.
That is until we weren’t.

Things took an unusual turn, as they often do in life, and we went from being on top to hitting rock bottom in the span of a few months, and we were suddenly stuck on a goat farm in the middle of nowhere, with no one around for miles.

A goat farm, you ask? How in the world did that happen?

Let me back up a bit.

Before Beth and I were married, we started volunteering with a local high school youth group. The people who ran the organization were so impressed with us that within a few months, they offered us both full-time jobs. Beth lucked out and got the job as director of the youth program.

I, on the other hand, was offered the position of the facilities manager, which in this case, was a fancy title for the person who ran the janitorial program. But I didn’t care. I was just so happy to have a good-paying job that also allowed me to keep volunteering with the youth that I was willing to do just about anything.

Fast forward a bit. After two years of making sure my team vacuumed the carpets, got the chewing gum out of the upholstery, and wiped up the pee from intentional misfires in the boy’s room, I’d had enough! You can only do work that is mind-numbingly boring (and disgusting) for so long.

And then fate takes control. The dot com bubble bursts, the Seattle economy was tanking fast, and because of budget cuts Beth was about to be let go, and I was about to be demoted from janitorial supervisor to just plain janitor.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was the day my supervisor told me that one of my new duties was going to be sweeping up cigarette butts in the parking lot every morning while the Starbucks sipping suburban soccer moms dropped their kids off for school, watching me sweep up trash from the windows of their Mercedes SUVs. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, not with a Master’s Degree.

We had to make a change and fast.

But, believe it or not, after all the years in school and tens of thousands in tuition, we still didn’t know what to do with ourselves, and after spending a few years working 70 hour weeks between our jobs and our volunteering, we had little time left over to figure it out.

But, the real problem was that we didn’t know what we wanted to do. And with our ridiculous schedules, we were having trouble finding the time to figure it out.

So we made a drastic move.

It was a little crazy, we’ll admit. We must have seemed certifiably insane to our parents who were all in stable, secure jobs they’d had for almost 30 years.

We quit our jobs. We gave away everything we owned. And we moved sight unseen to a solar-powered goat farm in the middle of nowhere.

You see, we had found a care-taking opportunity on the Big Island of Hawaii where we could live “rent-free” in exchange for just a few hours of work per week. We thought this would finally be our chance to take the time we needed to think about and plan our future.

Before you start thinking, “Wow, what a great idea, I should move to a goat farm in Hawaii,” let us tell you that we seriously wouldn’t recommend it. Here’s why…

Chasing Chickens, Milking Goats, and Crapping in Buckets

Perhaps you conjured up a romantic image when we mentioned how we moved to Hawaii — lying in a hammock under a palm tree on a beautiful beach pondering the meaning of life? That’s what we thought too, but that’s far from what we got.

Imagine black lava rock as far as the eye could see. Sunlight was so intense that we had to stay inside most of the day — a shack with no screens filled with blood-sucking mosquitoes. We had to wash our laundry by hand. And, since we had no toilet, we had to “go” in five gallons buckets and then carry them a quarter mile down the road to bury. Gross.

On top of that, completely isolated from our family and friends, we were cut off from making new friends because the farm was so remote. No Internet. No TV. Old-school “dumb” cell phones that only got one bar of reception on a good day.

We were miserable most days, and sometimes downright depressed. We were disappointed in ourselves and felt like we had let our parents down, who meanwhile was worried sick about us.

Why did we do this? Because we were desperate to get off the hamster wheel for just a while, to take some time to figure out just who we were and what we wanted out of life.

But it wasn’t all bad. We picked up a lot of valuable skills as well, learning how to milk goats, raise chickens, ducks, and geese, grow vegetables in our garden and make fresh, healthy foods from scratch like kombucha, yogurt, sauerkraut, and fresh-baked, organic sourdough bread.

