114: Free College Application Tools That Students (and Counselors!) Should Know About

Ethan Sawyer  0:00  
My guest today is Sean McElroy. He is a veteran school counselor. Check this out right now. He's at the Shanghai American school, but he's worked in Victoria, BC, Canada, in Bangkok, Thailand, in Caracas, Venezuela, and as I said, he's now in Shanghai. He's trained counselors on four continents and helped start the counselor training center. He's got so many resources to share, and we're gonna get into a few of them today. Sean, welcome to the podcast. Thanks,


Shaun McElroy  0:25  
Easton. I'm super excited to be here. You know, one of the I love the way you said, Caracas. Most people are like Caracas, and you got a little Latina thing going in there. That's awesome. Yeah? Well,


Ethan Sawyer  0:37  
you know, and I always kind of like debate, because, you know, having grown up in South America, there's, you know, I can do that, but then there's a part of me. I don't want people to think that I'm like, you know, sometimes it can be distancing, and then sometimes it like, pulls people in. So I'm glad it pulled you in. Yeah, that was awesome. So, you know, Sean and I were sitting at breakfast this morning, and by the way, maybe you can just set context, like, where are we and what are we doing this week?


Shaun McElroy  1:00  
We're in a gorgeous, little Lakeside resort in Lina, China, a town nobody's heard of, but I'm sure there's like 5 million people here, because that's what happens in China. We're just out on outside of Hangzhou, West Lake, which is the ancient capital of China, where Marco Polo came rolling in and my school decided we'd take all our 11th graders, almost 300 of them, on a retreat. What could go wrong? One of the things that we really wanted to address was, you know, really jump starting this college process. Our students, all of them, are going to university somewhere in the world. We have alumni studying in 15 different countries. And so part of the agenda this week was certainly getting into the essay process. And part of that experience is, well, I got to write about me, but who is this me? I'm writing out. And so how do we help them understand themselves? Over the last dozen years here in China, you know, we've been evolving a curriculum of self discovery, and through that process, some of the things I've investigated is my school is actually really well resourced. But when I train counselors, they don't always have access to the dollars to afford cool tools like Naviance, which a lot of schools use. So how could we do the same experience if we don't have if we have a very limited budget? So I've been, you know, playing around, trying to find things that are insightful, generating for students and counselors.


Ethan Sawyer  2:23  
Yeah, so I'm excited. We were talking at breakfast in the morning because I really wanted to get Sean on the podcast. And, you know, Sean is like me, where he is able, he's resourced in that, you know, he'll find the cool resource, and he takes the time to go out and do the research, and then he's collected some of these resources on a blog, and so we'll share about that later. But, you know, just to set this up, Sean, there's, there's, I know, there's a there's a great range of things I don't know. You know, maybe we don't need to set it up. Maybe we just need to jump in. Let's just jump in. What do you say? So we're going to share, or Sean's going to share, eight free tools that are available to and this will be relevant to students who are looking to discover more about themselves, you know, make this process easier, more fun. And also, you know, these are tools that definitely counselors can use. And then in the show notes, we'll share links, et cetera. So let's jump in with the first one. What do


Shaun McElroy  3:13  
we got Sure, sort of the gold standard is the Myers Briggs Type inventory. I know you've done training in that, and lots of schools use a tool called do what you are. You know that one, right? Absolutely, yeah. And, you know, one of the cool things about that is you do this quick self assessment, and boom, you get these four letters. I'm an ENFP, although last night I felt like an INFP.


Ethan Sawyer  3:38  
And why did you feel that way last night. You


Shaun McElroy  3:41  
know, you just hit this certain threshold of how much time can I be plugged into people? That's what you know. The E is this extrovert, you get your energy from connecting with people. The I, the introvert is on the opposite end of the continuum, and it is a continuum, and you're both things. It's not that you are only an extrovert or only an introvert. An introvert gets their energy from inside themselves. So I found that distinction a really helpful way of thinking about both myself, but also the students you know you get, these quiet kids who you know when they send you an email, it's four pages long and rich, and when you meet with them in person, they're like and it's this long pause and painful, because they're thinking, right? So internet, a lot of schools use a tool inside Naviance called do what you are, which is by E human resources. Human


Ethan Sawyer  4:33  
Resources, yep, and I'll link to this in the show now, so y'all don't have to, like, scribble those down. It's


Shaun McElroy  4:38  
based on a book by the same title, and it is this notion that you know, if you understood your personality better, you could possibly find a career that makes sense. Like a disproportionate number of lawyers come from ESTJ and the J stand. I hate the last two letters, judging and perceiving. I don't even know what that means. Like Jay a better word. Word for that would be like orderly or systematic. And the P I always joke it's piling because that's what peas tend to do. They organize by piles. But you know, a better word for that is adaptable, and when you start understanding these dimensions of personality, it can help you understand yourself better. Like peas tend to be really have a hard time making decisions, or that's what it appears like on the surface. The reality is, peas tend to really always be looking for more opportunities and really want to make the best decision based on all the available data. Peas are also fantastic with deadlines, but only when they're right in front of their face, whereas J's, you know, like when you counsel at Jay one of the delightful things is they tend to do stuff they're supposed to. They're hyper responsible and organized. So, you know, we've always had the kids do do what you are, and we have a way we unpack all of that. But when I started training counselors, was like, Well, what do we do if we can't afford this? There's actually a ton of free versions of the MBTI online, but my personal favorite is 16 personalities. It's just really nicely laid out. Take you about sort of 15 to 20 minutes to do it. It's not very long. The reports are fairly rich. They they're one of those. You know, they give you a fair bit for free, and then there's a premium version, but even with the free version, there's enough stuff there that you can kind of understand. It's just like most versions of the Myers Bay, Briggs type, inventory, there's strengths and weaknesses, communication, you and a team, and then a list of careers. And you know, if you just Google what are you? What's your personality type? Ethan,


Ethan Sawyer  6:38  
I'm actually I test as an ENFP as well. Well,


Shaun McElroy  6:41  
you know, if we google ENFP careers, you can, you know, the first 10 pings on Google are going to give you a bunch of university websites and private sites, but it'll have listings of careers. So it's pretty easy to find a way of jump starting. And you know, I became a believer when one of my students who had actually left the school was had come back through Shanghai International schools. Kids come and go. She came back with her dad, and she was ready to apply to college, so they really wanted to talk to me, and the kid had decided she wanted to be an engineer. And I'm like, Where'd that come from? She's like, remember that thing you had me do back in ninth grade? Well, that got me started to thinking, and that's the key any of these tools. It's not the tool that's the outcome. The tool is a box to stand on, to look at yourself, to look at the world around you and how you fit in it. So she went in there and saw this list, and, you know, a couple of things rose up, but one really resonated, which was engineering. And that seemed to show up for a lot of people with her personality type. Yeah, beautiful.


