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WHERE YOU GO...

Close to the end of eighth grade, my son came home from school to tell me he heard about a “research” program offered by the high school, that students could start taking in ninth grade.  High school faculty gave the middle school kids an overview of the kinds of classes that would be available to them once they graduated from eighth grade.  My son thought it sounded interesting.  So did I.  With that news, I started asking other moms of older kids what this research class was all about.  I heard a bunch of things: it’s challenging, difficult, a lot of work, intense, and then the news I had been subconsciously waiting for: it looks great on a college application. 

Yes, that excited and motivated me.  I encouraged my son to take the class.  Sure, he expressed an initial interest in it, but I certainly grabbed hold of the idea and ran with it.  As he completes his second year in the program, from what I can see, it has been all of those things the other parents said it would be.  And maybe it will look good on his college application too.  But what I have learned so far, and I hope he has too, is that this class is so much more than that, so much more than a sparkling line or two on his academic resume.

He is learning to think critically, to understand the need for information and how that need varies depending on the situation, to look at issues from multiple perspectives, to create a thoughtfully crafted literature review, to create surveys, collect data and to analyze his findings. He is learning how to present all of this information to judges and teachers and fellow classmates.  When he was practicing his presentation the other day, I heard him talk about how his study could have been enhanced.  This to me was the icing on the cake: he was required to think about the limitations of his work and how he could make it better.

As I contemplate my motivation for encouraging my son to take this class, I can’t help but think about Frank Bruni’s recent book, WHERE YOU GO IS NOT WHO YOU’LL BE.  While it is difficult to capture the meaning I gleaned from the data, anecdotes and wise advice featured throughout the pages of this wonderful book, suffice it to say that you will never look at the college application process the same way again.  And that is a good thing. 

Particularly moving is Chapter 10, which begins with a quote by Britt Harris, the former chief executive of the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund and a 1980 Texas A & M graduate:

“If you are extremely smart but you’re only partially engaged, you will be outperformed, and you should be, by people who are sufficiently smart but fully engaged.”


The research class has given my son tools, lifelong skills that will serve him well no matter where he goes to college and what he chooses to do with his life.  That’s the important aspect of the class, not that it will open any doors for him.  It’s the substance, what he is getting out of the education, that matters most.

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