It was during these six months on the farm spent reading, writing, researching, and tending goats that I started figuring out what was missing from my upbringing and education that made me stumble the way I did, and I began to figure out how I could fill in the gaps for other young people and help them to skip past all of the hardships I endured and move right into successful, lucrative, fulfilling careers, without having to move to a goat farm in Hawaii to work through a quarter-life crisis.

Ultimately, it was this challenging time on the farm that led us to create the Test Drive Your Future Experience online course and coaching program and helped make us into the ambitious, confident, and successful people we are today.

And that makes all of the isolation, sunburns, mosquito bites, scars from tripping and falling in jagged lava rock, and time spent hauling 5-gallon buckets of human waste down a gravel road in a tippy wheelbarrow worth it.

Smart parents know that the more they can do to ensure their children’s success when navigating the college and career planning process, the better off everyone will be. This includes understanding the student loan landscape and how it has changed over time.

Did you know that in 1976, the average cost of a year of college tuition and room and board was just $2,275?

College was so inexpensive that most students put themselves through school, and parents and other family members were much less involved.

There were also many fewer students attending college… and because there was so much less competition, jobs for college graduates were easier to come by.

The Times They Are A-Changin’

But… like singer/songwriter Bob Dylan once wrote, “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”

Today, a year of college is somewhere between $20,000-70,000.

And while in the 1970’s only about 25% of high school students pursued higher education, today that number is between 60-70%, so there is a lot more competition for available jobs that require a degree.

Because of the ever-rising cost of college, Americans now hold about 1.56 trillion in student loan debt. Almost seventy percent of bachelor’s degree recipients are graduating with debt, with the average student leaving school with over $29,800 in loans.

But, this is not just a problem for students. Their parents’ lives and finances are being impacted in a big way as well!

A recent study shows that about 3 million parents have $90 billion in federal student debt, in the form of Parent PLUS loans they took out to pay for their children’s college,  with the parents holding an average debt of $35,600.

And while in 1968, for instance, a vast majority of 20-somethings were living independent lives, and more than half were married, today, recent Census data found that 36 percent of Americans 18 to 31 years old were still living with their parents. That was the highest level that had ever been recorded!

Also, 50% of recent graduates are either unemployed or underemployed. And a whopping 60% of people in their 20s and 30s are receiving some kind of financial support from their parents.

It’s Time for a Solid College and Career Plan

So, while in an earlier time it might have been normal for a parent to be much less involved in the college and career choice process with their children, these days parental involvement is almost essential!

Think about it: if between $100,000-$200,000 is going to be spent on a college education, and that it is almost inevitable that both students and parents are going to emerge from the experience with tens of thousands of dollars in loan debt, shouldn’t you have a plan for where that money is going?

The greatest success can come when students and parents are on board the same plan regarding the choice of college, college major, career path, and repayment of student debt.

We don’t advocate parents make these important decisions for a student, but we strongly encourage them to be part of their team, to emphasize the importance of their decisions, and to not take them lightly. And we encourage parents to educate students and themselves about the loan repayment process to help students take responsibility for the money that is being spent on college.

Don’t stay in the dark about your child’s college, career and student loan path, because “The Times They Are A-Changin’”!

Updated July 2019

I really don’t like laundromats.

I know that they are a necessary evil, but I still don’t like them.

It’s not the overpowering smell of fabric softener or the stained underwear on the floor that you have to dodge like land mines.

It’s having to constantly pump quarters in the machines just to keep them going. Four bucks to get my jeans dry? Come on!

It never ceases to amaze me how differently I think about the cost of something when I have to pay for it at the moment, as opposed to when I’m either paying for something way ahead of time or much, much later.

When I do laundry at home, for instance, I rarely think about how much each individual load costs me. I just close the lid, hit the button, and come back to put in another load 45 minutes later. At the end of the month, my electric bill has everything all lumped together into one number. I don’t know how much it costs to make a pot of coffee, take a long, hot shower, or wash and dry a single load of laundry. And because I don’t know what these things cost individually, I often just do them without thinking.

