The headline of this month’s Harvard Education Letter is seductively simple: “Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions.” The advice is undeniably practical. But will asking questions alone suffice to create engaging classroom dialogues?

The article highlights the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), a technique for encouraging students to direct inquiry in the classroom, engage with each other and develop critical thinking skills. A teacher whose students are under-engaged in the classroom would do well by her students to study the QFT technique and begin testing elements of it. If nothing else, QFT shows that “Any questions?” following a lecture will not provoke many questions. To engage students, questions must be engaging, too.

Though effective, QFT is only half the equation. Students need to ask questions, yes. But they need to answer them, too. The teacher plays the role of guide, facilitator, and provocateur.

Most teachers I had operated under the transactional method of teaching, which is similar to a bank transaction between teller and customer. The teller (teacher) holds the money (knowledge), while the customer (student) is in demand of it. A one-way transaction occurs to process the knowledge from teacher to student.

The transactional method can be characterized as organized and linear. An ideal classroom operating under this method of teaching may look something like this:

More often, though, the transactional method classroom looks something like this:

That’s me in the front (left), teaching English to a group of 20-something students in the jungles of Siem Reap, Cambodia. Students obediently scribbled information as I imparted my knowledge, them craned to see my notes on the board. My original plan was to lecture on different conceptualizations of courage, sourcing JFK’s Profiles in Courage. That was until I arrived, asked “how are you?” and was met by largely blank stares.

One of the problems of the transactional method is that it is highly assumptive. I assumed that my “English” class was closer to “English Literature” than “English 101,” and that the 16-22 year-olds would be able to speak at an advanced level in English.

I was wrong on both fronts. Even if I had delivered a magnificent lecture (I didn’t), I was clearly way off the mark in terms of content. In the transactional method of teaching, the teacher must make a series of educated guesses daily as to the level of preparation of his students.

An alternative method of teaching is to empower students to drive their education forward by teaching them to ask questions and to respond insightfully. This organic method can be unpredictable, and highly effectively.

In spite of my JFK gaffe, my students gave me another opportunity to mold their minds and returned every other day over the next two weeks for Mr. Kevin’s class. With the honor of teaching again afforded to me, I decided to turn the teacher-focused classroom into a learning circle. Literally. 

I pinpointed the most advanced English-language learners and goaded them to help lead activities and discussion. I provided a framework for learning, and students reinforced the material by asking questions and interacting with me and, even more importantly, with each other.

To teach effectively, I learned to be a student and encouraged my students to teach, too. I learned a lot, including a very effective method for teaching English to students who speak a language like Khmer, in which verbs do not inflect (more on this in a future blog post). I learned the power of non-transactional teaching. 

And my students taught me a lot about courage, even if they were just learning the words to express it.

With the college application season coming to a close, this is the question writer Jennifer Moses attempted to answer in a recent Wall Street Journal article. A video interview with Moses and the Journal’s Kelsey Hubbard can be found here.

The author, who was not a victim of the college application arms race, but did break his left ulna in a cycling accident

In the article, Moses outlines several expenses associated with her 17-year-old twins’ college application process:

• Total cost of her twins’ standardized test fees = $522
• Total cost of travel, including air fare, gas, hotels, food and incidentals, for both twins accompanied by one parent each = $3,9908.23
• Total cost for private college counselor = $701.25 (to date)

According to Moses,  ”If we hadn’t [spent money on SAT prepatory classes], what if, G0d forbid, some other kid who went ahead and got the tutoring and  inched his or her SAT score just enough  to bump our own kids out of the running?” In other words, why spend all this money on SAT tutoring and visiting college campuses (she admits she had the discretionary income to do so), when there is some child somewhere , with an overall, poorer college application, who will be admitted to the same elite institution one of my children has applied to, based on a legacy connection?” Moses finds the latter incredibly frustrating (as seen at the 3:20 mark in the video).