Ethan Sawyer  7:43  
This is, I mean, we're starting off with a home run. This is something that I've been using for a few years with my students. And the way I use it, or have tended to use it, is I'll just, sometimes just give students the book. So I have like, eight copies of this book, and it's one of those that I give out a lot. Or I'll just, if I'm working with a student remotely, I'll say, go on Amazon. You don't necessarily even need the number the most recent version. For a penny, you can buy the, you know, the other version of this that like the version that came out a few years ago. Just search. Do what you are on Amazon. If you want to get the book, you take a quick personality assessment, and then, boom, you're off to the races. Is there a particular way that you use it with your students that you feel like could be even more like next level, useful just in terms of, I don't know if you, you know, give them advice in terms of relating to their college essay, or, you know, how, what's some of the pre work that you have students do related to once they have their type? What do they then do with it?


Shaun McElroy  8:34  
Yeah, so one of the things we do is a claiming exercise. So if you print out the actual printout of what does it mean to be an ISTJ or ENFP, and then grab a highlighter highlight any words or phrases that resonate with you for whatever reason, and really the top of the mind response is best, and then you need to discuss it. This tends to be a more extroverted thing, but I find even the introverts really like to have conversation. And the conversation you want to have is the reflection. How does that show up? You know, so ENFPs tend to be good at meeting people, you know. So well. What does that mean in the college search? Well, colleges are going to be coming through your town. Maybe go press the flesh. Let's talk about what that looks like. You know, if you look at the weaknesses again, there could be fodder there, like I ISTJ is the Introverted Sensing, thinking, judging element. Those are actually kind of the counselors, dream and nightmare all rolled into one, because the dream side is they get everything done. The nightmare side is they rarely talk to anybody about it, because they're so hyper organized, they've already thought about it. They have a system that they're working through. And the counselors, like, I have no idea and parents get really frustrated, especially. The extrovert parents who just want to, you know, chat about it every moment they get and the kids like, I've already got this, you know, so understanding yourself and understanding that other people don't always share it. So, you know, an add on to this is Susan Kane's work called Quiet. It's a book she has a fantastic TED Talk, which is about 18 minutes long, where she outlines the book. She wrote a sequel last year to the book that is actually really actionable, where she focuses primarily on teenagers and how they you know, sort of case study model. What they found to navigate this world, because schools are increasingly extroverted world. So these great, quiet kids have this challenge where teachers are rewarding group work, and the introverts are especially the extreme introverts are exhausted by the end of the school day, you know. And they a lot of sharing circle type idea. And again, they're exhausted, you know. So like she coaches students about how to navigate this world. So to me, that's the other add on that I often have parents read to better understand the kids, especially extroverted parents. Now, the funny thing about quiet is, pretty much every extrovert I know never finishes the book. They get about halfway through and they go, I get it. You're quiet, you know. So it's a challenge. I feel like I have a sort of real soft spot for introverts, and I want to kind of champion them and help them better understand themselves. There's nothing wrong with them. In fact, you know, I love Susan's sort of subtitle, forward introvert. You know, the quiet person, the thinker. You know, the world needs more thinkers. So helping them be okay with being this sort of quiet thing and helping them clarify that. You know, being quiet isn't about not having friends or being shy. In fact, there's nothing to do with that. It's about having deep and meaningful friendships. This


Ethan Sawyer  11:53  
is awesome, and seeing like how much more we are kindred spirits in the Sean like and loving this resource. So one of the things that I've been working on that I'll share it in a future podcast on, is this resource for helping students take that and then I've written like, 30 pages on how to then turn it into an essay. It's not ready yet, but if you're interested in it and you're a counselor, shoot me a quick email or put in the comments and say, hey, I'm interested in that resource, because I've been trying to figure out, Is this something that that folks are actually interested in? So great. All right, let's move on to the next one. What do we one.


Shaun McElroy  12:22  
What do we got via character strengths, via stands for Values in Action. This was developed out of UPenn and University of Michigan Dr Martin Seligman, who's sort of the godfather of positive psychology, where he flipped the world of psychology on its head, and he said, I'm not interested any longer in talking about what's wrong with people, but what's right with people. And so since about 2000 there's been, you know, about 25,000 different studies focusing on what's right with people. Under what conditions do individuals and communities flourish? And sort of, the sort of backbone of this, and we've made it the backbone of our program, is character strengths. Now, there's various strengths assessments out there. Most of them cost money via is underwritten by the Myerson Foundation. And what they did, because Martin and Chris Peterson, at you Michigan are academics, they had this incredibly rich network around the world of academics, and so they reached out to them and said, you know, what values does your culture celebrate? And they started generating a list, and they asked them for paragons of virtue. So here in China, Confucius is one of those paragons of virtue, or the Buddha, or, you know, in the West, Christ, or, you know, Abraham Lincoln, you know, so when, when I say Abraham Lincoln, what values do you immediately think of? Honest, yeah, Honest Abe. Well, that's one of the 24 characters, right? That pretty much every culture values humor is another one, love of learning, you know, that's Confucius there. You know, like, these are different elements, and they show up in all of us now, the ones that are sort of your go to strengths might not be my go to strengths. And it's thought that, like I suspect, we both have love of learning and curiosity as two of our go to strengths. You know, those are just different rank order, if you will. And the theory behind the positive development is we tend to use the things we know, and a lot of school becomes involved around deficit remediation. What are you not good at? You know, at some point you gotta just let that go. And if you actually look at Highly successful people, they tend to actually be very aware of what they're not very good at. And they partner with people who kind of complete the circle, if you will. You know, on the other end of the rather than focusing on trying to become good at something that they're not like being just it. Sort of very zen, you know, accepting it now, what if you understood your strengths better, and how to leverage them more fully, how to mine them? So, you know, you take the assessment. It's sort of 1520 minutes. It's available in like 24 different languages. As I said, it's free. You push a button, boom, you get the rank order of all 24 what we do with our students as we focus on the top five or six? If you were to take the assessment again a few days later, chances are it'd be pretty close to the same. You know, in your top five, probably three or four would be the same. Maybe 4567, might be slightly different. But you know, the ones at the bottom of your list, are not likely to suddenly be at the top of your list or vice versa, you know. So like knowing the bottom of the list is helpful, like self control is number 24 for me. And, you know, people strong and self control tend to be those guys who get up in the morning and go for a run. I admire them. I think that's awesome. It's not me, exact, and that's the key. It's not me. So what we have the kids do is, when they do the character strengths is we have them again unpack it through sharing stories. How did this show up this last summer, for example. You know, right before heading into senior year, we have all our kids unpack their top five and given an anecdote that illustrates each of their five character strengths. You know, so love of learning is one of mine. So how does that show up? Well, I actually walk to my work every morning, and I have my headphones on. I'm actually reading a book every morning, and my friends think I'm weird. I put it on double speed because audible books tend to talk very clearly, and when you put it on faster, it's not a big deal. I


Ethan Sawyer  16:47  
do the same thing. That's funny. Yeah, you're reading it twice speed. Obviously, that's amazing. So this is connected to, so I'm loving, loving, loving this. And this is connected to, you know, in an earlier podcast, I talked about the montage style, and it's something that we've talked about, Sean, and it's sort of like, how can you clearly demonstrate what your superpowers are, and how are your superpowers, or your skills or your values, or, in this case, your strengths, manifest themselves in your everyday life? Once you can get four or five of those, you've got the content for a college essay, right?


