00:00:05 Maya El-Sharif, Pioneer Academics: Hi, everybody! Welcome in, welcome in. I’m so excited to be here with you all today, and as people are trickling in, I’m going to introduce myself, the session, and our speakers. I am Maya El-Sharif, I’m a Pioneer alumni, a recent graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, and a second year at Duke Law.
00:00:23 Maya El-Sharif, Pioneer Academics: Today’s session will explore the skills, mindsets, and behaviors that enable individuals to make a real impact.
00:00:29 Maya El-Sharif, Pioneer Academics: And how high school students, like many of you, can begin cultivating to lead, innovate, and inspire in college and beyond.
00:00:36 Maya El-Sharif, Pioneer Academics: Today’s speakers are first Brian Cooper, who is the Director of Research and Development here at Pioneer Academics. Professor David Getschel is a clinical professor in the Siegel Design Institute and directs the Manufacturing and Design Engineering, or MAID, undergraduate degree program. And Professor Michael Parkin is the Erwin N. Griswold Professor of Politics at Oberlin College. And with that, I can’t wait to turn it over to our speakers for today’s session.
00:01:02 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Thank you so much, Maya, and welcome, everyone. We’re so glad to have you with us this afternoon, or this evening, or this morning, wherever you are joining us from around the world.
00:01:14 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: So, we’re gonna jump right in, and we’re… I’m so thankful to have both David Gatchell and Mike Parkin with us,
00:01:23 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: And so… What we want to talk about today is those things that really differentiate
00:01:33 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: students and individuals, leaders, faculty even, who are really making a difference, who are inspiring others, who are innovating, who are driving new things forward. And when we think about a school like Northwestern, or we think about a school like Oberlin College, where
00:01:50 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: You know, these are very selective…
00:01:53 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: colleges and universities. These are… are places where there’s a… there’s a baseline level of… of skill and performance that kind of everyone has. You know.
00:02:06 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: most everyone earned lots of 4s and 5s on AP exams, and most everyone had, you know, GPAs through the roof, and… and had a very similar profile in their, you know, extracurriculars or co-curricular activities. And so.
00:02:25 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: what are those things that maybe we don’t often think about? We tend to think about, oh yeah, these measurable, you know.
00:02:36 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: trophies of knowledge, you know, that are traditionally academic, but what are those things that maybe are less traditional? Maybe we don’t think about, but
00:02:47 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: that really make a difference. Maybe they’re… they’re in what we call the metacognitive space, or the social-emotional space, or the interpersonal space. And so we want to talk about those skills and mindsets and behaviors, and as Maya said, what you can do, even as a high school student, to begin to cultivate, or continue to cultivate those things.
00:03:11 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: So that you’re ready to hit the ground running in college and beyond. So…
00:03:16 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: With that, both David and Mike have experience
00:03:22 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: As leaders, and as directors, or deans, as administrators, and as faculty members, and so they are uniquely positioned
00:03:31 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: to help us think through some of these things. So, our first question is, you know, based on your experience, what are those skills, those mindsets, those behaviors
00:03:44 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: That, that come to mind, and that characterize in your mind.
00:03:49 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: The individuals who are truly making a difference, whether it’s on your campuses, or in your classrooms, or your labs.
00:04:02 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: I guess, Mike, I’ll go first.
00:04:05 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: I think there are a lot of different answers, Brian, but I want to start with some that many of you in the audience have heard before.
00:04:12 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: And that is, the idea of a growth mindset and the idea of resilience. There are little things that every student can do that may individually not seem to be that monumental, but over time make a huge difference.
00:04:28 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: And one of those things that you can do is you can learn from all of your failures. You can be risk… you can take risks and be willing to fail, knowing that through that failure, you can get that much better.
00:04:41 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: if you spend too much time always trying to be right, you’re gonna miss out on a lot of opportunities. And so I think the, I guess, the trust in oneself, the ability to embrace failure, is definitely a mindset that is really important.
00:05:00 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: Yeah, I would add to that, you know, this idea that, you know, Brian was talking about, how, you know, on college campuses all throughout the country, they’re filled with a lot of really smart people. That’s not the measure of immediate success. What I’ve seen over 20 years being at Oberlin is that the administrators, the faculty, the students who succeed.
00:05:19 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: have this higher level of emotional intelligence than others, and they work on it. You know, as David said, they don’t always succeed, but they learn from their failures. And what I mean by this emotional intelligence is, for example, a lot of people try to lead, right? How do you lead? How do you lead other people? Maybe you’ve got a brilliant idea because you’re a brilliant person, but how do you get other people to come along with you?
