Changing Direction

Recently I caught up with a student I supported in one of my first years as a college counselor. She’s doing wonderfully. 

Our conversation brought us back to a moment during her senior year, when she was wrestling with her own college decision. She had been admitted to a college that offered exactly what she wanted. 

Strong academics. 

A chance to compete as a student-athlete. 

A path she had spent years preparing for.

Then she visited another college and everything changed. She loved it. There was just one problem: she wasn’t invited to continue her sport as a varsity athlete.

She didn’t care. But friends, teachers, and coaches did – and they immediately pushed back when she stated her intention to enroll anyway.

“Why would you give that up?”

Twice they talked her out of depositing at the school where her heart said she should go.

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From the outside, their confusion made sense. She had built her high school life around becoming a college athlete:

- early mornings

- weekend sacrifices

- rigorous coursework

- constant training.

When I asked her why she no longer wanted the original path, her answer was immediate. She already knew she could succeed as a student-athlete. What drew her to the second college was something else. The feeling that it would ask her to discover new parts of herself.

The challenge was different, and it was the one she now wanted.

What then, I wondered, was holding her back from formalizing her choice?

Sadness. That choosing a different future might somehow invalidate everything she had worked toward in high school.

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I made a rough sketch on a piece of paper.

A simple visual to help her see that her earlier choices had not been meaningless. They’d just been aligned with a different version of herself.

She had wanted to become a student-athlete, and her choices reflected that: discipline, training, sacrifices, and academic focus.

Nothing about those years had been wasted.

The reality was simply that her primary goals had changed. And once they changed, it made sense that staying aligned required a different decision.

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When we reconnected last week, it was great to hear about her current path. And...the original conversation has stayed with me because I think many students quietly struggle with this tension.

When they have spent years building toward a version of themselves, they assume changing direction removes meaning from their previous efforts – whether midway through high school or while approaching a final college decision.

Instead, speaking with her reinforced that changing direction, especially as an intentional choice, can open up meaningful possibility.

A slightly more detailed description of the framework is in a recent LI post here.

Stay tuned --

Beth

ROSECLIFF College Consulting, LLC