She concludes by asking two sobering questions: “Is going to a so-called better college worth it?” and “Is the system fair?” With regards to the former, she references a few studies and offers a resounding “It depends,” as her answer. With respect to the latter,  she adamantly opines that the college application process (and tasks required prior to the application process) is a mess.

On the surface, Moses does have a point: all of these additional expenses on top of the standard fees to submit one’s applications to various schools would seem superfluous. However, there may be situations where some of those expenses can be justified. Suppose one of Moses’ twins had a history of sub-par performance on standardized exams, such as the SAT. In turn, an SAT prep course would be beneficial for that particular twin in raising his or her SAT score. Additionally, there are nuanced experiences that cannot be found via a college’s website, therefore justifying a visit to a college campus. These include the feel of the neighborhood surrounding the campus and a more accurate portrayal of the student body.

However, what Moses fails to acknowledge in her article is that SAT scores and private counselors are only part of the college admissions decision. This was even more apparent in the Journal’s Feb. 12 “Letter to the Editor” section, in which one Ivy League alumnus who conducts student interviews notes, “Every student I interview has near-perfect SAT scores and a 4.0 grade-point average. What we look for is what makes you different.” The debate continued in one of collegeconfidential.com’s forums where one poster declared that  ”there was no real news here,” yet corroborated with the growing notion of competition and the accuracy in Moses’ discretionary expenses.

So, while it’s clear that some observers agree with Moses in her arms race observation, to others, this is just another common practice. Don’t bet on a Reagan-esque descendant to put an end to this cold war anytime soon.

The author, Elizabeth Cutler, displaying Trojan spirit.

I’m only 23, but I’m already a legacy.

By “legacy,” of course, I’m referring to the word that can become the bane of any high school senior’s existence: in this context, the term refers to a student’s family connection(s) to a given university. For some students, where their parents or siblings went to college doesn’t affect their interests or choices. For others, studying in the same library as mom or dad is extremely important—and for many like me, well, we fall somewhere in the middle.

My dad went to the University of Southern California and loved it. He also loved teaching there as a faculty member for more than 15 years.

I grew up wearing cute USC toddler gear and clutching my stuffed animal of Traveler, the white horse mascot that gallops across the field at home games. My older brother graduated from USC as well, and his stories and memories were woven into my personal USC narrative.

I’ve always been a bit of a planner. Okay, more than a bit—in 7^th grade, I went on my first college tour (long story) and used to scribble chronological life plans in the back of my Pocahontas journal. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when I started fixating on “the perfect college” pretty early on… and my model of the classic college experience? USC, of course.

I went through phases. As I started high school, for months at a time I would be positive that USC was the best place for me. I started to compare every other college against it. At that point, I was primarily interested in journalism as a career, and I also loved studying theater and Spanish, all of which are strengths at USC.

Then I would go through my “anti-USC” phases, the times during which I overdramatized feeling like I had to go there or was expected to attend because of my family’s history with the school. It’s taken me quite a few years to admit that it was pretty much all in my head. Moreover, I realize now that my family’s connections to USC had given me a particular deep and nuanced perspective on one particular school, making it my yardstick against which I measured all other schools. Once I let go of this way of perceiving my options, I started to realize that I actually wanted to go to a much smaller school. This is part of how I came to go to Oxy (Occidental College)—a small liberal arts college in the big city that I wanted very much to explore.

I think that, above all else else, the inculcation of one particular college into a child’s life serves largely to offer a tangible picture of what college is supposed to be. I would not trade my father and brother’s stories of challenging professors, quirky roommates and lifelong friends for anything. It’s part of why I looked forward to college—wherever I would go—so, so much.

At the same time, I know that the legacy experience is not always positive. I’ve heard many stories of students who are unhappy at Family Legacy U or who feel guilty about applying to a rival school. Each school is different, and so is every family. I can’t speak for all legacy experiences, but I can say that it does not have to have the slightly bitter taste that seems to permeate reports of legacy students being favored in admissions.

