Profession in practice

I just had the best conversation with a young man in a coffee shop.

Sitting by myself, late at night, reading "Lean In" by Sheryl Sandberg for my upcoming book club discussion group- a young 19-year-oldish black man asked me if he could sit down and ask my advice. He said he just thought I looked like I knew what I was doing because I was "reading and everything" and he wanted my opinion on where he should go to college.

Now let me say, I have not been asked for advice by many young people, and NEVER by a young black man at a coffee shop at 10:15 on a Sunday night. Why I was at a coffee shop at 10:15 on a Sunday night is a whole other story. So, what do I do? I say, "Yes, of course I will give you some advice. What's going on?" We introduce ourselves and Tim tells me that he is going to Washtenaw Community College right now and is thinking about transferring to either Eastern Michigan University or the University of Michigan. He continues to tell me that he is worried about rejection and failure and doesn't want to apply to Michigan if he might be turned down or if it will be too hard if he does get accepted. Explaining that his grade point average in high school was a 3.7 and he only got a 26 on the ACT- he is worried that he might have to settle for EMU.

Well, son- you have come to the right person! Our conversation followed many different paths. Without being too forward he asked about my experiences- where I went to school (high school, undergrad, and graduate school), what my grade point average in high school was, why I chose my undergrad major, and why I went back to school. The more information I gave about myself, the more I found out about him.

Tim wants to be a psychologist because he "just wants to understand what is going on in other people's minds". He graduated from an Ann Arbor high school and upon finding out that I want to be a school librarian he shared with me his fond memories of his own elementary school librarian and proceeded to suggest school districts that I should apply to.

Before I knew it I was helping him decide on how he should proceed with his life. In the course of 45 minutes I gave him 3 pieces of advice: speak with advisors at both EMU and U of M to have them review his transcript to let him know what type of coursework he will need to complete in order to graduate, I explained to him (supplemented by my entire Google presentation on my iPad of the "College Application Essay" lessons from my last week of student teaching) how his application essay can help his chances to get accepted into college even with less than stellar test scores and GPA, and finally- once he gets into college, how making personal connections with his professors can only help him through more difficult classes. His response, "You mean it's that simple? I'm going to apply to U of M."

He was appreciative, inquisitive, responsive, and a pleasure to talk with. As he was leaving he asked if I had any final advice- I said, "If nothing else, in your application essay share your experience of how sitting down to talk with a strange white lady in a late night coffee shop changed your attitude about applying for college and how you changed her attitude about young men."

Good luck Tim- and go for it. Oh, and don't wear the "DOPE" shirt when you talk to the college advisors.