But imagine how differently I would act if every appliance in my house had a coin slot or a dollar bill feeder like the machines at the laundromat.

What does all this have to do with the cost of your college classes? Be patient, I’m almost there…

Wrapping your head around a really large price tag

I’m guessing that you, like me, probably put a lot more thought into things you are buying when you understand just how much you are paying for them. And you are probably more likely to understand the cost of something when it falls within what you would consider your normal daily expenses.

This is my own little theory, but it seems that when something has an enormous price tag, something that our minds just can’t fully comprehend, they just “disconnect.” Essentially they turn off… leading us to make some rather silly and often rash decisions.

$40 jeans vs a new Honda Civic

Here’s a quick example. When Beth and I were first engaged to be married we made two purchases within the same month. Keep in mind that we were just out of college and flat broke. The first purchase was a pair of Levis 501 jeans. We stood in Sears for over an hour debating about whether or not we could afford the $40 for those jeans, as that was a lot of money for us at the time.

The second purchase was a 2000 Honda Civic, which we got “suckered” into buying by a really convincing salesman. The price? About $15,000. No money down. Only five years of “low” monthly payments. What happened?

Our minds couldn’t comprehend the $15,000 for the car in the same way they could the $40 for the jeans, so they just kind of shut off, and all logic went out the window! (We signed the papers and purchased a new car in about the same amount of time it took to buy the jeans.)

The incomprehensible cost of college

There are few places where this kind of incomprehensible price tag is more evident today than when paying for college.

For the first time in history, the amount of money Americans owe in student loan debt exceeds the amount we owe in credit card debt. As a matter of fact, as a nation, we now owe more than 1.5 trillion dollars on our student loans.

One 1.5 trillion dollars! Talk about a number you can’t wrap your mind around!

On a personal level, you might see your own huge tuition number and ignore it because you simply can’t wrap your mind around it, or you don’t fully understand what it means for you in the long run. And if you are taking out student loans, the bill isn’t going to come due for several years, so you might just choose to think about it later.

But it is absolutely essential for you to think about it now, to fully understand just how much you are paying for your college education. Because doing so will transform the way you think about your choices. Your choices of which college to attend, which major to declare, and which career path you are heading down (if any).

How much are you paying per hour for a college class?

To best understand just how much you are paying for your college education, you are going to break the entire bill down into something you can wrap your head around, how much you are paying per hour for each college class.

There are 3 steps to figuring this out.

Step 1: What is your total annual cost of college?

Find out the total cost of attending your college for an entire year. This number should include your tuition and fees, books and supplies, room and board, and other estimated expenses. Your college or university should have a page on their website with these numbers.

Why not just use the tuition number, you ask? That would give you the specific cost of your classes, but it’s not really giving you the full picture since so many of your additional college expenses are intimately tied to you being there for the purpose of taking those classes. Including expenses such as room and board, student fees, transportation costs, and books will ultimately give you a more accurate look at the total cost of your education.

Here are some numbers I found for a few sample colleges. I included Columbia University and Middle Georgia State College (formerly Macon State College) because they were on the US News and World Report’s lists of most expensive private and least expensive public schools, respectively. I included Ball State University in Indiana because it has great sample class schedules for students, which we will use later on, and I included Illinois State University, just because it is my undergraduate alma mater, for which I know that I paid around $10,000 per year for when I attended in the mid to late ’90s.

I found all of the numbers used below on each school’s website by Googling the name of the university with the words total cost (for example Ball State University total cost) or using the CollegeSimply website.

• Middle Georgia State College: $22,000
• Ball State University: $24,280
• Illinois State University: $28.929
• Columbia University: $$74,199

Step 2: How many hours are you in class per year?

Take a look at your class schedule and figure out the total number of hours you will spend in class this academic year. This is the total of the number of hours you are in class per week multiplied by the number of weeks you are in class. If it is the Fall semester, and you don’t know your Spring schedule yet, just base your estimate on your fall numbers for the sake of ease.