While I cannot speak for the complex ethics that swirl around issues of legacy applicants and admissions, I can say that the experience of considering going to a family college can be very positive. Years of stories about life at one particular school—even though it turned out not to be where I studied—helped me figure out what I wanted for my own college experience. Without those insights, I’m not sure that I would have ended up at what turned out to be my own perfect fit.

As it happens, two of my best friends went to colleges where they had close family alumni—and they had incredible experiences, too. Ultimately, it’s about individual preferences, choices and those gut feelings we’ve all had at some point.

Shortly after I made my decision, my dad brought home an Oxy sweatshirt. His and my mother’s support for me in figuring out my next chapter was the best legacy that they could ever leave for me.

How about you? Did you go to college where someone else from your family attended? Did you grow up learning fight songs and college traditions? What do you think about the legacy controversies in college admissions?

Once more, with feeling!

That’s right, I’m back for one more installment of the Teach For America (TFA) series—first we took a look at the overall organization and all sides of the related controversy. Next, I talked to a former TFA teacher to get her take on her experience working for the organization. Now I’d like to share the perspective of Molly Burke, who studied sociology and education at Occidental College, where she also earned her master of arts in teaching. She has taught children in a variety of environments and now works for Share Our Strength in Washington, DC.

Like many other education and children’s welfare professionals, Molly’s primary concerns about how TFA works stem from its recruitment of young teachers new to the field and how this and their often short-term classroom commitments affect their students.

“TFA’s goals are noble, but the way those goals are achieved is not. Young adults are sent into the toughest of classrooms, and those students need capable, strong teachers. A paltry amount of training does not a good teacher make! However, it is an attempt to get teachers into the neediest of areas, which is a need we as a society are facing,” she said.

Herein lies the crux of the principal TFA controversy: TFA places enthusiastic and energetic, young and brand-spanking new teachers in the neediest of America’s classrooms. They are also responsible for teaching in some of the country’s most challenging schools and many are concerned that the summer “crash course” and same-time education training that TFA teachers receive is insufficient to meet these schools’ needs—and, most importantly, the students’ needs. Molly, like many other professionals in the field, does not fault TFA for its mission, but would like to see a different approach to solving the tremendous problems facing the American public school system.

Molly supports an approach based on “pay incentives for qualified, trained teachers to head into these neighborhoods so that the students are with qualified, dedicated educators” instead of the short-term commitment that TFA facilitates.

The proof that TFA will continue to be a popular and successful organization is in the numbers: it continues to expand its locations, and its applications have hit record numbers in the past few years. The controversy that we have unpacked over this series is thus not meant to be fodder for argument, but rather an explication of an issue very relevant to many college students interested in education. As the debate continues to develop, perhaps the criticisms of TFA will be useful for broader education reform.

As Molly said, “teaching is a service. However, the way TFA does it makes it feel like a service project. These are children’s lives we are thinking about here. That is not to be taken lightly … We should make teaching coursework and training accessible to all interested parties, and we should incentivize individuals who have the training necessary to work where children need good teachers.”

What do you think, BetterGrads blog readers? Where do you stand on Teach For America’s mission and practices?

(Read Part 1 and Part 2 in this miniseries.)

For many undergraduate students majoring in the hard sciences and for the professors who teach these subjects, animal research is a standard part of the curriculum.

Photo courtesy of Kd Rome via Wikimedia Commons

However, it’s unlikely that these students and educators cover topics such as how to protect yourself from car bombings and  how to handle hate mail.

Last year, J. David Jentsch, neuroscience professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, awoke one morning to the sound of a large explosion outside his West LA home. His 2006 Volvo was blown up by activists calling for his death. And most recently, he received a package of used razors, and an accompanying letter stating these razors were tainted with the AIDs virus (FBI officials have yet to confirm the latter).