Shaun McElroy  17:16  
Yeah, well, and one of the things that you know, the exercise you had our kids do, where you look at challenges, needs and work them through the cycle. The other piece that you know, for me, the add on there, is when you do all that. Now, take a look at your character strengths. Which character strengths are resonating through there. You know, the neuroscience behind it is well founded. We can actually, you know, the neural pathways that are used get used again. They become wider, so to speak, you know, so people who are strong in things tend to stay strong in those things for their life. You know, these are their go to things. And if you do the permutations of just five, the combination of five, it's not the individual pieces, it's how they interact, you know. So it's like about 4 million potentialities of the top five. So, you know, on this planet, that's you and a few 1000 people are similar, if you just looked at the top five. Now, if you actually strung the 24 together. And then, you know, how dominant is it? Like, humor is one of my top five, you know. So, like, how does that influence love of learning, you know? So the videos I'm drawn to watch, for example, when I go to Ted, I the ones that really resonate tend to tell stories. A version of humor is obviously Haha, that's funny, but stories engage, and to me, that's the subtext of humor is about engagement, having fun, really getting deep, and also helping kids really get into that. Now, some of the research that's really exciting is people who thrive at their work, who view their work as calling, tend to be using their strengths more often. You know, now, if you think about that, what's the implication for college? Well, what if you went to a college that fed your strengths? So you know, some of the strengths of heart are kindness, generosity, teamwork. Well, kids like that, and love, the capacity to love and be loved kids like that, if they went to a hyper competitive program, it's not that they couldn't do the work, but they're not likely to thrive, because the very nature of that place is probably going to violate the essence of who they are. And I'm sure you've had friends in your life who have this job that just seems to weigh them down, and it's the things that they do outside their job where they come alive. Well, I'm going to suggest that's a misalignment of Values in Action. That's the via the character strengths, you know. And if they could figure out how to bring more of their values inside their work, or shift their work now and our work working. With students around colleges. That means looking beneath the surface. All colleges are going to feed strengths. I mean, obviously love of learning and curiosity is going to show up. But what about prudence? You know, this is a hard one for me to get. You know, what is prudence? You know, one of the activities we have our ninth graders do with this is identifying activities the schools offer. You know, we want the kids to get plugged into this rich extracurricular life, you know, so teamwork, obviously, you can join a sports team. You could join the quiz team. You could join, you know, it manifests itself in so many different ways. Generosity, you could volunteer, you know, like as a way of giving back to the world. Well, prudence, you know, I'm sitting with a group of guys, and I said, So how did you know what would feed prudence? And he's like, long pause, and he goes chess club. I'm like, That's brilliant.


Ethan Sawyer  20:52  
It really is.


Shaun McElroy  20:53  
And you know, prudence is way down on my list. That's why I also get in trouble, and it's also why I was never a great chess player. Because it's like, well, I come up. Oh, I did, oh, I took my fingers off. Oh, well, there goes that queen. Oh,


Ethan Sawyer  21:07  
wow. There goes the self control thing. Exactly. So, two things that I just want to flag he, you know, Sean mentioned this exercise there where it walks students through the, you know, what are the challenge you've been through, the feelings, the needs. And there's a column that he mentioned that's about, and by the way, I'm mentioning this because if you just Google feelings and needs exercise, College Essay Guy, or you look in the show notes, you'll see this exercise, and you can walk through it yourself. The column he's talking about is the, the one that's after the what did I do about it? So, based on the stuff that you did, what values or what strengths did you connect with? You know, what are your superpowers that you were able to experience and express. How are those manifesting in your life? So that's one. And the second thing is, you know, to students who are out there who do an exercise where it's, you know, focused on a limited set of values, they might start to feel like or worry about blending in with other students. And I think this is a great point that you're making, that the way that these values, because these values, or these strengths are so universal, the way they manifest themselves, one is so different, and two, the permutations, the way that you can combine these, especially when you're starting to rank them, is huge. So just wanted to make those two points Great,


Shaun McElroy  22:14  
all right. The other thing with the via, from the counseling end, that's and on an individual level, is when you're feeling frustrated, when you're feeling like something's been violated. You know that feeling? Yeah, you know you're interacting with people all day long, and something just not rubbing you right away, if you look inside yourself in terms of which of my character strengths is being violated right now, that's probably going to give you great insight like so, for example, fairness is one of my top five. And so when people are treating each other poorly, or when somebody's being taken advantage of that, I can feel my back get up now, just I've always known that I didn't have a language right that I could share with people, right? And that's been the powerful tool. So when I meet with teachers to talk about students and how to better work with them. We have a shared language. This is the power of the via character so, you know, again, for any of these tools, if they just Google them. So first 116, personalities.com, boom. There it is, via Character strengths.org. But just Google via character strengths, and it's right there. These are freemium models. Again, you know, you take it. You get a great report. You can pay extra to get more whether you need it or not. I've also written a lot about strengths development in one of my blogs called strengthsmining.com and the idea is they're really taking some of the great research from positive psychology and making it accessible to both teens and adults and how to use this in the real world. Awesome.


Ethan Sawyer  23:44  
I love how much you know about this and how much time you've spent creating resources that are useful. So everybody that'll be definitely in the show notes, just click the link and you can get to Sean's blog. All right, let's move to the next one. What do


Shaun McElroy  23:56  
we got? You know, in terms of learning, there's been a whole lot of variations of learning styles. Now the reality is, the research doesn't support that learning styles really exist in the world. Yet, it's one of those things that if you take a learning styles assessment, it sort of makes sense, right? You know? So to me, the value is in making sense for yourself, whether it's true or not, right? So one of my favorite ones is from one of the universities. It's called VARK, which is like visual, oral, something kinesthetic. I forget what the r is, but so V, A, r, k, yeah, and you know, so if you're a visual learner, you're probably, you know, the kid in class who loves it when film clips are shown, or when there's conceptual diagrams, you're probably doodling in your notebook. The oral kid loves listening great lectures. They're probably drawn a podcast. The kinesthetic kid, that's the hands on. They're the ones that probably can't sit still. And the moment you get up to do simulations, they come alive, you know? So this is just understanding these. Moments about yourself and how you learn best. You can also look at colleges from that way. You know, some places are much more hands on. So when you think about that kinesthetic thing, you know, if a college has an emphasis on Co Op, you know, you might actually really thrive that where, where Co Op learning is. You have paid employment that's related to your major. You tend to have three to five work terms over the course of your college career. You know where you're applying your learning. This is where you're going to get in and doing it. You know, if you go to a place like Colorado College or quest University in Canada, these are the block schedule. You know, one course, three weeks. That sounds incredibly intense, but you're not sitting in a lecture hall for that time. You know, when you take geology at Colorado College, that means every day is a field trip to the Rocky Mountains, because that's where you happen to be. If you take history of the Trojan War, it's a three week course that happens in Turkey, ie, where the Trojan War actually happened. How cool is that? So understanding how you learn best you know, could help you make your learning more accessible to yourself? You know, lots of teachers will teach kids how to do mind maps now, for on a kid who's strong in in the hearing side, this doesn't make as much sense, yeah, you know, but I didn't have access to audio books when I was a kid, but I think I would have really I'm a slow reader, but I love reading audio books would probably really help jump start me again. I found, you know, in my lifetime, I've been really drawn to engaging powerful speakers, because I think it really feeds that side of my understanding.


