Essay Prompts: School and Career | 50 Essay Topics for EmSAT Achieve PDF Download

School 

Essay 29: Should the School Day Start Later?

Could letting teenagers sleep later in the morning do more than just make them happy?
New evidence suggests that a later start to the school day could have all sorts of benefits, like better grades and fewer car crashes. But some worry that pushing the school day back might get in the way of after-school sports and jobs, and wouldn’t leave students enough time to finish homework.

Should the school day start later?

In “To Keep Teenagers Alert, Schools Let Them Sleep In,” Jan Hoffman writes:

Jilly Dos Santos really did try to get to school on time. She set three successive alarms on her phone. Skipped breakfast. Hastily applied makeup while her fuming father drove. But last year she rarely made it into the frantic scrum at the doors of Rock Bridge High School here by the first bell, at 7:50 a.m.

Then she heard that the school board was about to make the day start even earlier, at 7:20 a.m.

“I thought, if that happens, I will die,” recalled Jilly, 17. “I will drop out of school!”

That was when the sleep-deprived teenager turned into a sleep activist. She was determined to convince the board of a truth she knew in the core of her tired, lanky body: Teenagers are developmentally driven to be late to bed, late to rise. Could the board realign the first bell with that biological reality?

The sputtering, nearly 20-year movement to start high schools later has recently gained momentum in communities like this one, as hundreds of schools in dozens of districts across the country have bowed to the accumulating research on the adolescent body clock.

In just the last two years, high schools in Long Beach, Calif.; Stillwater, Okla.; Decatur, Ga.; and Glens Falls, N.Y., have pushed back their first bells, joining early adopters in Connecticut, North Carolina, Kentucky and Minnesota. The Seattle school board will vote this month on whether to pursue the issue. The superintendent of Montgomery County, Md., supports the shift, and the school board for Fairfax County, Va., is working with consultants to develop options for starts after 8 a.m.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us …

• What time does your school day start and end?
• Should your school day start later? Or do you like your daily schedule?
• Is an early start time leaving you sleep deprived? Are you staying up later than you should?
• What do you think the most important benefits of a later start time would be? What might the disadvantages be?
• What do you think about the campaign that Jilly Dos Santos led in her district to push back the high school start time?

Essay 30: Would a Later School Start Time Increase Student Success?

How much sleep do you get each night during the school year?

Are you rested in the morning before school? If so, why? If not, why not? And if not, what do you think could be done to ensure you get more sleep during the school year?

In “The Economic Case for Letting Teenagers Sleep a Little Later,” Aaron E. Carroll writes:

Many high-school-age children across the United States now find themselves waking up much earlier than they’d prefer as they return to school. They set their alarms, and their parents force them out of bed in the morning, convinced that this is a necessary part of youth and good preparation for the rest of their lives.

It’s not. It’s arbitrary, forced on them against their nature, and a poor economic decision as well.

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute recommends that teenagers get between nine and 10 hours of sleep. Most in the United States don’t. It’s not their fault.

My oldest child, Jacob, is in 10th grade. He plays on the junior varsity tennis team, but his life isn’t consumed by too many extracurricular activities. He’s a hard worker, and he spends a fair amount of time each evening doing homework. I think most nights he’s probably asleep by 10 or 10:30.

His school bus picks him up at 6:40 a.m. To catch it, he needs to wake up not long after 6. Nine hours of sleep is a pipe dream, let alone 10.

There’s an argument to be made that we should cut back on his activities or make him go to bed earlier so that he gets more sleep. Teens aren’t wired for that, though. They want to go to bed later and sleep later. It’s not the activities that prevent them from getting enough sleep — it’s the school start times that require them to wake up so early. More than 90 percent of high schools and more than 80 percent of middle schools start before 8:30 a.m.