Here is a sample class schedule for a Pre-Business major at Ball State University:

This student is taking 13 hours of class per week, and there are 15 weeks in each semester. 13 hours multiplied by 15 weeks= 195 hours, multiplied by 2 semesters= 390 hours of class per year.

Step 3: Apply some simple division

Divide the cost of attendance by the total number of class hours. To make your life a little easier, we have included a calculator that can crunch these numbers for you just below the following example.

Let’s use the schedule for the Ball State Pre-Business major from above and apply it to our sample schools:

Keep in mind that this is per hour, not per class. At Columbia, your one-hour English class will cost $190.25, but your three-hour chemistry lab will cost $570.76!

In other words, you might want to think twice about skipping that chem lab to play Ultimate Frisbee on the quad, given that you are being charged almost $600 whether you attend the class or not!

OK, by now you should get the concept, so now it’s your turn. Take a minute and find out the total cost to attend your particular school, then figure out how many hours you should be spending in class this year, and plug that number into the calculator to get a rough estimate of what each of your classes is costing you per hour.

If you had to pay at the door would you do anything differently?

Imagine that instead of paying for college several months before classes begin— or in the case of student loans, paying several years after you have completed them— what it would be like if you had to pay for each class right on the spot. As if you had to buy a ticket just to get in the door, like at a movie theater.

I am guessing that if you had to hand over somewhere between $56 and $600 at that moment, just to get into that room, that you would try to get as much benefit from that class as possible!

Not only that, but I think that you might be more motivated to be sure you were pursuing a college degree with purpose and intention. Something that is leading you to a career that you are genuinely looking forward to. A career path that would interest, inspire, and fuel you for years to come. Fuel you mentally, emotionally, and financially.

That’s why it’s so important to break down the cost of your college classes. It’s a great way to determine how much you really want the future you are heading toward.

So, it’s time to ask yourself… Are you so excited and sure about your college and career plan that you would gladly shell out that much money at the door just to get into each class?

If your answer is yes, then you are probably on the right track.

But if your answer is no, or you’re not sure, it might be time to stop for a while and make a new plan.

How about you?

How much are you paying per hour for your college classes? And if you had to pay at the door, would you do anything differently with your chosen college major or career path?

Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts about the value of your college education and whether you were surprised or not to learn just how much each college class costs.

Updated July 2019

If you were an entrepreneur looking to take out a $50,000 small business loan from a bank, you wouldn’t stand a chance of getting that loan without a well-researched, well-thought-out business plan.

The same holds true if you are planning on spending four (or more) years of your life, and tens of thousands of dollars of someone’s money (yours, your parents’, or a bank’s) on a college education.

You owe yourself and anyone else who is gifting, loaning, or co-signing a loan for you a well-documented plan for what you are going to do with that investment of money.

What are the essential elements you would put on that plan? They are more or less the same components that would be included in any good business plan.

Here are the 10 things that absolutely need to be a part of your College and Career Plan:

1. Why are you choosing this career field?

What are your reasons for going into this career field? What do you love about it? Why can you see yourself in it?

2. What makes you a good fit for this career?

In what ways are you a good fit for this career? What are your skills, interests, values, and how do they match up with the career you are considering?

3. What’s your proof that it will work?

Can you provide an example of someone who is actually employed in this career field? If so, can you map out the pathway they took to get into their career? Is the pathway something that you can replicate? If not, how would your path differ?

4. How are you going to get from where you are today to your end goal?

What steps do you need to take? What are the milestones along the way? What training, certifications, or degrees will you need to obtain? What college major would be the best choice to prepare for this career path?

5. How many jobs are available in this field?

What kinds of jobs are available in this field? How many people are employed in this field?

6. What is the competition in this field like?

If it is a highly competitive field, are you willing to do what it takes to get into both the training programs and the jobs? What will you do to stand out from the competition? What can you do in college to get your foot in the door?