Ethan Sawyer  26:35  
Just a quick side note for those of you who are interested in doing mind maps with students, I was made aware of this really cool resource called Coggle, C, O, G, G, l, e.it, which is how you can help a student create a mind map and then click a button and it turns into an outline. So that's a really cool one that I believe is a free resource. So


Shaun McElroy  26:55  
let's jump, you know, go a little bit further majors. Now you and I know that most kids are going to change their majors. The research suggests about 75 about 75% of us will change their majors at least once in college. Did you change your major?


Ethan Sawyer  27:09  
Absolutely. What'd you start out at? So I started off as English, and then I actually changed my major while I was applying. So I was like, ahead of the game there. So English. And then I changed to theater, and then I switched it again to performance studies, and then I switched to a minor in English. Minor in English, and then I got rid of that. So, yeah, I probably switched two or three times.


Shaun McElroy  27:26  
I was a double history English major, you know, during my second year, I discovered there's no future in history, but I'm fine, that's good. And then, you know, I took a random course, because you can do that in college, you know. And one of the random courses was through our counseling department. And so I, you know, double history, English major put me in counseling, quite literally. And I became major in Child and Youth Care counseling, you know, so But what I've noticed is a lot of young people feel like they should have an X marks the spot. And, more importantly, a lot of parents feel like, especially in this economy, you know, like the kids should be training, you know. And the beautiful thing about America and Canada, in terms of university, you can easily double major, you know. So you could do one that feeds your passion, that might not seem to have an obvious career path, and you could do a different major that maybe gives you a skill set. But the reality is, three quarters of the jobs out there, while they require a college degree, do not require a specific major. Now, where they do is a licensing issue, you know, like nursing or engineer. You know, if you're Boeing and you want to hire an engineer, I'm sorry, English Lit majors, you're just not the guy I want designing my airplane, right? Not that you're not smart and talented, but I want the guy designing my plane or the woman designing my plane to actually understand aerodynamics at a very deep level. And it's the same with accounting and teaching and, you know, a handful of other careers like that. But you know, to go work in business, you don't have to have studied in business. In fact, I think that's a huge mistake. Most school counselors become incredible champions of the liberal arts and sciences because they see this broader based training and thinking being a way to understand yourself in the world that you occupy, and how do you contribute to that, you know? So there's a whole range of great things coming out around career development. A really easy one for kids to do, or counselors to set up in their program, is my majors.com The lovely thing about my majors, from a counseling standpoint, is I can create an account and send the personalized link to my students, so I have, you know, a space there where I can see what my kids reports are coming out. It's about 20 minutes. It goes beyond just your sort of personality elements. It looks at your interests. It looks at, you know, what courses you really thrived in during your high school time, like, these are the questions they're asking. And then it generates. It's a list of majors that you might find in tree. You know, one of the challenges even a small college like Pomona, you know, it's, I don't know, 1200 students, 40 different majors. Most high schools have, like, seven, eight departments, so you're not even like, I didn't know what anthropology was until I took an anthropology course. Sociology, you know, biophysics. What is that, you know, like neuroscience? Well, I think it's sort of psychology, but it's sort of biology. And maybe I don't know what else it is, you know, like so until, and that's what university should be, some discovery. So I'm cautious about the major idea and the career development thing, I think you have to kind of wander through the world a little bit. And the problem with a lot of career assessments is it devalues serendipity. Like you think about what you're doing now, and I've heard you talk about this, you know, you feel like you're doing the thing you're meant to be doing. There was no test in the world that was going to do that, right? You


Ethan Sawyer  31:01  
know, I don't think they list College Essay Guy on my majors.


Shaun McElroy  31:05  
Note to self add to you know, but that's the thing, you know. Like bloggers, they didn't exist 10 years well, you know. But people make a living through that serendipity. You know, there's, there's a guy who started Vox. He was at University of California, Santa Cruz, he just started writing about politics, because he loves politics. And he was, you know, just writing it on this software, and people started reading it. And before he knows it, he had a huge following. And then he, you know, figured he could actually leverage this. And now you know that property is worth, I don't know, millions of dollars, and he's doing what he loves. He was not going to become that through following his major quite like that, right? You know, but at the same time, especially if mom and dad are like so what do you want to do with your life? Well, it's nice to say, here's something I'm moving


Ethan Sawyer  32:02  
towards, right? That's great point. And so, you know, just another evidence that we're on the same page there, I'll link to a blog post called five reasons why it doesn't matter what you major in, which happens to be one of the most popular blog posts on the blog. But if you were to just throw this at a student, John, how would you recommend that they treat this in other words, and I kind of hear this in your response already, but you know, what would you suggest they do with my major, something like that?


Shaun McElroy  32:28  
Yeah, again, I think this becomes one of your criteria. Like, you should have some criteria around colleges. You know, whether that's I want highly accessible professors, or I want a place with fraternities, sororities or service learning. You know, those are your criteria. Well, the college should offer you at least a few majors that you're genuinely interested in. You know, if you think you want to study Arabic, not that many colleges offer it. You better go to a place that has it. Now, what happens when you hit third year Arabic and you realize, oh, my God, I'm terrible at languages. What's the backup there? You know? And most universities have a pretty wide array. As I said, small places have a lot of options. This the mistake a lot of kids make is, well, I got to go to UCLA, because they're going to have the most choice. Well, how much choice do you need? And I'm not convinced that that much choice is good. And


Ethan Sawyer  33:20  
by the way, you know, having, you know, living near UCLA, knowing something about it. One of the things we laughed about when we were talking about this podcast is that, you know, I happen to know, and this was a few years ago that UCLA students come in, the most popular major they come in with is undecided, and, and I don't know if this is still true, but it was true when I, you know, a few years ago. And the one, the most popular one that they leave with is psychology, which is sort of like a catch all major, right?


