What Happens When Your Teen Has to Interview a Stranger for a School Project
My daughter texted me from her dorm on a Tuesday afternoon: “I have to interview someone with a real job by Friday. I don’t know anyone. Help.”
She’s a sophomore, studying communications, and the assignment was straightforward enough. Find a professional in a field that interests you, ask them fifteen questions about their career path, and write a reflection. The problem wasn’t the writing. It was the finding.
I suggested her uncle, who works in insurance. “Too boring,” she said. Her former boss from a summer ice cream shop? “That doesn’t count as a career.” Her roommate’s mother, a nurse? “I don’t really want to do nursing.”
What she meant, though she didn’t say it, was that she didn’t want to cold-call a stranger. She didn’t want to send an email to someone she’d never met and ask for half an hour of their time. The assignment required her to step into a space most college students avoid: initiating contact with adults they don’t already know.
The first attempt was painful to watch. She drafted an email to a marketing director at a local agency, spent forty minutes on it, then deleted it without sending. “It sounds weird,” she said. “Like I’m asking for a favor.”
I didn’t rescue her. I’ve learned that when my kids hit a wall like this, jumping in with solutions usually backfires. Instead, I asked what felt weird about it. She said the email sounded either too formal—like a cover letter—or too casual, like she was texting a friend. She couldn’t find the middle.
So we talked about what the middle actually looks like. Not a template, but a few principles. Keep it short. Say who you are, what the assignment is, and how long you’d need. Make it easy to say yes or no. And don’t apologize for reaching out.
She rewrote the email in about ten minutes. It went something like: “Hi, my name is Maya. I’m a sophomore at [University]. I’m working on a class assignment where I interview someone about their career. If you have twenty minutes sometime this week, I’d love to hear about your work in marketing. I’m flexible on timing. Either way, thanks for reading.”
She sent it to three people. Two never responded. One, a woman named Priya who worked at a small branding firm, said yes.
The interview itself was scheduled for Thursday at 4 p.m. over Zoom. Maya was nervous in a way I hadn’t expected—not about the questions, but about the silence. “What if she gives short answers and I have to keep filling the gaps?” she asked.
This is a real skill, and it’s one most students don’t practice until they’re in a situation like this. I told her to prepare more questions than she needed, and to let the conversation breathe. If Priya gave a short answer, Maya could follow up with something simple: “What did that look like day to day?” or “How did you end up in that role?”
The interview went fine. Priya talked for almost forty minutes. Maya took notes, asked her follow-ups, and afterward said, “That was actually kind of fun.” She wrote her reflection paper that weekend.
But here’s what stuck with me: the assignment wasn’t really about marketing or career exploration. It was about learning how to ask. How to reach out to someone with more experience, make a reasonable request, and handle the awkwardness of not knowing what would happen.
For parents watching their kids go through this, there are a few things that help.
First, don’t do it for them. It’s tempting to say, “Oh, I know someone—I’ll connect you.” But the whole point is for the student to practice initiating. If you make the introduction, they skip the hardest part. If they’re truly stuck, help them brainstorm who they might already know loosely—a neighbor, a family friend, a former teacher—and let them send the message themselves.
Second, help them write the email, but don’t write it for them. Ask them to read it out loud. If it sounds like a robot wrote it, it probably won’t get a response. If it sounds like they’re apologizing for existing, same problem. The sweet spot is direct and respectful without being stiff.
Third, normalize the no’s. Maya sent three emails and got two non-responses. That’s normal. Adults are busy. It’s not personal. Students who understand this early are less likely to take silence as rejection.
Fourth, remind them that most people actually like talking about their work. Priya later told Maya that she remembered doing a similar assignment in college and was happy to help. The interview wasn’t a burden. It was a small, pleasant break in her day.
There’s something else, too. These assignments push students into a kind of low-stakes professional interaction that they’ll need later—for internships, job shadows, networking, and eventually job interviews. The mechanics are the same: introduce yourself, be clear about what you want, follow through, say thank you. Doing it once for a class takes some of the fear out of doing it again for real.
Maya still doesn’t love reaching out to strangers. She told me last week that she has another interview assignment coming up, this time for a different class, and she’s already dreading it a little. But she also said she knows what to do now. She has a draft email saved in her notes app. She knows to send it to more than one person. She knows the silence isn’t personal.
That’s not nothing. It’s a small, practical skill that will keep showing up. And honestly, watching her figure it out—clumsily, with a deleted draft and a missed connection and one person who said yes—felt more useful than any advice I could have given her upfront.
She’ll probably still call me next time, asking for help. I’ll probably still suggest her uncle. And she’ll probably still say no. But she’ll send the email. That part, at least, is getting easier.
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