Some argue that delaying school start times would just cause teenagers to stay up later. Research doesn’t support that idea. A systematic review published a year ago examined how school start delays affect students’ sleep and other outcomes. Six studies, two of which were randomized controlled trials, showed that delaying the start of school from 25 to 60 minutes corresponded with increased sleep time of 25 to 77 minutes per week night. In other words, when students were allowed to sleep later in the morning, they still went to bed at the same time, and got more sleep.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us:

• Should school start times be adjusted so teenagers can get more sleep in the morning? Why or why not?
• How would a later start time personally affect you?
• Do you agree with the author that a later start time for the school day would save money and increase student success? If so, how? If not, why not?
• What other benefits, or disadvantages, can you see in delaying school start times?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Learning & Studying

Essay 31: Do Teachers Assign Too Much Homework?

When you get home after school, how much homework will you do?
Will it keep you up late at night? Will it cause stress in your family? Or do you have homework under control?

Do your teachers assign too much homework?

In “As Students Return to School, Debate About the Amount of Homework Rages,” Christine Hauser writes:

How much homework is enough?
My daughter, Maya, who is entering second grade, was asked to complete homework six days a week during the summer. For a while, we tried gamely to keep up. But one day she turned to me and said, “I hate reading.”

I put the assignment aside.

That was my abrupt introduction to the debate over homework that is bubbling up as students across the United States head back to school.

This month, Brandy Young, a second-grade teacher in Godley, Tex., let parents know on “Meet the Teacher” night that she had no plans to load up her students’ backpacks.

“There will be no formally assigned homework this year,” Ms. Young wrote in a note that was widely shared on Facebook. “Rather, I ask that you spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success. Eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside, and get your child to bed early.”

Other conversations about homework are humming in town halls and online. Some school districts, including one near Phoenix, have taken steps to shorten the summer break, out of concern that too much is forgotten over the summer. But discussions on blogs like GreatSchools.org or StopHomework.com reveal a belief that the workload assigned to students may be too heavy.

When we asked students this same question in 2014, most commenters — but not all — voiced their opinion that homework was stressing them out. Dinah wrote:

In theory, homework seems like a good idea, just a little bit of looking over what was learned in class and answering a few questions to feel more comfortable with the material. In practice, it’s entirely different. Now I’m up till 11:30 p.m. some nights desperately trying to finish three colossal essays.

Eve agreed:

I’m an eighth grade student at an American school and my teachers pile on homework, so much where I am staying up until nearly three in the morning. I LOVE school and I truly do have a passion for learning, it’s just these extra worksheets are not teaching me anything.

And Doug B. wrote:

I’m becoming deranged from the excess of homework given to me. I have no time for any interests I have, companions and sleep.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us:

• Do your teachers assign too much homework? Or do you have just the right amount?
• Does homework cause stress and tension in your family? Or does it create opportunities to work together with your parents or siblings?
• Does it get in the way of sleep or extracurricular activities? Or are you able to manage the right balance?
• How do you usually get your homework done? At home or at school? In a quiet room, or with family or friends around? Do you tend to work alone, or do your parents or friends help?
• Is homework, including projects and writing assignments you do at home, an important part of your learning experience? Or is it not a good use of time, in your opinion? Explain.

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Essay 32: Does Your Homework Help You Learn?

New research suggests that a lot of assigned homework amounts to pointless busy work that doesn’t help students learn, while more thoughtful assignments can help them develop skills and acquire knowledge.

How would you characterize the homework you get?

In the Sunday Review article “The Trouble With Homework,” Annie Murphy Paul reviews the research on homework:

The quantity of students’ homework is a lot less important than its quality. And evidence suggests that as of now, homework isn’t making the grade. Although surveys show that the amount of time our children spend on homework has risen over the last three decades, American students are mired in the middle of international academic rankings: 17th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math, according to results from the Program for International Student Assessment released last December.

In a 2008 survey, one-third of parents polled rated the quality of their children’s homework assignments as fair or poor, and 4 in 10 said they believed that some or a great deal of homework was busywork. A new study, coming in the Economics of Education Review, reports that homework in science, English and history has “little to no impact” on student test scores. (The authors did note a positive effect for math homework.) Enriching children’s classroom learning requires making homework not shorter or longer, but smarter.