Shaun McElroy  33:44  
Yeah. And again, from the admission standpoint, with the exception of fields that require very specific preparation, like engineering, for example, they want to see strong physics and math background. Most colleges don't really care, you know. So Georgetown, for example, there's four faculties. You have to apply to one of the faculty, but you don't have to choose a major. They're looking for your suitability within that context, you know. So some students think I'm going to be really clever. The School of Foreign Services, Georgetown is sort of their gold star. Everybody knows this is fantastic, but it's really hard to get into. Well, I'm a guy. I'm gonna apply to their nursing school because there's not many guys in nursing. So then I'll just go through the side door. Well, Georgetown is full of pretty clever people. They figured out that a long time ago, so to transfer out of nursing into it's probably not gonna happen, you know. So rather than trying to game it, why not look for the things that are sincere. So if International Relations is floating your boat, get into the values of that. What is it that does it, you know, Georgetown's really hard. What's another place that could also allow me, what are the characteristics about Georgetown that resonating it, you know, is it the fact that it's in DC? Well, then you got American, you got George Washington, you got Catholic, or. Is it the fact that it's a Jesuit school? Well, then you got Santa Clara, you got University of San Diego, you've got, you know, 28 different Jesuit Colleges just in the US, you know, so like, get beneath the surface again, the major doesn't need to define it like that. And one of the great things a lot of kids really struggle with is when they apply to a specialized major, and they don't get in for the major, but they get into the school, you know. So one of my kids got into Carnegie Mellon, but he really wanted computer science. He wasn't admitted to computer science. This is one of those super thin slicing admission places, you know. So now it became a quandary, do I go to Carnegie Mellon to study the thing I don't want, or do I go to a place that lets me do this, you know? And that's, again, a personal values choice. He ended up going to NYU to study computer science, and he ended up having an amazing experience. I think, you know, the handful of kids that really have an end in mind tend to fall in that, you know, engineering, doctor, nursing, like, very early on, they know this is what they're meant to do, and they find it most the rest of us, we get


Ethan Sawyer  36:12  
to wander in the desert for a few 40 days or years. And I just want to point out, like, how cool it is for me, Jean, to hear you. Like, just riff on other schools. And this is the value y'all of having somebody like Sean and you know, as an ally to, you know, to be able to help you find these schools. Now, if you don't happen to have a connection with a counselor who has an encyclopedic knowledge of schools, I just want to this is like the the interconnected reference podcast. There's an earlier episode that Stephen Antonoff does where he talks about the college finder, which is a book he wrote the listener on college Express, which I'll link to in the show notes. There's just going to be, like, tons of links for this podcast where students can actually find different schools based on the major. So just one more application of this. If there, if you are one of these students who has a particular major you're interested in, and you're looking for what type of school is good for this major. You can find out via college finder or college express on that


Shaun McElroy  37:05  
well, and the college Express is another one of those great tools, like, if you like Columbia, you click on Columbia, there's all its list. And you know, one of the lists is colleges in New York City. Okay, great. That might be the reason you're drawn there, or maybe it's for the College of lovers of ideas. Well, that list looks very different than the New York City list, you know, the colleges with great books curriculum. Again, that's another list that Columbia happens to be on. Weirdly, Columbia is also on the list of happiest college students, which is actually huge, and it's not big or small, urban or rural, like, it's really arranged, yeah, that there's a


Ethan Sawyer  37:43  
list called the happy colleges. And I don't know, I should actually go back and ask Steven, like, what, you know, what the criteria was for that, but these are, and from what I know about it is that it's a school where students were, you know, given some kind of assessment, and they, the people giving the assessment, determined that, Oh, these are students who are who report being happy on their campus,


Shaun McElroy  38:01  
not a bad thing to environmental learning. Let me just go back to majors for a second. Majors can link to careers. They don't have to. I discovered a couple of years ago this incredibly rich career development tool. It's called 80,000 hours. Do you know this? It was started by a British philosophy professor. He's actually the youngest Professor of Philosophy in Oxford history. So, you know, the guy is way smart, for super smart. And he looks at altruism. He looks at how our work has meaning in this world. He's one of the few non profits to enter and win Y Combinator. And the result was this 80,000 hours website. It's six questions, and the questions are very different than what you'd expect, because the questions are driven from how do you want to make an impact in the world? He comes from the assumption that your work should have meaning in helping the world. And you can help through philanthropy, or you can help through direct action, social worker, direct action, philanthropy, you make a lot of money so you can influence things, yeah, six questions. One of the questions is, how much do you like math? Well, different set of majors are going to come up, or careers through math or not math, right? Really fascinating stuff. Really cool. Yeah, now any of this stuff is the key here. And you mentioned ally, your counselor is your ally. So if you take my majors or the via our 16 personalities, don't keep it private, share it. And even better, you know, make an appointment. Sit down and say, counselor, I took this assessment. Let's talk about it. I don't fully understand it, or I'm still making sense of it. That's where the real richness comes in. And what you're giving to the counselor is material to work with, because not only are they allies, they're advocates for you, and so if they understand what drives you, what floats your boat. So. To speak, they get hearing these little anecdotes and stories of how these things came to be. Man, their letters are going to be so much more rich and compelling.


Ethan Sawyer  40:09  
This is great. And you mentioned when we chatted about this yesterday, this the contrast between that and what sometimes develops is more of a transactional relationship. Would you mind just saying a couple words about that and how not to do that,


Shaun McElroy  40:20  
yeah, you know, like you walk into your counselor's office and say, Hey, counselor, I'm applying to college, here's a form to fill out that's a transaction, you know, that's definitely a function of what needs to happen. I cannot think of a single counselor, and I know, and I know a lot of them that got into this business because they love filling in papers. They love connecting with human beings, and they love playing in the future. You know, like, let's sit down, Ethan and talk about where you're going with your life, how you want to make a difference in this world. And you know, if you don't know, that's okay too. Let's talk about who you are and who you're becoming. How can I support you? This is exciting to any counselor, and so kids, if you're giving that to the counselor, it's sort of a gift, because it makes their job richer and more enjoyable, and they're going to be better advocates. So you know, responding to your counselor, sitting down and working with them, becomes key to that element. Now, your counselor may have observations about you that you don't agree with. Your counselors may have things that they have you do that you're like, Oh, really, I got to do this. Well, you know, sometimes you just suck it up and see where it goes. Yeah. So yeah.