7. Are there geographic limitations related to working in this field?

Are jobs in this field found only in particular locations, or can they be found pretty much anywhere? Are you willing to “go where the work is?”

8. How do the numbers add up?

What is the starting salary in this field, and what can you anticipate earning over time? Does this number reflect a reasonable standard of living in relation to your lifestyle preferences? How much do you anticipate your education will cost in full? How much do you anticipate owing in student loans at the end of your training? Will you be able to handle the monthly payments that start six months after graduation (or whenever your grace period ends)?

9. What’s the outlook for this career field in the future?

Is this career field “growing” or “dying?” Will there be more or fewer jobs available in the future?

10. Do you know anyone who can help mentor you along your college and career path?

Can your college help connect you with alumni from your major? What associations or professional organizations can you join as a student? Do you know anyone who is working in this career field? Are they willing to provide you with some guidance along the way?

OOH…Where to find these answers?

The good news is that much of this information can be obtained easily from spending an hour or two with the Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook.

For a much more in-depth exploration of these questions, and for a free copy of our Career Choice Road Map (a brief overview of how to make a college and career plan), sign up for our free Career Choice Crash Course. Click here to learn more.

Making a smart investment

The real reason you would want to create a “business” plan for your college and career dreams boils down to this:

You need to prove to yourself and anyone else who is backing you that what you are planning on investing your time and money in will be “worth it” in the long run.

Just like every business owner knows that to be successful she needs to be able to prove that her initial investment will yield a profitable return, you need to be able to prove that your college and career path will lead to both success and happiness for years to come—that the time and money you are spending on your training will ultimately pay off.

Now that would be a smart investment.

How about you?

There are dozens of other ways to prove to yourself if your college and career dreams will be worth it in the long run. How did you do it?

And do you think it’s even possible to “prove” that a career path will be a good investment of your time and energy? Let us know in the comments.

When it comes right down to it, I guess I let my high school boyfriend choose my college major.

It was at the end of a date and we were sitting in his car in my parents’ driveway.

He informed me that he planned on majoring in psychology when he went to college, and went on to explain, “Psychology is the practice of giving prescription medication to people who need emotional support.”

Well, that’s actually part of the practice of psychiatry, but I didn’t know that at the time.

I decided right then that psychology would suit me just fine too, and I didn’t really give it too much thought after that.

The subject did in fact prove to be a decent fit for me. It’s not like I had spontaneously decided to be a race car driver or something completely out of left field. I guessed correctly that a psychologist had to be good with people, service-oriented, and a good listener—and I had all of those qualities already. But it turned out that it was not the perfect fit for me.

What bothers me about my first career choice wasn’t so much that it was not a perfect fit, but that I made the decision so lightly, with little regard for the implications it would have on my life for years to come.

I Didn’t Know What I Didn’t Know

I didn’t have any idea what a psychology major actually studied before I started school.

Nor did I understand that different colleges emphasized different aspects of the field—some schools focused more on conducting research, while others placed more emphasis on actually working with patients. The college I attended, the University of Vermont, is a large, research-based school, which meant that throughout my four years in the psychology department I did not have a single interaction with a person in need of psychological counseling, but instead spent my time running statistical studies on rats and unenthused college students.

No one at my college talked to me about what I wanted to do with psychology when I graduated, nor did I understand at the time that it was my responsibility to figure it out.

(Jim, my husband and the co-founder of Test Drive Your Future, also happened to choose psychology, yet the only psychologist he knew of was a character on a popular T.V. show. It turns out that Jim was just as confused as my boyfriend: Dr. Frasier Crane from Cheers was actually a psychiatrist, not a psychologist.)

The Second Time Around

The second time I chose a career (at age 26), I “test drove” it.

First I re-learned who I was and what I wanted out of life. Things like my interests, values, personality type, and workplace preferences. Then I considered a wide range of career options that seemed to fit me especially well. And finally, I narrowed my options down to two career choices that I wanted to seriously explore: naturopathic medicine and oriental medicine (acupuncture).