Jentsch also happens to be an animal researcher. He’s taken flak recently from animal activist groups for his research with vervet monkeys on drug addiction and teenage smoking. Part of his drug studies involve the insertion and then withdrawal of methamphetamine, resulting in the deaths of a half dozen or so monkeys annually.

Photo courtesy of Daryona via Wikimedia Commons

Despite the recent attacks and claims of abuse from animal activists, Jentsch has not been found guilty of any criminal wrongdoing.

The issue of ethics in the world of animal research on college campuses is a touchy subject among university professors and animal rights activists. And in a recent article in the The Chronicle for Higher Education, author Lawrence A. Hansen, who also happens to be an animal researcher at the University of California at San Diego, believes that both camps are guilty of groupthink.

According to Hansen, the passage of  the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act in 1966, which mandated the creation of “Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees to oversee all use of primates, dogs, and cats in research and teaching,” was supposed put a stop to abusive animal research procedures. However, because many of the independent committees are also comprised of researchers, there is no true system of checks and balances. As a result, this fosters a culture allowing some researchers who lack moral compasses to extend the boundaries of their research grants and conduct experiments that have no historical correlation to their study of work, that result in cruel treatment of animals.

From the animal activist camp, Hansen notes how groupthink is “self-defeating” when activists only rally around issues such as the euthanization of  mice, who are used as test subjects in 97.5% of all research studies, instead of larger issues at hand including the vivisection of primates and dogs, who are considered companion animals within both camps. However, such attitudes complicate matters further. Hansen goes on to mention, “They [animal activists] fear that rescuing only monkeys, dogs, and cats from the vivisection will dissipate any growing public pressure to abolish vivisection altogether, leaving the vast majority of experimental animals beyond the pale of public compassion. They consequently refuse to designate any particular species as special, but in so doing they risk allowing the perfect to become the enemy of the good.” And of course, resorting to extreme acts of violence as highlighted in Jentsch’s case underscores the abysmal results of groupthink.

Beyond Hansen’s observations, it’s also important to consider how the groupthink issue impacts students. Evie Hobbs, an Occidental College graduate who spent the last two  years as a lung cancer research fellow at the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Washington D.C. shared that she’s not afraid to blow the whistle on likely perpetrators engaging in acts of animal cruelty. In her six years of experience conducting animal research, she once observed two high school students left unsupervised in the animal facility, who were twirling around the mice by their tails upside down and giggling. “I immediately told them to stop, asked their names and who their research mentor was,” she explains.  ”I contacted him and let him know what had happened and although he was as appalled as I was, he apologized for not properly training [and educating] the students that research animals are not pets and are not to be played with.”

So while it’s clear that groupthink impacts both university researchers and animal activists, it’s refreshing to see that students have the capacity to rise above the influence.

November brings crisp autumn weather, pumpkin spice everything, Turkey Day, and…millions of college students submitting applications for post-graduation endeavors! This time two years ago I was burning the midnight oil on grad school and fellowship applications. Eeek, glad those days are over.

One such post-graduation endeavor might be Teach For America, the program that places recent college grads as teachers in areas of the U.S. that need more educators in their classrooms. Since it’s such a popular program (35, 000 applied in 2009, about 15% were accepted), BetterGrads is exploring the organization and the broader policy issues it brings up in a blog series.

As I shared before, I ended up not pursuing TFA after my initial interview. So I talked to my friend and Oxy classmate (and sorority sister!) Jessica Cornick, who taught 7^th grade science in Los Angeles as a TFA member, shared some insights into her experience with me.

Unsure of what she wanted to do after graduation, Jessica said that she pursued TFA because she thought it would provide her with a job opportunity while allowing her to see if teaching would be a good career path. Prior to starting TFA, Jessica had taught sports at summer camp and worked in a variety of tutoring jobs during college.