She goes on to enumerate some of the aspects of effective independent assignments, like “retrieval practice,” which basically means doing practice tests to reinforce learning and commit it to memory, and “interleaving,” in which problems are not grouped into sets by type, but rather scattered throughout an assignment, which makes the brain work harder to grasp the material.

Students:

Tell us how effective you think your homework is.

• What kinds of assignments seem pointless?
• Which ones are confusing or frustrating?
• Which ones are most engaging and interesting?
• Which ones are you fairly sure help you learn and grow?

Education Tech

Essay 33: Are the Web Filters at Your School Too Restrictive?

Five years ago we asked students about the web filters used in their schools, and the question became the single most commented-on Student Opinion question we’ve ever asked.

In honor of Banned Websites Awareness Day, held on Sept. 28, and the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week taking place all this week, we’re asking this same question again:

Are web filters in schools still an issue?
What websites, blogs and social networks are blocked in your school? How has this affected teaching and learning for you?

In response to our 2011 question, students generally used their comments to express a deep frustration with the web filters at their school. They complained how “absurd,” “ridiculous,” “stupid,” “suffocating” and “creepy” they thought their school filters were.

Students pointed to a host of popular sites that were blocked, such as YouTube, Buzzfeed, Wattpad, Tetris, Instagram, Google Translate, Wikipedia or streaming music sites like Pandora. And they resented how filters stymied their ability to do online research on a range of subjects — on plants, for example.

• Nat wrote, “It’s censorship, plain and simple, when you can’t access more than a handful of news sites and some purely educational, not opinion-based sites.”

• Most students agreed with that sentiment.

• Gheff wrote: “Just recently I was doing a project on Super Smash Bros. and its history for web design. I could not even get to the REAL website which gives information from the creator and what will happen next with the game. For this I had to change my topic to something I was not really wanting to learn more on.”

• Olivia added, “The other day I was researching birth control for my health class and it took me way longer than it should have to complete my essay because the web filter wouldn’t let me open any websites including Planned Parenthood.”

• Tyler wrote, “It’s too much when I can’t even go on an informal website talking about breast cancer or sexual abuse because they have the words ‘breast’ or ‘sexual’.”

In a statement about Banned Websites Awareness Day, the American Association of School Librarians, a division of the American Library Association, includes the following background:

Usually the public thinks of censorship in relation to books, however there is a growing censorship issue in schools and school libraries — overly restrictive filtering of educational websites reaching far beyond the requirements of the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA). Students, teachers, and school librarians in many schools are frustrated daily when they discover legitimate educational websites blocked by filtering software installed by their school.

Filtering websites does the next generation of digital citizens a disservice. Students must develop skills to evaluate information from all types of sources in multiple formats, including the Internet. Relying solely on filters does not teach young citizens how to be savvy searchers or how to evaluate the accuracy of information.

Over extensive filtering also extends to the use of online social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blogger, etc. In order to make school more relevant to students and enhance their learning experiences, educators need to be able to incorporate those same social interactions that are successful outside of school into authentic assignments in the school setting. Unfortunately, filters implemented by school districts also block many of the social networking sites.

Students:
We want to hear what you think. Tell us:

• What internet sites are blocked in your school and why?
• How have web filters affected teaching and learning at your school? How have they affected your experience as a student?
• Do you agree with the American Library Association that overly restrictive filtering of educational websites “does the next generation of digital citizens a disservice”? Why? If so, what would you say to your principal or school board if asked to argue for making your school’s filters less restrictive?

Teachers:
Find many more ideas and resources for Banned Books Week here.

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Essay 34: Does Technology in the Classroom Ever Get in the Way of Learning?

School districts have spent millions of dollars wiring classrooms, installing smart boards, and purchasing laptops and iPads so that students will have more access to technology.
The intention is that all these devices will increase student learning.