In order to make the absolute best decision I could, and eliminate one path completely, I began the test drive process:

• I read books related to both careers and spent hours online, learning as much as I could about the specifics of each career.
• I learned about all the variations of acupuncture and naturopathy, and researched the top schools to understand if their focus was more academic or clinical.
• I scoured the local phonebook for clinics and conducted several informational interviews with professionals in each career.
• I apprenticed with an acupuncturist for a few months, and also landed a paid administrative position at a naturopathic clinic where the doctor even let me observe her work with patients.

After months of research, interactions with professionals, and first-hand experience, I felt that I had “test driven” my options sufficiently to make an informed decision, and from there I confidently pursued a career in acupuncture.

The Key Difference

The difference between how I chose a career in high school and in my twenties is like night and day.

The first time I was on “autopilot,” going through the motions of choosing a major, attending school, and hoping I would figure it out later.

The second time, I was clear and confident about my end career goal, which made the process of getting through another three years of college exciting, inspiring, and motivating. Plus, the second time around I was spending my money, not my parents’, and this made it seem even more important that I take my career decision seriously (sorry, Mom and Dad)!

The second time, I could honestly say to myself years later, “I made the best decision I could at the time.”

Getting in the Driver’s Seat

One of our goals at Test Drive Your Future is to help students get out of the cycle of making major decisions about their lives haphazardly, and instead, help them get “in the driver’s seat” of their college and career choices. So they won’t regret their choices 10 years later, and will be able to honestly say, “I made the best decision I could at the time.” No matter what twists and turns their journey actually takes them on.

If you, or someone you know, could use a little help getting “in the driver’s seat” of your college and career decisions, sign up for our free Career Choice Crash Course.

How about you?

It’s fascinating to learn how other people chose their college majors or career paths, especially when they are a little off-the-wall. We’d love to hear your story about how you chose your first college major or career path in the comments.

P.S. My Third Test Drive…

The funny thing about life is that you just can’t predict all the twists and turns along the way. After becoming an author and being thrown into finishing our website when our designer “dropped the ball,” I was surprised to learn how much I loved web design. In the past few years, I have set up a Hawaii Web Design company called Websites with Aloha and scaled back almost completely from my career in acupuncture.

While not every career can be test driven to this same degree, what an amazing opportunity I had to learn first-hand how well this new (third) career fit my personality, work style, and interests. Rather than discounting any past experience or stories that we’ve used to illustrate our career choice philosophy, I think it confirms even more for me the value of test driving your future.

This year’s gap year scholarship applicants were incredibly impressive.

Every one of them offered insight, passion, and motivation beyond anything either Jim or I remember having when we were their age. And they all were truly dedicated to using their gap year to “test drive” their interests, skills, and future college or career path.

This made it very difficult to decide on our winners, and we wish we could award more scholarships and in larger amounts (and we look forward to the day when we will be able to do this).

Two applicants stood out from the rest, and we decided to split the $1000 scholarship between them. Congratulations to Jessica Lippe and Ilana Gelb, our Test Drive Your Future Gap Year Scholarship winners for 2011!

Jessica Lippe — 9-Month Camp Internship

Our first winner was Jessica Lippe who will be participating in a 9 month internship at Camp Rivercrest in Nebraska, where she will have the opportunity to test drive four different camp-related jobs, including programming, marketing/promotion, and maintenance.

Here’s what Jessica says about her reasons for choosing a gap year:

“In my past two years attending college, I felt that I was learning a lot, but that much of what I was learning would not give me an advantage in the workplace. I came to the conclusion that education is necessary, but it needs to be tied in with hands-on experience for two reasons: one, so I could explain my experience and do better in job interviews, and two, so that I can believe that the job is right for me instead of being unsure whether or not I want to pursue this career or field of study for the next 40 years.”

This truly gets to the heart of Test Drive Your Future. We love the idea that Jessica will get to rotate through a number of positions within her internship to gain a world of experience in several potential careers she is interested in: writing, camp programming, and marketing.