Ethan Sawyer  41:29  
And I love the notion of coming to them with questions and ideas and coming, like, as it were unfinished, yeah? Just sort of like, Hey, here's the thing that I'm trying to figure out. I haven't quite figured it out yet, but I'd love, you know, I'd love your thoughts. I'd love your input just to begin that dialog and to develop the relationship. Yeah,


Shaun McElroy  41:43  
well, it's much like the work you do with the college essays. Very few of us writers have a finished product, right? It's not until we read it out loud, it's not until other eyes set on it that it starts morphing and becoming a much richer thing. You know, if you talk to any famous writers, most of them will credit their editor, right, for really helping them bring the story to life. And I think that's key within that you know, these allies in your world


Ethan Sawyer  42:13  
and finding the story, right? So that's another value of the counselor. Sometimes you're trying to find your story. And by story I mean like sort of a narrative arc. It doesn't have to be the narrative arc, and the narrative arc could change. But, you know, that's another value of your counselor,


Shaun McElroy  42:26  
yeah. So, you know, piggybacking off that idea, there's three other tools that I wanted to mention that go in the realm of understanding yourself, but maybe the self that you're not so proud of, you know. So all three of them actually came out of research that led to books, you know. So the first one is grit. Angela Duckworth Lee out of UPenn. She was actually a graduate student Martin Seligman. Her story is fascinating. She tells it in a TED talk, really engaging speaker. Grit, is that very American notion of stick to it. You know, you know, John Wayne True Grit, her research was she wanted to look at what do really successful people do in different environments. So she started with the National Spelling Bee. I'm a terrible speller. I I don't understand the rules. I don't pretend to understand. I think my computer's my best friend, and I don't understand why it doesn't know what I want to write all the time. Yes, yeah, but it corrects a lot of my mistakes, you know? But that's only the starting point. Well, when she looked at grit, all those kids who are making the National Spelling Bee are really smart, but some do better. And what she discovered was that stick to it Ness was key to learning those, you know, 16 syllable words, you know. And then she went to West Point and looked at cadets now, West Point, if you can get in there, you're obviously awesome, you know, it's a quarter of a million dollar free education. You know, this is worth something. Yet they have a real problem where they're entering cadets. There's a percentage that blow out of there. Now, these guys were highly screened. The military wanted to get better at this. Again, when they looked at the fitness scores, because being in West Point means you have to be incredibly fit, that wasn't a good predictor when they looked at leadership, not a good predictor. When they looked at intelligence, as evidenced by SAT or GPA, again, not a good predictor. When they looked at grit, they suddenly discovered that was The distinguishing feature, and so rather than recruit for grit, they train for grit. Yeah? So even if your grit score, like, when I took this, this assessment takes you, I don't know, like, five minutes, no, two minutes, it's eight questions. It's humbling, yeah, I'm not very gritty, yeah, although, in some areas, I'm more gritty, you know? So it's definitely one of those. It depends. But understanding that about myself allows me to cry. Kind of set up accountability systems, you know, maybe ask for a friend to kind of help me. It goes back to that self control thing, you know, like, if I really wanted to get fit, that's a function of grit, right? You know, if I had an ally kick at my butt to the gym every day, I would get fitter, for sure, right? Does that make sense? Absolutely.


Ethan Sawyer  45:22  
And I'm, I'm loving that you're telling folks how, just how short these assessments are, because, and I'll probably mark it in the show notes, that you know, each one of these takes like, 15 minutes or 10 minutes or two minutes, but the information that it gives and so I'll say this, that you could, in one ways, take this set of resources and have, like, the most productive hour of your life, right? But then one of the great points that you just made, Sean, is that it's what you do after it, and how you take the results of that and then kind of fold that back in and go, Okay, well, what does this say about me? What does this mean? You know, in what cases do I apply this? So spending just a few minutes and going, Okay, well, based on this my grit score, like, what does this mean for me? And this is the kind of practical stuff that, well, I'll say on a heart level, and just like self reflection level, can potentially shift or contextualize certain things in your life, as you've been saying, for example, when I did the do what you are, and I saw that the heart of my type was on helping people realize their potential. And I saw that that was the juice where there was like that was really, the real sweet spot for me. Well, behold, suddenly I understand deeper what my work is about, why I do it, why this podcast even exists, you know. And then would think something like, like this, when you're talking about grit, you know, there's, there's a way that that folds in on me. And then also, you know, because I got to put a plug in for the college essay, this can give you context and details, and you know information for your personal statement.


Shaun McElroy  46:44  
When Angela's TED Talk took off the following year in college admissions, a disproportionate number of not essays but counselor recommendations focused on the grittiness. My friends who work in admission were like, if I read about one more gritty kid, I'm just going to,


Ethan Sawyer  47:01  
I know, and I remember at the National Conference, the keynote was on grid. I think it was given by Jonah Lehrer, or somebody, where it was like, Greg was mentioned. And you say that to, you know, 7000 people, however many people were there, and it's like, okay, well, that's that meme is gonna spread. Yeah. Again,


Shaun McElroy  47:15  
while it became a buzzword, there's substance behind it. Now, a similar one is mindset. And this is Carol Dweck work out of Stanford. And mindset is, you know, sort of that, how I view myself, the self efficacy. If you say I'm just not a math person, you're limiting yourself. That. That is a limited mindset. If you say, I could possibly learn this, that's a growth mindset, you know, I'm just not there yet, you know. So on her website, she also has a very simple self assessment, you know, three, four minutes. And part of the beauty is the actual questions, yeah, like, if you actually looked at the question and reflected on that, it's rich fodder for understanding yourself. And that's the whole nature of what we're talking about here today, Ethan is, how do I understand myself? Well, the questions Carol asks, you know, cause you to go inside and say, Well, how do I respond to that? Now her, her thing is sort of a like heart scale, so you select it somewhere on there, and when you finish taking it, boom, you get a report on your mindset. And she actually gives you some bullet points of how to improve your mindset, you know. And really it's the mindset piece that's limiting. And I think a good counselor is often listening for kids and how they're limiting themselves, you know, I know you did a podcast a couple weeks back about undocumented students, and, you know, they have incredible challenges that a lot of other students don't have. But one of those challenges is even just, is it possible for me to go, you know, the moment you think it's possible, suddenly your worldview changes. That's what a mindset, a growth mindset, really opens up the possibility for right? And


Ethan Sawyer  48:58  
I'm thinking back to the first thing you said in terms of dot, dot, dot, yet. My wife's reading this book on my daughters too. And, you know, in French culture, when they're trying to feed children, when they're, you know, feeding children, there are two categories of foods. There are the foods that they don't eat, or, sorry, they're the foods that they eat, and they're the foods that the child doesn't eat yet. So even that mindset has shifted the way that we think about feeding our daughter. And so I love this, this notion of mindset and how it can on a practical level. Because listen to me, I'm all about the practical shift, the way that somebody is approaching a thing, and which can shift behavior, which can totally shift, you know, a life course, in the case of the in the case I'm talking about, you know, my daughter will eat more foods because I will be inspired to think of these as being foods that she hasn't eaten yet, and to continue to introduce them to her