But is it possible that the opposite is sometimes true? Could technology in the classroom ever be getting in the way of student learning?

In the January 2015 Op-Ed essay “Can Students Have Too Much Tech?,” Susan Pinker writes:

… More technology in the classroom has long been a policy-making panacea. But mounting evidence shows that showering students, especially those from struggling families, with networked devices will not shrink the class divide in education. If anything, it will widen it.

In the early 2000s, the Duke University economists Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd tracked the academic progress of nearly one million disadvantaged middle-school students against the dates they were given networked computers. The researchers assessed the students’ math and reading skills annually for five years, and recorded how they spent their time. The news was not good.

“Students who gain access to a home computer between the 5th and 8th grades tend to witness a persistent decline in reading and math scores,” the economists wrote, adding that license to surf the Internet was also linked to lower grades in younger children.

In fact, the students’ academic scores dropped and remained depressed for as long as the researchers kept tabs on them. What’s worse, the weaker students (boys, African-Americans) were more adversely affected than the rest. When their computers arrived, their reading scores fell off a cliff.

We don’t know why this is, but we can speculate. With no adults to supervise them, many kids used their networked devices not for schoolwork, but to play games, troll social media and download entertainment. (And why not? Given their druthers, most adults would do the same.)

The problem is the differential impact on children from poor families. Babies born to low-income parents spend at least 40 percent of their waking hours in front of a screen — more than twice the time spent by middle-class babies. They also get far less cuddling and bantering over family meals than do more privileged children. The give-and-take of these interactions is what predicts robust vocabularies and school success. Apps and videos don’t.

If children who spend more time with electronic devices are also more likely to be out of sync with their peers’ behavior and learning by the fourth grade, why would adding more viewing and clicking to their school days be considered a good idea?

Students:
Read the entire article, then tell us:

• Have you noticed technology in the classroom ever getting in the way of student learning? How common is it for students to get distracted by surfing the web, playing video games or using social media on your school computers? How frequently do teachers underutilize expensive technology in your school?

• How well do you think your teachers use technology in the classroom? Can you describe a time when a teacher really advanced your learning by using technology?

• What recommendations would you give your teachers to use technology even more effectively?

• This 2011 article profiles a Silicon Valley school that was deliberately low-tech. Why would tech-savvy parents choose to send their children to a school that frowns on educational technology? Do you think these parents were making the right decision? Why?

Teachers & Grading 

Essay 35: What Do You Wish Your Teachers Knew About You?

Do you ever wish your teachers knew you better — knew what your life was like outside of school?
Do you ever feel your teachers just don’t get you — who you really are as a person?

What do you wish your teachers knew about you?

In the article “What Kids Wish Their Teachers Knew,” Donna De La Cruz writes:

When Kyle Schwartz started teaching third grade at Doull Elementary School in Denver, she wanted to get to know her students better. She asked them to finish the sentence “I wish my teacher knew.”

The responses were eye-opening for Ms. Schwartz. Some children were struggling with poverty (“I wish my teacher knew I don’t have pencils at home to do my homework”); an absent parent (“I wish my teacher knew that sometimes my reading log is not signed because my mom isn’t around a lot”); and a parent taken away (“I wish my teacher knew how much I miss my dad because he got deported to Mexico when I was 3 years old and I haven’t seen him in six years”).

The lesson spurred Ms. Schwartz, now entering her fifth teaching year, to really understand what her students were facing outside the classroom to help them succeed at school. When she shared the lesson last year with others, it became a sensation, with the Twitter hashtag “#iwishmyteacherknew” going viral. Other teachers tried the exercise and had similar insights. Many sent her their students’ responses.

In her recently published book, “I Wish My Teacher Knew: How One Question Can Change Everything For Our Kids,” Ms. Schwartz details how essential it is for teachers and families to be partners.

“I really want families to know how intentional teachers are about creating a sense of community and creating relationships with kids,” Ms. Schwartz said. “Kids don’t learn when they don’t feel safe or valued.”