Ilana Gelb — Leap Now’s “One Revolution”

Our second winner is Ilana Gelb who will be participating with Leap Now’s “One Revolution”, a semester-long program which travels to Guatemala, India, Kenya, and Tanzania. In these locations she will be participating in a variety of service work focusing on sustainable agriculture, education, job training, community technology, and bio technology.

Following One Revolution, Ilana will participate in a 2-month internship as a Development Assistant with a non-profit organization in London. She will complete her gap year with a three-month volunteer term in South Africa with the Umzingisi Foundation during which time she will be working in the local schools and orphanages to coach children in sports.

Here’s what she says about her upcoming gap year:

“I feel that I would not be able to grasp the information I will be taught in college without having a better understanding of the world, and without having a glimpse into what my future would look like if I turned my human development major into a career path…I chose this [gap year], because I want to use the world as my classroom… This gap year will amplify and specify my passions and show me a snap shot of possible futures. I will use this year to expand myself, while developing a more intimate relationship with the world.”

Ilana demonstrated a great deal of motivation and passion to participate in her gap year. She interned for the summer with the Center for Interim Programs to receive the assistance she needed in planning the perfect gap year experience.

We had multiple scholarships from LeapNow participants which were all excellent, and we wish you all the best on your exciting adventure.

We look forward to next year’s applications!

Test Drive Your Future is now accepting applications for their 4th annual Gap Year Scholarship Program. The winner will be given a $1000. scholarship which can be used for any gap year related expenses, including program or travel-related expenses. The scholarship is not tied to any particular gap year program, and it is also available to students who are designing their own gap year experience.

The aim of the scholarship is to award students who are passionate about figuring out or confirming what they want to do with their lives college and career-wise, and who wish to use their gap year to “test drive” their future choices. The scholarship is connected to the Test Drive Your Future program, which teaches high school students, college students, and gap year students how to make clear, confident, and conscious career choices.

Last year’s scholarship winner was Amanda Brinegar who participated in a gap year with Global Citizen Year in Senegal, Africa. Amanda was chosen as the 2010 scholarship winner because her essay most strongly demonstrated her drive and determination to use her gap year to “test drive” a few possible ways that she might be able to contribute to the world in her own unique way.

To be eligible for the scholarship, a student must be a US citizen, have graduated from high school, and will be eighteen to twenty-five years old during his/her gap year experience.

The program directors are hoping the scholarship program will expand next year to accommodate a greater number of scholarships awarded. Runners-up will receive free access to an upcoming multi-media e-course called The Test Drive Experience (estimated value $200.)

The Test Drive Your Future Gap Year Scholarship is sponsored by A Little Bit More Fun, Inc, a Hawaii-based lifestyle products company that produces guidebooks and other items to help make life and life decisions a little more fun.

Students who wish to apply can learn more at https://testdriveyourfuture.com/gap-year-scholarships/ Any questions can be directed to Beth or Jim Hood at admin@testdriveyourfuture.com.

“I would like to be a zoologist or a chef. I love animals and cooking, which one?”

I love questions like this because it’s fun to explore different types of careers, especially ones that you don’t hear about everyday, like a zoologist! What a very broad spectrum of interests you have! Let’s explore them in three different ways:

One of the first things I have my students do when they are looking at different careers is to look at the facts. I have a few different places on the internet that I go to get information about careers. One of my favorite new places is a website called www.iseek.com. This is actually a website that is specific to Minnesota (and no, I don’t live in Minnesota—I actually live in Hawaii!) but it has so much great information that is super clearly laid out, that it’s totally worth a visit. So lets see what iSeek says about the two careers you are considering. We’ll look at a couple different categories and you can look at the rest when you have time.

