The relentless focus on “Resume Building” can prove exhausting for today’s kids

Investors are always told to “diversify” their portfolios. Don’t put all your money in stocks – what if the market crashes? Don’t put all your money in bonds – you’ll miss out on market rallies. And for heaven’s sake, don’t put all your money in one company.

Or, to put it more anciently: don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

However, when it comes to our children, many parents today have been told not to diversify at all. Just make them college materials.

That meant a childhood focused on academic success and “resume building.” Of course it’s great to learn how to write a persuasive essay – I’m doing that right now – and some world history. Nothing wrong with lacrosse or coding.

Just the time and energy—and money—that goes into building your resume can be exhausting. Meanwhile, the skills children develop beyond the classroom or extracurricular activities may end up being the most valuable of all.

I see this in my volunteer capacity as an alumni interviewer for Yale. Over the years, I’ve interviewed over 100 college aspirants and I can say that all the schoolwork and extracurriculars make for some boring boys and girls.

The students I recommend are generally very excited about at least some facet of their formal education, but also something they discovered on their own. Often something strange.

A girl started a “Real World Skills” class at her school after learning that her friend couldn’t sew a button on a coat.

One boy started his own website business – and if a request got too technical, he outsourced it to Russian programmers.

Another young man went to so many of his girlfriend’s younger brother’s baseball games that he eventually became the team’s coach.

Admissions officers have read thousands of essays from excellent students. Those guards are looking for something extra that screams curiosity, or doggedness, or the ability to see and seize an opportunity.

The business world is looking for the same thing. HR departments say “soft skills” are what’s missing in today’s workforce. In a Wall Street Journal survey of nearly 900 executives, 92 percent said “soft skills” are as important—or more so—than technical skills. The buzz is that many young workers lack the ability to collaborate, innovate and communicate in real life.

It’s time for us parents to realize that building a fort in the woods can teach kids everything they’d learn at robotics camp—and more. Children still have to gather materials, come up with a plan, execute it and test it. They often work in teams.

Unlike robots, however, fort builders are driven by a fierce desire to do something in the world—something adults will never see, comment on, or compliment. This is the “self-driven” element that psychologists come to recognize as crucial to self-esteem and success.

The skills kids learn when they organize their own fun are exactly the skills colleges and businesses want: collaboration, innovation, communication. Even when they’re just drawing or practicing free throws, they’re learning focus and perseverance. At Let Grow, the nonprofit I run, we call these “non-robot skills”—a set of skills that robots don’t share.

It becomes unusual to give children a lot of free, unstructured and unsupervised time. When no one is teaching kids something that has a name, like “chess,” that time can seem wasted.

That’s just because we haven’t trained ourselves to see all the growth that happens.

Let’s allow children to “diversify” beyond the skills they acquire in one formal setting or another. The future – and maybe even Yale – awaits you.

Creators.com