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us …

• Finish the sentence: “I wish my teacher knew. …” What would you write?
• What do your teachers not understand about you or your fellow students that you wish they did? Is there anything about your life outside the classroom that teachers should know — and that might increase learning and improve teacher-student relationships?
• How do you think your teachers see you? Do you feel they know the “real” you?
• Should all teachers ask their students this question at the beginning of each school year? Why?

Essay 36: When Has a Teacher Inspired You?

Most of us have had a teacher who has made a difference in our lives — helping us see the world differently, making us feel proud, motivating us to try harder.
Some of us have even been lucky enough to have more than one.

Has a teacher ever inspired you? When?

Tara Parker-Pope’s article “Laws of Physics Can’t Trump the Bonds of Love” shares the story of a high school physics teacher who inspires his students year after year.

Jeffrey Wright is well known around his high school in Louisville, Ky., for his antics as a physics teacher, which include exploding pumpkins, hovercraft and a scary experiment that involves a bed of nails, a cinder block and a sledgehammer.

But it is a simple lecture — one without props or fireballs — that leaves the greatest impression on his students each year. The talk is about Mr. Wright’s son and the meaning of life, love and family.

It has become an annual event at Louisville Male Traditional High School (now coed, despite its name), and it has been captured in a short documentary, “Wright’s Law,” which recently won a gold medal in multimedia in the national College Photographer of the Year competition, run by the University of Missouri.

Students: Tell us …

• When has a teacher inspired you?
• Was it something specific that they said or did? Or, was it just something about the way they teach or interact with students that affected you? Explain or tell a story.
• Do you think you or your classmates ever inspire your teachers? In what ways?

School Rules & Student Life

Essay 37: Are School Dress Codes a Good Idea?

Do dress codes help to foster an environment conducive to learning?
Do they help prevent clothing (or the lack of) from becoming a distraction for students?

Or are school dress codes sexist, old-fashioned and ineffective?

Are school dress codes a good idea?

KJ Dell’Antonia addresses these questions in this 2014 Motherlode post:

The dress code — for girls, at least — has become a complicated issue. Is it intended to protect the girls against unwanted advances, or the boys against temptation? If the intent is to foster an atmosphere conducive to learning, why would spaghetti straps interfere with an understanding of algebraic equations? Does demanding that young women disregard the siren song of advertising and the media and leave the midriff-baring tops on the racks teach them that they are worth more than their appearance, or that their appearance is the measure of who they are? Is sexy strong, or is sexy dangerous?

“Today’s canny girls,” Peggy Orenstein writes in The Battle Over Dress Codes, “emboldened by #YesAllWomen Twitter culture, scold their elders, ‘Don’t tell us what to wear; teach the boys not to stare.’ They are correct: Addressing leering or harassment will challenge young men’s assumptions. Imposing purdah on middle school girls does the opposite.” Still, she argues:

Taking on the right to bare arms (and legs, and cleavage and midriffs) as a feminist rallying cry seems suspiciously Orwellian. Fashions catering to girls emphasize body consciousness at the youngest ages — Gap offers “skinny jeans” for toddlers, Target hawks bikinis for infants. Good luck finding anything but those itty-bitty shorts for your 12-year-old. So even as I object to the policing of girls’ sexuality, I’m concerned about the incessant drumbeat of self-objectification: the pressure young women face to view their bodies as the objects of others’ desires.

All of those arguments apply only if you accept the premise that dress codes are, and should be, about sex. As someone who grew up in a time and place where all kinds of rules of dress applied, I can see the argument behind that conclusion, and yet I question it. The ladies did not set aside their white shoes after Labor Day because they just got the gentleman too hot under the collar to be appropriate for the cooler months. Jackets were not worn by those gentlemen at certain times and in certain places because shirt sleeves were too revealing. There was a societal agreement, maybe rooted in sex simply because most things are, that some clothes were more appropriate in some places than in others.