Here are the links for each career on iSeek:
Zoologist
Chef or Dinner Cook

1. Preparation- what skills and training will you need?

To be a chef or dinner cook:You must have a high school diploma or GED; complete formal training; complete on-the-job training, have a good sense of taste and smell; and have the ability to work as part of a team. To be a zoologist or wildlife biologist: You must have a high school diploma or GED; complete at least a bachelor’s degree in a biological science, have excellent oral and written communication skills; and be self-motivated. Think about what kind of training you want to get, do you have the drive to get a four year bachelor’s degree, and maybe even a PhD? Consider the different skills that are required—what skills are you most interested in using?

2. Outlook- how many people are employed in these careers and where?

There are 914,160 people employed as chefs or cooks in the entire United States whereas there are only 19,530 people who are employed as zoologists. So this might mean that there are less jobs out there (ie. you would have to work a little harder to make it in this field- does that sound like a good challenge to you?) There is also a higher concentration of zoologists in certain parts of the US like Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Is there a part of the country that you are pretty sure you want to live in?

3. Wage- how much money would you be able to make in this career?

Money isn’t everything, but this is another area where there is quite a discrepancy between these two careers. Zoologists on average earn $60,670/year whereas chefs earn $38,770/year. This could make a difference to you based on what kind of lifestyle you are hoping to achieve in the future.

Now keep in mind that facts don’t always add up, so it’s always a good idea to combine multiple factors when you are trying to make a decision about something as important as a career. You want to keep in mind what type of skills you have the aptitude for (meaning you are naturally prone to learning these skills), what your interests are, and what matters to you most in life. And one of the best ways (you’ll hear me say it again and again) to make a decision about which career would be a good fit for you is to test drive it!

Volunteering at a zoo or wildlife refuge would be an amazing way to gain skills for this career and really test out your interest in this field. Likewise working a part-time or summer job in a restaurant as soon as you are old enough to, would give you the inside scoop about what type of work environment you’d encounter as a chef. Try out a cooking class, start making a meal for your family once a week, maybe even see if you could be their “head chef” and lead your family members or friends to make a meal together! Oh, also check out a previous GPS Gal interview with Bianca who went to culinary school to be a chef. She’s now in Germany actually working in a restaurant!

Click here to read other GPS gal posts on Girlzone.

Here’s what Amanda says about her hopes for her gap year:

“I want to work directly with the indigenous people. I want to be a part of a new generation of Americans to provide leadership that will address the global challenges of the 21st century. I have compassion and an ethic of service, but I need to develop the ability to communicate across languages and cultures and better understand the world and my place in it. I truly believe that my life is closely connected to others across our global community; I want to discover those connections.”

Global Citizen Year is a non-profit organization that partners with high schools and colleges in the US and NGOs around the world to create opportunities for emerging leaders to work as apprentices in Asia, Africa and Latin America.  For more information about their program you can visit: http://globalcitizenyear.org

This will be our last scholarship given under the Where’s the Map? name, as the scholarship will now be associated with Test Drive Your Future. We feel the new book and the new name truly embody what we are trying to accomplish with this scholarship program —helping young people take the time to figure out what they really want to do with their lives by doing what we call an “Extreme Test Drive” in the form of a gap year. To learn more about our Gap Year Scholarship, click here.

Runners-Up

We would also like to recognize the following runners-up to the Gap Year Scholarship who will be awarded a copy of Test Drive Your Future. We were impressed by so many of our applicants and wish we could have offered everyone a scholarship.

• Lauren Honican and Esther Khachatryan who will study conservation in Ecuador, public education in China, sustainable agriculture in India, and public health in South Africa through a gap year organization called Thinking Beyond Borders.

• Alysa Vanderheym, Diana Chung, and Lacey Shaw who will be participating in LEAPNOW’s LeapYear to India for three months, followed by a three month internship.

• Kaia Waller who will volunteer at a Haitian summer camp, participate in a 3-month Patagonia NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) course, and volunteer through the WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) program.

• Yeosol Chung who designed an independent gap year diving into her passion for history lessons by conducting research in local museums.

We wish Amanda and all of our scholarship applicants a fantastic journey!