Helping young leaders transition
It had been 56 years since I stepped into a classroom at my alma mater when I took a class last fall in creative nonfiction. Oh, how college has changed. Here I was, at 78, in a classroom of 14 students where the average age was 20.
As students revealed themselves through their writing assignments, the themes of drug use, suicide, loneliness, prejudice, family issues, abuse and other themes surfaced. And yes, even faith—or lack of faith.
Many books have been written about hanging onto your faith and values while attending college, but this might be the only one addressing that transition from college to the marketplace. Erica Young Reitz, living in State College, Pennsylvania, has written an excellent new book After College: Navigating Transitions, Relationships and Faith (IVP, 2018), that these students and those who lead them would find valuable.
Reitz is a good writer and reading her book seems effortless while informative for any of us, especially if you work with young adults. Also, she has the background for the topic she is writing on; she directs Senior EXIT, a service/ministry that helps college seniors transition into the next phase of life. Her research comes from reaching out to students at Penn State University, and doing research for her M.A. with a focus on the senior-year transition.
She listens daily to real life experiences from 20-year-old young adults and has done her research on the subject. Therefore, you can depend on her book’s conclusions and helps for that crucial transition after receiving one’s sheepskin. She writes:
“From life’s small to big changes, everyone processes transitions differently. Research into stages of transition has helped me and others name what’s happening, both internally and externally, and navigate the process. Transition theorist William Bridges talks about the difference between transitions and change, suggesting that change is what’s happening on the outside (with our situation and external circumstances) whereas transition is what’s happening on the inside (with us personally and internally).”
It is a book about one’s faith too, with Part One about “Real Faith: Faithful to Christ.” “One of the biggest challenges of Christian life,” she writes, “is aligning our beliefs with our behaviors. Many of us flounder because we’re not sure how to manage unmet expectations or we choose actions (or inactions) that send us down unhealthy paths.
“We may wake up one day to realize I don’t even know how I got here. Countless little decisions (or indecisions) add up to a life we never meant to live.” You would do a college graduate well if you rush a copy of After College into her or his hand, and life.
So, says the author in a preface, Are you ready for life after college? Or, what is the magic about turning 21 or even 23 and landing that first job? Nothing really, just some arbitrary marker.
“[Preparedness is] about preparing not just for a career but for a life of faithfulness in a complex world. It’s about connecting what’s happening in the classroom for the last four years of our calling—to what we will do and who we will be after college.”
In other words, it is about so much more, and few of us think about those things. How are we preparing these young leaders for such a transition?
Photo source: istock
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