Sometimes that societal agreement was silly, or overly restrictive, particularly of women’s movement, or too insistent on gender norms that gradually became outdated. Most of those more extreme constraints have fallen aside. What is left behind, in the form of school dress codes requiring collars, limiting tank tops and decreeing a certain length for shorts and skirts, could be viewed as less about sex than about putting school on the list of places where there are standards, and where the freedom to do whatever we want, whenever we want shouldn’t and doesn’t apply.

Unless it’s unevenly applied (as in schools where the dress code applies only to girls, or is enforced more stringently for some students than for others), that form of dress code seems to me to be a reasonable way of setting school apart.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us:

• Does your school have a dress code? What is its purpose? Do you think it is effective? Why?
• Are school dress codes a good idea in general? Why?
• Do they help keep students focused on academics? Do they help keep clothing from becoming a distraction?
• Do you agree with Ms. Dell’Antonia that a thoughtful dress code can “be a reasonable way of setting school apart”? That it can put “school on the list of places where there are standards, and where the freedom to do whatever we want, whenever we want shouldn’t and doesn’t apply”?
• Do dress codes fall more heavily on girls? Do they impinge on students’ self-expression? Do the dress codes themselves, and how fairly they are enforced, become a distraction?
• What do you think is the ideal dress code for school? What clothing is inappropriate for school? Why?

Essay 38: How Does Your School Deal With Students Who Misbehave?

No matter what kind of school you attend, students sometimes get in trouble.
Maybe they get into a fight, get caught cheating, pull a prank, use alcohol or an illegal drug, or disrespect a teacher or another student. What happens next?

How does your school deal with a student who misbehaves?

Patricia Leigh Brown and Jim Wilson document an alternative discipline program in Oakland, Calif., called restorative justice that helps students learn from crises and defuse conflicts in the article “Opening Up, Students Transform a Vicious Circle” and the related slide show “Defusing Conflict in Schools.” The slide show captions describe the program:

Restorative justice is a program increasingly offered in schools seeking an alternative to punitive “zero tolerance” policies like suspension and expulsion for students with a history of getting in trouble.

Eric Butler, the coordinator of the restorative justice program at Ralph J. Bunche High School in Oakland, Calif., does not so much teach as defuse grenades of conflict.

Mr. Butler passed a “talking stone” to a student during a circle, indicating that the student had the floor.

The approach taking root in 21 Oakland schools, and in Chicago, Denver and Portland, Ore., tries to nip problems and violence in the bud by forging closer, franker relationships among students, teachers and administrators.

It encourages young people to come up with meaningful reparations for their wrongdoing while challenging them to develop empathy for one another, often through “talking circles” led by facilitators like Mr. Butler.

Students: Tell us…

• How does your school deal with a student who misbehaves or gets in trouble?
• What kinds of punishment does your school use?
• Does your school try to help students learn from their mistakes after they get in trouble?
• What does your school do to prevent conflicts or violence in your school community?
• Do you think your school’s approach to student discipline issues is effective? Why?
• Do you have any suggestions for ways your school could do a better job in preventing future student problems, strengthening your school community or helping students learn from their mistakes?
• Do you think a restorative justice program, like the one described above, would work well at your school?

College

Essay 30: How Necessary Is a College Education?

Attaining a college degree is a milestone many people dream about — and expect to achieve.
But with the rising cost of tuition and high unemployment rates for recent graduates, is college a necessity or a luxury?

In the op-ed piece “The Imperiled Promise of College,” Frank Bruni writes:

For a long time and for a lot of us, “college” was more or less a synonym for success. We had only to go. We had only to graduate. And if we did, according to parents and high-school guidance counselors and everything we heard and everything we read, we could pretty much count on a career, just about depend on a decent income and more or less expect security. A diploma wasn’t a piece of paper. It was an amulet.

And it was broadly accessible, or at least it was spoken of that way. With the right mix of intelligence, moxie and various kinds of aid, a motivated person could supposedly get there. College was seen as a glittering centerpiece of the American dream, a reliable engine of social mobility.

