I was at the kitchen counter, chopping vegetables, when my son Sam came in and started rummaging for a snack. He was a junior in high school, which meant that every casual conversation could suddenly pivot toward the future without warning.
“Dan is thinking about not going to university,” he said, mouth half full of crackers. “His parents are freaking out.”
I put the knife down. “What does Dan think about it?”
Sam shrugged. “He doesn’t really know. He just doesn’t see the point.”
That sentence stayed with me. I hear variations of it a lot now, from Sam and his friends, from other parents at pickup, from my sister about my nephew. The question of university used to feel settled—you graduated high school, you went to college, you got a degree, you got a job. Now it feels like a math problem with several variables that keep changing.
I went to university in the early 2000s. I was the first person in my family to go, and nobody ever asked me what I thought about it. The assumption was that it was the obvious next step, the only step. So I went. I took on loans. I studied something I liked well enough, and it led to a career I didn’t end up staying in. When I look back, I don’t regret it exactly, but I do wonder what would have happened if someone had sat down with me and asked what I actually wanted, instead of just pointing me toward the nearest campus.
We’ve had more of those conversations in our house over the past year than I expected. Sam is a decent student but not a passionate one. He gets good grades in English and history, struggles with math, and spends most of his free time fixing up an old bike he bought for forty dollars. He’s not dreaming about lecture halls. He’s dreaming about getting a small engine repair certification and a garage.
I’ll admit, my first reaction was internal panic. I saw the garage as a ceiling, a limitation. I had to catch myself and recognize that I was doing exactly what I resented—projecting my own assumptions onto his future.
There’s this thing that happens with parents, especially parents who went to university themselves. We treat it as the default, and in doing so, we stop actually listening to what our kids are trying to tell us. I have a colleague at work whose daughter dropped out after two years. She was miserable, failing classes she didn’t care about, depressed in a way her mom had never seen. The decision to leave felt like a failure at first. Then she started working at a bakery, and she discovered she was actually really good at managing the morning rush, the inventory, the staff. Two years later she’s running a second location. No degree. But she reads business books on her own now, because she wants to.
That story helps me when I feel my own anxiety creeping in. University is a path, not a verdict. It works brilliantly for some kids—the ones who need structure, who crave academic challenge, who have a specific field they want to enter. It’s an expensive mistake for others, at least right now, at eighteen.
The trick, I’ve learned, is to stop asking “What do you want to do?” and start asking better questions. When Sam and I talk about this, I try to keep it practical. You don’t need to know what you want to do with your life at seventeen. That’s not a reasonable expectation. But you can ask yourself what conditions you need to do good work. Do you like being around people all day, or do you need solitude? Do you want hands-on tasks or abstract problems? Do you want a schedule that changes, or one that stays the same?
Those aren’t university-specific questions, but they help determine whether university is actually a good fit. A kid who loves repetitive manual work might be miserable in a seminar room. A kid who loves reading and arguing might find a bike shop isolating.
There’s also the money question, which is awkward to talk about but necessary. University isn’t what it was when I attended. The cost is staggering, and the return is less guaranteed. We’ve had to be honest with Sam about what we can contribute and what he’d be taking on. It’s not a fun conversation, and I know a lot of parents avoid it because it feels like admitting that this grand dream might not be affordable.
But avoiding it doesn’t make it true. If your kid is heading into a field that doesn’t require a degree, and the degree would cost six figures, it’s worth asking what it’s actually for. Trade school, apprenticeships, community college—these aren’t fallback options. They’re legitimate choices that lead to careers with real salaries and real satisfaction.
I’ve also started paying more attention to how we talk about gap years. There’s a stigma attached to taking time off, as if it means your kid is lost or unmotivated. But I know a kid who worked for a year, saved money, grew up a lot, and then went to university with a much clearer sense of why he was there. He’s doing better now than the kids who went straight in and burned out. Time off doesn’t have to be a detour.
The conversation with Sam isn’t over. It’s not even really a single conversation. It’s a series of small exchanges, often at awkward times—driving to practice, standing in line at the grocery store. I try not to push. I try not to panic. I’ve learned that my job isn’t to make the decision for him or to make him feel like there’s a wrong answer that will ruin his life.
There isn’t. That’s the part I have to keep reminding myself. I once believed that the path was narrow and that stepping off it meant failure. Now I know better. I know adults who went to university and hated it. I know adults who never went and are doing exactly what they love. I know adults who went back at thirty-five, at forty-two, at fifty, because they finally figured out what they wanted.
What I want for Sam is the thing I didn’t have at his age: the sense that this is his choice to make. Not his friends’ choice, not my choice, not society’s choice. His.
He came into the kitchen the other day and told me he’d been looking at a two-year program at the technical college. “It’s not great at first,” he said, “but there’s an apprenticeship in the second year, and they help with placement.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment. He looked at me, waiting.
“That sounds like you’ve really thought about it,” I said.
He nodded and went back to fixing his bike. And for now, that’s enough.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » I was at the kitchen counter, chopping vegetables, when my son Sam came in and started rummaging for a snack