Shaun McElroy  49:47  
again. This is one of those books that in grit similar to that. It's an idea that takes about 28 seconds to explain, but they fill the whole book with it. Now, what's interesting about the book. Work, especially if you have love of learning or curiosity, is it gets into scientific studies that validate their contentions right up front. So these two go hand in hand, both of them fit firmly in that positive psychology realm I mentioned. You know what's right with people under what conditions do they thrive? And people who have a growth mindset thrive by definition right now, least you think I'm just all Pollyanna and only ever think about what's right and what's good. You know, there's the other side. And if you study psychology, you've encountered Young who he's actually the reason we have the Myers Briggs was his theory that gave birth to those archetypes, extrovert, introvert, sensing thinking, you know, like it's rich, rich territory that he was exploring. And one of the keys there was the shadow, you know, the shadow self? Well, there's a business guy who's taken a look at how we sabotage ourselves. You ever done something and then you're like, crap, I just sabotage. Oh yeah, yeah. And you know, like, you kind of promise yourself, I'm not going to do that again, and then a while later, you do it again, but slightly different, right? So maybe you learned something, maybe not. So I don't know if I'm saying his name, right, but Shiraz Carmine wrote a book called Positive Intelligence. And on his website, he has a Free Self Assessment in which you get your list of saboteurs. He's identified, wow, 10 of them. Wow. And you sort of have much like, you have go to strengths, you have go to


Ethan Sawyer  51:35  
sabotage. Oh my gosh, um, take this today. This is anything. It's so


Shaun McElroy  51:39  
much fun, like, so one of mine is definitely a pleaser, you know, like, I tend to do stuff to help people. Well, that's a good thing in a counselor, but maybe not a good thing in drawing boundaries, you know. So I end up working a disproportionate number of hours. Sure, I can meet you at 6pm at night, you know. Or another one of mine is avoider, you know, like a lot of counselors, I don't like conflict particularly much, and I get that conflict can be healthy, you know. And professionally, I've learned how to use conflict. Personally, it's still not my favorite thing. Well, you know, if you're a student, you're in high school, and you're discovering for yourself your own sort of sabotaging techniques, if you will, because that's what they are. That's a great way of putting it. Yeah, no, you don't really want to develop these any further. But perhaps if you started noticing yourself saying those pleasing things when really inside you're like, This isn't right, and you heard that voice, maybe you could step back, you know, and as you enter the college process. I mean, for me, all of this comes back to this pinnacle that we're climbing, and it's like it's hard work. I think sometimes we make it harder than it really needs to be. There's so many great choices out there, like, who are we kidding? Going to Harvard doesn't change your life. What you do at Harvard could change your life. But by that same token, you know a kid I went to high school with. He studied philosophy at University of Victoria. Do you think he's had a good life? He invented flicker. Oh, I heard of that. Yeah. Stuart Butterfield, you know what Stuart did? He actually started a gaming company. The Game sucked, but he figured out, well, inventing the game a better way to store photos. Boom. Flickr sold to Yahoo, became a vice president at Yahoo actually didn't like that corporate culture. Quit the Job, started a new gaming company. The game didn't really work, but when they were developing the game, they developed a new messaging platform called slack. You heard a slack? Oh, yeah, I used slack this morning. $4 billion property, wow, from a mistake. Yeah, repeat it. Now. I don't know what sabotages Stuart has, but I bet he understands some things about himself. Yeah, and this is really what these tools are, whether you're looking at what's right with you through strengths. You know, how you move through time and space via personality, what limits you? You know, the sabotaging thing, I think, is a really fun one to kind of get deeper beneath. It's it's also, you know, you You've talked a lot about making yourself vulnerable with your counselor. Well, sitting down just now, and I'm saying, you know, I'm a people pleaser and I'm an avoider, you know, like that doesn't make me feel good. And yet, you know, and making that little bit of intimacy, we develop a little bit of connection. You know, that that side of things


Ethan Sawyer  54:32  
well, and I also just the impact of you sharing those things with me. I'm like, I re one, I recognize those things in myself, but two, I feel closer to you. So I I'm appreciating that share. And you know me, because I'm all


Shaun McElroy  54:43  
about, how can we get more vulnerable? Yeah, now, now here is the last tool I'm going to share today. Auspicious number eight. Don't anybody count? Because I think we actually probably had 24 that we've stuck in here. I think so I'm going to have to,


Ethan Sawyer  54:55  
we're gonna have to, I'm gonna have to go back and count just how many resources you've got. And then I'm gonna. Put that as the title


Shaun McElroy  55:00  
of this, but the final one, and I'm going to just call it number eight, it is the greatest self discovery tool of all times. Sit quietly by yourself. You can call it mindfulness. You can call it meditation. It really doesn't matter, but in quieting your mind, you create space for yourself to show up. So what is this self? And this is really interesting. There's a growing body of research around mindfulness and meditation and the incredible benefits it has, from improving memory to sleep, to decreasing stress, to helping with physical conditions like migraine headaches and pain management and things like that. And I think the earlier person engages in some sort of contemplative practice. And it doesn't need to be like, sit in lotus position and go. Now, if you can do that, that's really cool. It looks cool too. Yeah. But, you know, like, for some people, it looks like running, and you get in that zone where you forget, for another person that's picking up the guitar, you know, one of my students, we were talking about his love of guitar, and I asked him, you know, when you play guitar, tell me about time. And he goes, it disappears. You know, he enters this other world, what Mikhail cheminsky Eye calls the flow state. You know, mindfulness is a way of creating space for you to react, not you know, like to really make a decision. And so, you know, a couple of tools that if you really wanted to get started. My personal favorite is called smiling mind. It's out of Australia, again, it's underwritten by a foundation. So all of their stuff is free. They have an iPhone app, an Android app, online version, you know. And it's guided meditations. It's lovely Australian gentlemen guiding us. And mindfulness just seems so much better when they have this accent, you know, kind of makes you want to go there, you know, there. And then there's another one, the meditation Bell one, where I'll give you the link. And this one, you know, the lovely thing there is you can create groups. So just like exercise, it's hard to get going. If you had a group that you went running with, you're going to show up. Well, if you had a group to meditate with, you would show up. Now, the research, you know, if you did 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening. In about three weeks, things are going to be changing in your brain in a very positive and powerful way. If you actually look there's a guy named Tim Ferris has a fantastic podcast. You know, his show long form interviews, kind of like this. I think we're now pushing his his length of show. I don't know how long we've been talking for, but it's been really fun. He has been sort of documenting for himself how many and he asked, Do you have some sort of mindful practice? And he figures about 85% of the people he interviews has some sort of mindful practice. Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, the Terminator the Governator, took Transcendental Meditation for a year. He said he felt the impact for the next 16 years, like it just quieted his mind. That guy is incredibly successful, fantastic, like, maybe


Ethan Sawyer  58:30  
the most successful person ever. When you look at like, what everything that Schwarzenegger you should check out, if you get a chance, the Schwarzenegger podcast at Tim Ferriss, or you can just check out in his book Tools of Titans, and read it all that Schwarzenegger has gotten done.


