Why kids got stuck last week

Here are some of the reasons we get stuck on the horns of a dilemma, like which college to choose when we’ve been accepted at more than one:

1. We forget that we can't know the future. No matter how big the decision, throw the mind into four-wheel drive, shift down, up, or sideways, we’ll never get traction on what’s going to happen if we go to MIT instead of Davis, or Haverford instead of Michigan. We might go to our first-choice school and hate it, or our last- and love it, or anything in between. But we can't know which before it happens.

Solution: Don't try. Decide based on what you know and feel now. What’s the worst that can happen? You learn something about yourself for a year and transfer.


2. Fears multiply infinitely. There is no limit on what we can imagine going wrong. The worry-wart section of the brain can always supply disaster scenarios. You’ve got a free ride to your ideal school? Fine, but what if the only dorm without cockroaches has you rooming with someone just like your evil aunt Gertrude?

Solution: Don't decide based on fear. After registering all the known positives and negatives, decide based on desire. What draws you? Go by that.


3. Making the “wrong” choice seems to imply a lifetime of misery and regret. It’s the romantic either/or absolutism of adolescence (which some of us never get over). One choice is the “right” one, the other the “wrong”—success or failure, heaven or hell.

Solution: Realize that you can't possibly make a wrong choice here. You’ve been accepted into two or three places to which you chose to apply. Why would any of them ruin your life? In any case, you can't take both forks in the road. Mercifully, you will never know what it would have been like to choose the other fork: you might have been made valedictorian or been hit by a truck, but you won't know it. Get over this phantom fear.


4. What will my parents/friends/relatives/future children/future grandchildren/fans say? Well, if they were wise, they would say “why would you care what I think? It’s your education. We’ll be the happier if you follow your heart in this.”

Solution: Listen to the wise among those parents/friends/relatives/future children/future grandchildren/fans and ignore the pretentious, bragging, manipulative, self-concerned, and threatening phantoms of the mind.


Every true choice is a response to something that moves us, to a calling. Where the call is not immoral or destructive, let your courage bounce your fear off the premises. Go toward instead of running from. That’s what the people you admire do.