I’m not sure things were ever that simple, but they’re definitely more complicated now. And that was an unacknowledged backdrop for the pitched debate last week about federal student loan rates and whether they would be kept at 3.4 percent or allowed to return to 6.8 percent. That was one reason, among many, that it stirred up so much anxiety and got so much attention.

Because of levitating costs, college these days is a luxury item. What’s more, it’s a luxury item with newly uncertain returns.

Yes, many of the sorts of service-industry jobs now available to people without higher education are less financially rewarding than manufacturing jobs of yore, and so college has in that sense become more imperative. And, yes, college graduates have an unemployment rate half that of people with only high school degrees.

But that figure factors in Americans who got their diplomas and first entered the job market decades ago, and it could reflect not just what was studied in college but the already established economic advantages, contacts and temperaments of the kind of people who pursue and stick with higher education.

It doesn’t capture the grim reality for recent college graduates, whose leg up on their less educated counterparts isn’t such a sturdy, comely leg at the moment. According to an Associated Press analysis of data from 2011, 53.6 percent of college graduates under the age of 25 were unemployed or, if they were lucky, merely underemployed, which means they were in jobs for which their degrees weren’t necessary. Philosophy majors mull questions no more existential than the proper billowiness of the foamed milk atop a customer’s cappuccino. Anthropology majors contemplate the tribal behavior of the youngsters who shop at the Zara where they peddle skinny jeans.

Students:

Give us your outlook on future job prospects and the value of a college education.

• What is college for? To gain skills for future employment? Immerse oneself in a field of study? Experience character-defining events? Something else?
• If you are a current college student or recent graduate, are you satisfied with the path you’ve taken? Why or why not?
• If you are neither in college now nor a college graduate, do you aspire to earn a college degree?
• Are you considering a less traditional route to earning one than going straight from high school to a four-year college?

Essay 40: Is College Overrated?

A technology entrepreneur named Peter Thiel is providing seed money to create start-up companies to 24 people under 20 who agree to drop out of school, partly because he believes that higher education is generally not worth the time and expense.
To you, is college essential or overrated? Would you consider applying for one of the Thiel fellowships?

In the Bits blog post “Want Success in Silicon Valley? Drop Out of School,” Claire Cain Miller reports on a fellowship awarding $100,000 each to 24 promising young people who drop out of school to pursue tech start-ups:

The fellowship addresses two of the country’s most pressing problems, Mr. Thiel says: a bubble in higher education and a dearth of Americans developing breakthrough technologies.

Much of the technological talent these days is going into Web sites and apps. Mr. Thiel says he has no problem with those — Facebook has made him a billionaire. But “there’s a more urgent need for innovation” in other areas, he said, like biomedical technology, nanotechnology, transportation and energy.

Mr. Thiel, a contrarian investor and libertarian known for his controversial views, knows that suggesting that education is not always worth it strikes at the core of many Americans’ beliefs. But that is exactly why he is doing it.

“We’re not saying that everybody should drop out of college,” he said. The fellows agree to stop getting a formal education for two years but can always go back to school. The problem, he said, is that “in our society the default assumption is that everybody has to go to college.”

“I believe you have a bubble whenever you have something that’s overvalued and intensely believed,” Mr. Thiel said. “In education, you have this clear price escalation without incredible improvement in the product. At the same time you have this incredible intensity of belief that this is what people have to do. In that way it seems very similar in some ways to the housing bubble and the tech bubble.”

In Silicon Valley, following in the footsteps of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Evan Williams by dropping out of school might make sense. But many employers would never look at a résumé that does not list a college degree, and of course some professions require advanced degrees. As the Times reporter Catherine Rampell has written, the job market is bad for college graduates right now but even worse for nongraduates.

But Mr. Thiel said the recession had opened parents’ and students’ eyes to the problems with the belief in higher education.