I asked Jessica about one of the central criticisms of TFA, which is that it puts young and un-experienced teachers in high-need classrooms. Jessica replied:

“Although many of Teach for America participants do not have prior teaching experience, they go through an extensive training program before they teach that provides them with the tools and knowledge necessary to maximize their teaching potential. It is true that there is a steep learning curve in the first few months of teaching, but watching other more seasoned teachers go through the motions in their classroom day to day is heartwrenching. While TFA teachers may not have the experience, they have the drive to really make a significant impact with their kids. I also have found that my lack of previous classroom teaching experience allowed me to be creative with my teaching approach which often resulted in the majority of my favorite lessons.”

I found this argument to be quite compelling. As someone who has pretty much stayed on the fence regarding this TFA criticism, this line of reasoning really sways my own opinion of this matter.

Seattle public schools, for instance, have recently been abuzz with debates over whether or not the city’s school district should sign a contract with TFA. The experience factor seems to be one of the biggest points of contention, which is completely reasonable—of course we want the best teachers possible for our children.

But Jessica’s points also make perfect sense to me. Energy, dedication, and enthusiasm matter just as much as formal training for success in the classroom. It is thus difficult for me to sway one way or the other on this debate—what do you think, where do you stand and why? Share your thoughts below.

And Jessica? She earned her teaching credential (concurrent with TFA) and currently works as a student loan specialist at Everest College. Even though she is no longer teaching in the middle school where she taught for two years with TFA, she has kept in touch with her former students as they enter high school.

And when they accept their high school diplomas in a few years, Jessica says that she hopes to be in attendance.

Next up: I’ll talk to some young education professionals who studied education in college and earned their MATs about their perspective on the TFA debate.

In the fall of my senior year of college, I sat down with a recruiter for a preliminary interview–not for big private investing firm or a political campaign, but for Teach For America.

TFA is a national nonprofit that recruits recent college grads to teach in schools in low-income communities. TFA volunteers teach for two years and are part of a program that involves training, professional guidance, and other enrichment tools (depending on the location, some TFA volunteers are able to concurrently earn a MA in education and teaching at a nearby university).

Besides education, many TFA alumni go on to careers in law, public policy, social services, medicine…the list goes on and on. I’ll be honest–I was never interested in teaching as a career, but I love kids and felt passionate about the problems that TFA tries to ameliorate, so I agreed to the preliminary interview when the recruiter was making appointments on campus. He wasn’t surprised at all when I admitted that I didn’t see myself pursuing a lifelong career in teaching–in fact, he jumped on that and emphasized what a great placement record TFA have with things like law school admissions.

Herein lies one of the big controversies with TFA–is it totally great that it’s providing teachers for low-income schools or not so much because its volunteers are not necessarily interested in teaching long-term? Most of TFA volunteers are not certified when they are accepted–there’s an intensive “crash course” training the summer before they begin teaching–thus, many critics of TFA argue that placing young, inexperienced teachers in needy areas is counter-productive. On the flipside, a friend of mine who completed two years with TFA contended that the organization places the most energetic, dedicated, and least cynical teachers in the schools that need them most.

Hmm. It’s a tricky dilemma. Ultimately, I knew for numerous reasons that TFA wasn’t for me, but I continue to think about it, especially since a number of my friends are pursuing careers in education. Over the next week or so I’m going to get their perspectives on this issue and share it with you. In the meantime, what do you think about Teach For America? Has anyone else interviewed with a recruiter or otherwise explored the program?

By U.S. Department of Education (Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

That’s right, taxpayers. A new report shows that states appropriated almost $6.2 billion for four-year colleges and universities between 2003 and 2008 to help pay for the education of students who did not return for year two. Specifically, the study shows that states sent $6.2 billion in general funds and $1.4 billion in grants to colleges and universities for first-year students who did not return. The dollar figures are taken from government data and aggregated by the nonprofit American Institutes for Research.

Looking further into the matter, some experts believe the root cause can be pinned to one core issue: state imposed budget cuts. According to California Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, state-imposed budget cuts that have slashed classes, increased student fees and reduced staff are more of a hindrance.