Shaun McElroy  58:45  
I just did some training with the guys from Search Inside Yourself. Search Inside Yourself is a spin off of a little company called Google. It was started by Chad Ming Tang Tan's official title at Google was jolly good fellow. His employee number 111, he was hired as an engineer. He's from Singapore, lifelong meditator, Buddhist practitioner, and what he noticed was a lot of engineers aren't very good with people, but he was pretty good with people. In fact, in the history of Google, he's the only person who transferred from engineering to human resources. And Google has this thing called 20% time, where people can work on projects. And so one of the projects he started doing was, how can I train people in this thing that's good for them? And so he consulted, because it's Google, he could reach out to people like Daniel Goldman at Harvard and the Dalai Lama. And he designed a curriculum which, you know, it's play on words Search Inside Yourself, which marries meditation and emotional intelligence training, right? Two day format. It's 1000 bucks, but it's probably the best 1000 bucks you'll spend, but you can jump start that now, simply using something like smiling mind to. Kind of just sit still. Now, when you first start, it's hard, and it's also like, Well, nothing's happening. Uh huh, that's actually good. Yeah, nothing's not a bad place to be. Think about your favorite book. Those pages were blank. Think of your favorite piece of art. It was blank. This podcast started from nothing. Now it's something nothing is a space that allows things to show up. So it doesn't need to be a formal meditation, but it needs to be contemplative, and it needs to be still and silent. We I think people, everybody should try this. Now, some people need a little more movement, so like running or something like that, but take out the headphones. Just be with yourself. Yeah,


Ethan Sawyer  1:00:50  
that's awesome. Sean, it's time for show and tell, which is, I mean, this whole podcast has been show and tell, which is what I love about it. But this is the opportunity where we share something that you know either has been useful in your life, and certainly you've named a few already, or you feel like could be useful in the college process. What? What have you got for show and tell this this morning? You mean beyond the everything else you talked about for the entire episode.


Shaun McElroy  1:01:15  
You know, one of the things my students know about me is I'm always pushing for reading, and again, I think a mistake people make is getting lazy. You know, you gotta read and read a wide variety. Read beyond your favorites, read beyond your discipline, you know. So when I was in university, I was taking a pretty intense course load, and I was immensely curious about human beings. You know, my field of study really delve deep into psychology, you know. So when I year after university, I realized I hadn't read a fiction book in about five years. And so I was like, wow, how did that happen, you know, so then I did a deep dive into some fiction that I had missed. And, you know, like, wow, that's a rich world. And you know, there was a study about a year and a half ago about what reading literary fiction does to your theory of mind. It makes you more empathic. Wow, it has real world applications, plus it's just a cool story. You know, we live in an incredibly rich world. I grew up in a town that has a university. I could go to free talks there all the time. When I moved overseas, it was like I really missed that part, and I was living in a land I didn't speak the language. I'm sure there was free things for me to go to. This was Thailand and but I really missed it. Well, a few years later, that's when the internet really, really expanded that world. And, you know, podcasts became this new rich platform to learn and discover, and more recently, Ted Talks, you know, like just fantastic. Imagine if you listened to a TED talk a day. Now, what if you took that to the next level? Listen to a TED talk and then reflect and discuss, you know, get together with a friend and talk about it, or journal it, or something like that. I mean, I think again, these are sort of self discovery things, you know, just kind of go with it. Journaling is another practice that can be incredibly powerful, helpful. There's a tool called Morning pages. Are you familiar with this idea? You know, 750 words as fast as you can, first thing in the morning? Totally unutilized time. You know, I think you and I are similar. We're both up early often. You know, my friends joke that I never sleep. That's not true. I just happen to wake up way early. And it's, it's a beautiful, quiet, still world me and my cat hanging out. You know, my partner is asleep. You know, I've just got this time to do interesting things without before the world collapses on you again when you're a teenager, getting out of bed early seems tough. But what if you got up a half hour earlier? Would you really be missing that much sleep? Yeah, and you use that half hour for something? Yeah? Maybe exercise, maybe meditation, maybe writing, maybe painting, right? What would you accomplish in a week a month, a year?


Ethan Sawyer  1:04:09  
I love we just given there. There are four show and tells in there, and I'll mark them in the show notes, but I heard at least four. Mine is the most relaxing song ever. You know this one. So if you Google the most relaxing song ever, there's a piece called Marconi union. It's called weightless, and I'll link to it in the show notes. There's a nice little YouTube video with it too, but it's eight minutes long. And if you if you read the article that I'll link to as well, they, you know, did a study on brain waves and how the brain is affected by different sounds and different pieces of music, and they determine that this was the most relaxing song ever. So here's your homework. Click this link and listen to this piece. Listen to it with headphones somewhere quiet, either at the beginning or end of your day. Listen to it for a week or five days and just breathe. See what happens. Final question, Sean, why do you do what. Do


Shaun McElroy  1:05:01  
I love playing in the field of human possibility and potential? You know, years ago, I was at this camp, and there's this guy from Mexico named Marco, and he came from a very well to do family. He wanted to be a banker. And I'm like, why? Like, you seem like a really good person. Okay, that sounds really judgmental, but, you know, like, it just came out, like, you know, pursuing the money dollar. And he goes, because I want to make a lot of money. I'm like, really? He goes, Yeah, but not for the reasons you think. It worries me that there's a poet who will never write a poem. And he went on to explain, you know, he wants to use his financial success to influence poverty in his country, you know, like, and that really stuck with me. Like, wow, what would happen if, you know, like, that's a beautiful notion. And so my work with students has been tremendously exciting. My first year overseas, one of the first conversations I had was with this young man from India who said he wanted to be a engineer and design weapons. Well, I'm a pacifist this. And you know, while I don't really like conflict, I was willing to get into it with him, but in a very gentle sort of way. And as we talked about what was motivating him, it was about national pride. It wasn't even about self defense. But, you know, his country then exploded an atomic bomb. And you know, it's like this atomic self esteem booth for a billion people. It was like the weirdest thing, and when we talked about it, you know, it wasn't that he was interested in killing or hurting people. He wanted to do something important for his country. Now, he ended up pivoting, still pursuing engineering, but from a more humanities base, and pursuing a different form of engineering. You know, like the world can open up. You know, there's a guy at Google, Laszlo. I forget what his last name is, but he talks about, don't ask your kids what they want to do, but what problems they want to solve. Boom, yeah, and that's where I get really kind of interested. So the kid who doesn't know what they want to do, I'm not particularly bothered by that, I know that serendipity is going to cause them if they're open to that experience. So that's what I see myself doing a lot, is coaching them to be open, have that growth mindset, to tap into their strengths, recognize that opportunity when it comes along, and be brave to try it. How exciting is that you know


Ethan Sawyer  1:07:41  
the best. Sean, thank you. It's so great to talk with you. I feel like I'm I'm feel like I'm meeting like a, I don't know a brother from ages and years ago, but there's also like a, I don't know. I'm just really grateful. Thank you.


Shaun McElroy  1:07:54  
Well, thank you. Ethan, you.


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