The Importance of Building a Great College Résumé: Whether You Are Going to College or Not.
I think the word “building” is the biggest indicator to assume that your résumé being put together at the last minute is disastrous.
Your teen will be left scrambling and trying to figure out what he or she did in the past 4 years that will make them look presentable and enticing to a university or job opportunity. Parents and teens need to realize that most serious students have been carefully crafting their resume for years and they have planned their volunteer hours, clubs, private lessons and extracurricular activities as events that inevitably lead to being accepted to a university that they are really looking forward to attending.
In my experience as a music educator and working with students for many years, building a college resume slowly throughout high school is the way to go. Even if your teen is not certain what major or which university to attend (or even whether or not they want to go to a university) building a résumé slowly while choosing a university or perhaps a career is the way to go. For every activity, have your teens think five years in the future. If they have some type of road map to get to their end goal, they will most likely get there.
As a parent, do not fret if college might not be the path your teen feels they need to take. It is important to build a resume anyway; Building and creating a résumé becomes a blueprint for their future life and setting activities to build that great résumé will help your teen find a job or create a business out of high school. Even if their resume is specifically set to figure out what they want to do in life, it is a win/win project!
I feel this is such an important aspect of building a future that I have created a Résumé Builder that will help you and your teen develop and organize habits that lead to a productive life and future. I encourage you to check it out if you need some help. Helping your teen see and build a future in an organized way will create a lifetime of goal setting and goal achieving. And I honestly believe that goal setting and achieving is more important than attending a university.
Even if your teen is not interested in college right out of high school, there are so many careers that do not need a degree. Real estate in one of those careers. Real estate school is a short term, high return investment of your teen’s time and your money. Does your teen want to start a business? Business classes at a local SCORE (The Service Corps of Retired Executives) SCORE.org are amazing. I have taken classes there myself and even have found a mentor using this amazing non profit. If you haven’t heard of SCORE you should check out the link I have provided. This organization is filled with retired business owners, business and marketing professionals and since they have been around and doing this work for so long, they know a ton! The classes are sometimes free and when they are not free, they are always very affordable.
I believe that learning how to create a business can be a more credible option than attending college. For instance, do these young 18 year olds learn how to make money taking a geography class? If your teen is interested in geography, that is great but if they want to go out into the world and make money, I think it is a waste of time. Colleges and universities routinely require unnecessary classes to students just to keep their departments full. Keeping their departments full is great for them but what about the 18 year old who wants to run a business? I’ll be honest, attending that class is an absolute waste of time! They can get a book from the library and teach themselves geography. They can join the Sierra club or an organization in your community that focuses on the outdoors.
Doing research about how to build your child’s future, having conversations and throwing out ideas to them here and there never hurts. It helps teens visualize their future and allows them to start building one that they will look forward to. I do know that a lot of teens are worried about where they go after high school but I think the worst thing to do is to ignore or pretend that their future is irrelevant or so far off that it isn’t worth thinking about. Let them know what they have and what they can build upon. Their future is exciting and they will be more comfortable and confident knowing that they have a roadmap and parents who have their back.
So check out my website at Monteiro Music Studio for more about this topic, our 30 Day Practice Planner and our other blogs and videos! Or send us an email at monteiromusicstudio@gmail.com
It will be great to hear from you!