And how does this impact students? An economist might look at this situation and argue that the marginal cost of students continuing their studies after their first year of college far outweighs the marginal benefit of these same students continuing their studies after their first year of college. In other words, it’s likely that students will not feel incentivized to continue their academic pursuits, knowing that massive loans, coupled with the absence of required classes to transfer to 4 year colleges, will only set them farther back.

And it’s clear that students are not the only ones who are suffering. An appropriation of $1.4 billion dollars of tax-payer funds to cover the cost of grants for students who do not return after their first year results in an enormous loss in social welfare to taxpayers too.

So, what’s the point then of continuing to learn when both students and tax payers suffer? Well, there are several reasons, but all fall under the umbrella concept of learning for the sake of learning. As cliched as this sounds, students fall into the trap thinking that any educational opportunity beyond high school is the sole ticket to a rewarding and fruitful career and lifestyle.

And that’s problematic-this attitude that higher education is the only solution, rather than a key piece to the solution. In a youtube video that I have grown to love, Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, discusses a case study, where MIT students were subjected to a series of tasks, some rudimentary, some highly cognitive. The students’ reward was based on their performance. Those students who demonstrated below average performance received a a small monetary reward, followed by larger rewards for the middle tier and elite performers.

And what did this experiment reveal? For rudimentary tasks, the carrot-on-a-stick model works well to optimize student performance. In other words, a greater reward results in more output by the performer. However, the model breaks for highly cognitive tasks. Put another way, when students did not have to perform a basic mechanical task, their performance in response to these financial incentives dropped significantly.

Pink’s video presents a potential solution to the collegiate attrition problem: change the way colleges market higher education, and perhaps students will feel incentivized to continue their studies after year one. For instance,  placing a greater emphasis on the learning for the sake of learning instead of rehashing the same old study highlighting the financial benefits of higher education, may incentivize students to return after year one.

And how does Mr. O’Connell recommend we begin to resolve the issue? “The fact that we have these numbers helps with accountability and transparency,” he said. “We should do exit interviews with students and learn why they leave education.”

That’s a start, but it’s obvious that it will take more than exit interview or survey for any real change to occur.

Portrait of a Scholar by Rembrandt van Rijn, via Wikimedia Commons

The Ph.D. candidate who specializes in philosopher Jean Baudrillard ‘s theory of hyperreality in graphic novels.

The English lit master’s student who studies post-structuralism in Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way.

The undergrad majoring in 19th century French poetry.

These hardworking, passionate scholars regularly face the same dreaded question:

“What are you going to do with that?”

An article of the same title published in the Chronicle of Higher Education earlier this month provided the transcription of a speech given to Stanford University freshmen earlier this year.

The speaker, William Deresiewicz, said:

“The problem with specialization is that it makes you into a specialist. It cuts you off, not only from everything else in the world, but also from everything else in yourself.

Of course, every profession in the world has its own specialization. From river fisherman who specialize in bamboo boats made for a very specific type of catfish… to financial lawyers who only deal with specific types of mergers between companies of a specific size and type.

Specialization in itself is not bad. Getting sucked into a hyper-specific world to the point that you no longer find use for creativity is bad.

I’ve been guilty of hyper-specialization.

In undergrad at SF State, I became obsessed with forensics (a.k.a. speech & debate). But not all of forensics… just individual events. But not all 11 individual events… just platform events. But not all platforms, either… Just three: informative (info), communication analysis (CA) and after-dinner speaking (ADS).

Those three individual events guided my life in college.

I spent my entire junior and senior years obsessing over the best topics, structure, attention-getters, sources, examples, speaking styles and visual aids to give the best info/CA/ADS I could for competition. I spent hours picking the right pantsuit-shoes-jewelry combo for different tournaments based on how conservative the judges would be. I switched up my speeches based on the types of communication programs in which my competitors were enrolled: Were their professors interpersonal theorists or post-modernist feminists? Or did they study communication management? I lived and breathed a hyper-specific academic universe.

