Graduated. Employed. Still stuck.
I ran into a former student recently, let’s call him "Mark". He graduated from college. He’s smart, capable, kind.
And six years after his high school graduation, he’s still working at Domino’s. Not because he lacks ambition or intelligence, but because he still doesn’t know what he wants to do or how to get there.
He looked at me and said, “I just feel stuck.”
I’ve been teaching for 20 years, and I hear versions of this story constantly.
Students who did everything they were told to do, earned the degree, checked the boxes, and still don’t have a roadmap for building a life that actually fits who they are.
What worries me most isn’t that people feel stuck, it’s that we treat feeling stuck like something to hide or to be ashamed of.
Stuck isn’t failure, it’s feedback.
It's time to normalize these conversations. We need to give young adults the language, or the permission, to say, “I need help figuring this out.”
This is the gap we don’t talk about enough when we talk about college and career readiness.
Does this sound familiar to you or someone you care about? Where do you see young adults getting stuck after "doing everything right"?
I ran into a former student recently, let’s call him "Mark". He graduated from college. He’s smart, capable, kind.
And six years after his high school graduation, he’s still working at Domino’s. Not because he lacks ambition or intelligence, but because he still doesn’t know what he wants to do or how to get there.
He looked at me and said, “I just feel stuck.”
I’ve been teaching for 20 years, and I hear versions of this story constantly.
Students who did everything they were told to do, earned the degree, checked the boxes, and still don’t have a roadmap for building a life that actually fits who they are.
What worries me most isn’t that people feel stuck, it’s that we treat feeling stuck like something to hide or to be ashamed of.
Stuck isn’t failure, it’s feedback.
It's time to normalize these conversations. We need to give young adults the language, or the permission, to say, “I need help figuring this out.”
This is the gap we don’t talk about enough when we talk about college and career readiness.
Does this sound familiar to you or someone you care about? Where do you see young adults getting stuck after "doing everything right"?
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