“I think a program like this would have been unthinkable in 2007, but I think you increasingly have people who are graduating from college, not being able to get good jobs, moving back home with their parents,” he said. “I think there’s a surprising openness to the idea that something’s gone badly wrong and needs to be fixed.”

Students:

Tell us what you think about the value of college and about programs like the Thiel fellowship and the Uncollege movement.

• Is college essential?
• Or might other types of experiences be more valuable and more worthy of pursuit?
• Do you agree or disagree with Mr. Thiel that it’s time to rethink college?

Work & Careers

Essay 41: What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

It’s one of those questions you’ve probably thought about countless times since you were little.
And, as you get older, the question can start to feel more real, especially when teachers, parents and even friends start asking.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

If you have it all figured out, then great. If not, then just be patient. That’s what Angela Duckworth advises recent college graduates in this article. She writes:

For all their grandeur and euphoria, graduation ceremonies can be harrowing. Until that momentous day, you’re a student whose job is to do what your teacher asks. Now you have to ask things of yourself — but what?

If you’re relying on a commencement speaker to set your compass, you may still be confused at day’s end. In my experience, it’s common to hear “Follow your passion” from the podium. This is great counsel if, in fact, you know what that passion is. But what if you don’t?

Young graduates might imagine that discovering your passion happens the way it does in a movie: with a flash of insight and a trumpet blast. Before that flash, you were struggling to find yourself, and in the next moment, you know exactly who you were meant to be.

As a psychologist who studies world-class achievers, I can say the reality of following your passion is not very romantic. It takes time to develop a direction that feels so in-the-bones right that you never want to veer from it.

Thus, my advice to young graduates is not to “follow your passion” but rather, to “foster your passion.”

Ms. Duckworth then makes three recommendations:

1. Move toward what interests you.
2. Seek purpose.
3. Finish strong.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us:

• What do you want to be when you grow up? Why?
• Do you know? Have you always known, at least since you were little? Or are you still looking for your “passion,” as Ms. Duckworth writes? And are you ever worried you won’t find it?
• Do you think you will have a career that you love? Is that the most important quality you’ll look for in a job? Or do you think providing for your family or making enough money will trump your desire to enjoy your job?
• Are there other motivations that will help guide what kind of career you have — such as working toward social justice or following your religious beliefs?
• Do you have particular talents or skills that you think you should put to good use?
• What do you think about Ms. Duckworth’s advice? Have you already started to “move toward what interests you,” for example, by trying out different jobs, internships or volunteer opportunities?

Essay 42: Do You Have a Life Calling?

In his Op-Ed column, David Brooks shared his observations about commencement speeches.
He wrote that many speakers get it backward, and rather than exhorting new graduates to follow their dreams, they should be urging them to find an external purpose to dedicate themselves to.

Have you already found your calling in life? What issues and problems stir your interests and passions?

In his column “It’s Not About You,” David Brooks surmised:

“Most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life.”

He went on:

Most people don’t form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.

The graduates are also told to pursue happiness and joy. But, of course, when you read a biography of someone you admire, it’s rarely the things that made them happy that compel your admiration. It’s the things they did to court unhappiness — the things they did that were arduous and miserable, which sometimes cost them friends and aroused hatred. It’s excellence, not happiness, that we admire most.

Finally, graduates are told to be independent-minded and to express their inner spirit. But, of course, doing your job well often means suppressing yourself. As Atul Gawande mentioned during his countercultural address last week at Harvard Medical School, being a good doctor often means being part of a team, following the rules of an institution, going down a regimented checklist.

Today’s grads enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, they’ll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center. Fulfillment is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks, and can’t be pursued directly. Most of us are egotistical and most are self-concerned most of the time, but it’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.

Students:

Tell us what you think about this argument and about how you think you might “lose yourself” in your life and career.

• When you think about the future, do you think primarily about following your dreams and finding yourself?
• Or do you think about devoting yourself to an existing problem or calling?
• What “sacred commitments” may well define and shape your life?