Forensics, like any specialized field, came with its own language. It’s routine to ask an IE-er if they broke their CA and what kind of leg they need to qual for nats. The IE-er’s teammate, a big interper on the circuit, may respond that while their team is going to HFO this year, they have too many LD-ers to send everyone to AFA.

It was nuts! No one outside of the activity understood (nor cared) about what we did. But I loved it, and the sport remains an important part of my life.

However, specializing to the point of obscurity limited me, too. On one hand, I learned discipline, research skills and how to make a grumpy 6th-year rhetoric doctoral student laugh in a dingy classroom at 8 a.m. on a Saturday. On the other hand, all of my writing (academic, creative, blogging, prose, letters to my grandma…) suddenly became speech-ified.

I began to open every piece of writing with a speech-y “attention getter.” I would preview all of my paragraphs in verbal format. Once, I forgot to use MLA style in one of my English papers and instead, cited all of my sources (name, title, date) directly within the paragraph. I balked when the teacher wrote, “Google Purdue Owl to learn MLA…”

Specialization took over my entire M.O.

Deresiewicz sums up my dilemma with hindsight:

“…as you get deeper and deeper into the funnel, into the tunnel, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember who you once were.”

Was it wrong to specialize so specifically in college? Well, no, because fortunately, I had other outlets. I wrote for the campus news website, interned at the poetry library, volunteered for the YMCA and… well, that was basically the extent of my extra-forensics-curricular activities, but I’m eternally grateful for those outside experiences. I feel bad for those who did nothing outside of forensics. They have sacrificed other rich experiences to pursue a tunnel-vision directed path.

I think students need to be careful when they become hooked in one specific area in college. Maybe a tenured art history professor takes you under her/his wing and steers you toward a master’s about (specifically) one of those French poets, the subject of your excellent midterm paper. Maybe a summer internship with a big political think tank looks so good on your résumé that you can’t bear switching fields after having landed that crucial stepping stone. Maybe you’ve been telling people you were going to cure Alzheimer’s since the 9th grade and can’t bear to abandon the ability to one day say “I’ve wanted to do this since I was a kid,” once you’re a rich and successful brain surgeon.

And specialization can be a crutch. A comfy safe zone in a new environment.

This fall, the week before my journalism grad program began at USC Annenberg, I decided I wanted a spot in Neon Tommy, the student-run digital news site. I quickly labeled myself as a technology columnist and began fervently writing articles about Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist… you name it. The hottest topics in tech were mine on which to wax poetically. I didn’t have the courage to start writing without a framework, yet I ended up feeling pigeonholed by the ultra-specific closet in which I’d created. Now, I’m putting the feelers outside of this ultra-specific niche, but I’ll try to keep the framework as a starting place for new ideas. My editor has nudged me in the direction of linking the midterm elections to technology, and it sounds like a good way to stay creative while holding onto some specificity.

Remaining open to the rest of the world can be difficult once you’ve found a passion. In fact, some of the greatest discoveries and advancements have sprung from the minds of professionals who devoted their entire work to one specific thing.

But… I think the sentiment “find your passion” is a fallacy, because that implies that we have just one. “Find a passion and remain curious” seems like a more complete approach.

Toward the end of Deresiewicz’s address to Stanford’s freshman, he broke it down to imagination and courage. With those two motivators, he argued that even the most specialized individuals can channel their passion in new and fulfilling ways. He noted that having the audacity to imagine your future in creative and unpredictable ways is imperative to making the most of your mind, specialized or not.

“Morally courageous individuals tend to make the people around them very uncomfortable. They don’t fit in with everybody else’s ideas about the way the world is supposed to work, and still worse, they make them feel insecure about the choices that they themselves have made—or failed to make.”

Currently, I’m a dedicated BetterGrads volunteer, journalism grad student, online columnist and aspiring videographer… but I’d like to think I’m much more than simply the sum of these parts.

…and much less predictable.

Recently, Howard Schultz, the venerable CEO of coffee behemoth Starbucks, was asked about job characteristics he looks for when hiring. “First off, I want to know what you’re reading, and then I’ll ask you why,” he says. Hypothetically, if the potential new hire were to reply, “Well, Mr. Schultz, back in high school, I started the “T. Wolfe Pack Club: I was the founder, president, and only member (hint hint, I have read every Tom Wolfe novel)” and stopped right there, odds are that the interview would end momentarily.

Photo courtesy of ndupress from Flickr

The aforementioned parable, at its core, is an execution issue. Had the potential new hire continued to explain why he enjoys Wolfe novels and connected this passion with some related experience in the business world, he or she may have opened the door to a second round interview.

The same could be said for placing similar quirky yet potentially applicant-killer extracurricular activities in a college application. A few days ago, in The New York Times Education blog, “The Choice” Rebecca Ruiz shared some of the comments aggregated from the following open-ended question posted on CollegeCofindential.com: “Does your on-paper persona reflect your truest interests? Are there certain hobbies, passions or accomplishments you’ve excluded from your college application, feeling they’re not worthy or relevant?”

At its core, the decision of whether or not to include select extra curricular activities in an one’s college application is an execution issue as well. Interestingly enough, this exercise in creativity is not a fad. This is a trend that is here to stay. As discussed in a previous BetterGrads post, universities are giving their future first year class more creative freedom in their applications. In particular, Tufts gave students the option to submit YouTube videos covering a variety of topics (sample videos can be found here) last year.

However, as mentioned in a previous post, these videos present an ethical dilemma for many college admission departments. Similarly, listing quirky and intriguing extracurriculars that are completely unrelated to anything else in the student’s application with the hopes of piquing an admissions officer’s interest can do more harm than good for students looking to spice up their list of accomplishments.

Now, I am not advocating slamming the door shut on any attempts to showcase wit and outside-the-box thinking in an application (this is coming from a staff writer who discussed in one of his college essays how his passion for Legos as a child led to a wonderful volunteer experience building homes with Habitat for Humanity).

However, individuals who identify themselves as blatant resume fillers should proceed with caution. What do I mean by this? I’m sure you know of an individual who did the following: realized during the fall of senior year that there were no clubs or medals attached to his name, decided to start an [insert obscure sport or pop culture reference here] club, held one meeting, never organized a game, and listed in his college application that  he was the founder, and club president, for four years. Mr. and Mrs. Resume Filler, one day you will learn that titles and positions are meaningless, unless you have evidence of accomplishments or proof of the work you completed during your tenure in that position.

This happens to touch a larger ethical issue, which John Reid, who posted the following comment to the original NY Times blog post, cleverly points out:

But there is a larger problem in this conversation that most of the contributors have not mentioned: the idea of gaming the system. Again, this is common and comes in many forms, some borderline honest, and some clearly outrageous. This is the sad side of the college admissions scene today: the frenzy, the hunt for your own private hook, the gimmick, the need ultimately to win some prize called College X. What is the price to a student’s self-respect (not the same as their self-esteem, which will be rewarded by admission) if they play the game this way? Sure, they may never notice what they have done, but they have trivialized themselves. What kind of an introduction to the adventure of higher education is this? I respect students who keep the process in perspective and don’t lower themselves to this level. I don’t honestly think it help them to get cute, and I think it hurts them in another, more subtle way. It’s like fighting an election by defaming your opponent. It might work, but is it worth it? And is it good for the general welfare?

So, do I support creative extracurriculars in college applications? Absolutely, so long as they support a larger portion of the application. Again, this is a simple case of execution. However, I do not condone this practice of “gaming the system” and simply listing out-of-left-field activities as the silver bullet hoping to sway the admissions officer in his / her decision.

What’s your take? How did you handle listing quirky yet potentially intriguing extra curricular activities in your college application? Share your stories and thoughts below!