00:05:41 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: And I think the key, from what I’ve seen from other people, is you be that type of person that people want to be around, right? It’s not your personality has to be magnetic, but you have to be this type of person that other people are drawn to. And what kind of person is that? It’s a kind person, it’s a thoughtful person, it’s somebody who listens to others. And time and time again, when I look around our campus, I see a lot of people trying to lead, trying to get other people to
00:06:06 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: follow them, but they’re not doing the kind of basic work that makes them, you know, an attractive individual. Somebody who you just want to be around, somebody who’s
00:06:15 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: you know, welcoming and kind to you. And so, I’ve seen plenty of people who are really, really smart just not be able to succeed because they don’t have that kind of soft skill of being peop… being the type of people that other people want to be around.
00:06:33 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: Yeah, Brian, I’d like to follow up just on, on, Michael’s response.
00:06:38 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Nice.
00:06:39 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: some of the strongest students that I’ve had… I’ve been… and I consider myself very lucky to have worked with these students.
00:06:46 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: Are those students, when they’re working with others.
00:06:49 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: They may be able to do everything.
00:06:52 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: But they’re not going to do everything. They are going to help others or give others the confidence to do those things, and they’re happy to kind of step back.
00:07:04 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: And let others thrive. And…
00:07:09 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: students like that. I mean, in classes where they work individually, they’re doing very well, they’re getting A’s in those classes, but when they get into a class where they’re working with teammates, everybody wants to be on a team with them, because they know how good they are, but they also realize that they’re going to give me room to thrive.
00:07:26 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: They’re not gonna domineer over me, they’re gonna promote me.
00:07:31 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Well, what’s really interesting, thank you for… for all of those comments. What’s really interesting, for those of you, you know, that are… that are attending, I hope that you’re recognizing, kind of right out of the gate, how…
00:07:45 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: almost counterintuitive or… or counter-cultural, if you will, this sounds, right? Because there’s… there’s so much pressure, and there’s so much,
00:07:57 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: you know, we’re conditioned to make ourselves look good, to put ourselves front and center, right? And even when we talk about leadership, when we talk about,
00:08:09 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: you know, innovation or inspire, you know, it can be very me, me, me, me, me, and yet what we’re hearing from both Mike and
00:08:18 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: And David is…
00:08:20 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: That maybe at its root, as we… if we think about emotional intelligence and, you know, there’s this… there’s this, at least, other awareness…
00:08:30 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: If not in other-centeredness, right? That, that again runs very, very contradictory to… to what…
00:08:41 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: what we think about in the process, and so that’s actually a really interesting segue into the next question, because
00:08:53 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Obviously, college and university is different in myriad ways from the typical high school experience. But again, thinking about these types of skills and behaviors and mindsets.
00:09:11 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: What have you seen to be maybe some of the biggest adjustments
00:09:16 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: That, you know, you’re sitting there with maybe freshmen or sophomores, early students.
00:09:23 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: And you’re expecting that… or maybe it’s a skill gap, even, or adjustment, where… and these students have clearly been very successful in high school.
00:09:32 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: But yet, they’re missing some of these… these things that are, as you use the word, thrive, they’re going to really allow them and those around them to thrive. So where do you see that… that kind of steep learning curve?
00:09:50 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: For… for students who are new to your campuses or classrooms.
00:09:57 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: Michael, I’ll let you go first this time.
00:09:59 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: Okay, thanks, David. So, you know, going back to what I said earlier, there’s a certain level of maturation that takes place on every college campus, and it seems to me that the students
00:10:08 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: who embrace the newness of college, embrace the challenges of college, and mature while doing that, tend to do quite well. And so I think, you know, tying back to our earlier discussion, I think that’s very important. They’re gaining that emotional intelligence through the challenges that they face. But to get right down to the brass tacks of it, you know, like I said, I’ve been at Overland for 20 years, and something has fundamentally changed
00:10:32 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: Amongst our students, in terms of their executive functioning.
00:10:35 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: It is just not what it used to be. And I don’t know exactly why, I can’t put my finger on it, but…
00:10:43 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: it’s very difficult to succeed at a college campus if you don’t know the deadlines for your assignments, or don’t even get interested in when those deadlines might be. There’s just some really basic nuts and bolts kinds of things that you have to do to succeed. You have to know where you need to be, you have to, you know, go to your classes, you have to be prepared for your classes. I mean, faculty spend a lot of time creating syllabi.
00:11:08 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: and getting you and assigning readings, getting you ready for the class, you should do that stuff. And I think the people who are in the audience today probably don’t need to hear a lot of this, because they’re in the audience today. But I’ve noticed on our campus, some students are really struggling with what I would think are just basic nuts and bolts executive functioning things. I’ve noticed that.
00:11:31 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: Quite recently.
00:11:33 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Yeah, and what’s really interesting is, you know, that all too often, even Very high-performing high school students.
00:11:43 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: have not been challenged in the same way that a university curriculum is going to challenge them. They have maybe not had to do the level of preparation that’s required, and they’ve still performed very, very well. And so, I think that’s a really, really important
00:12:03 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: thing to bring up. Thank you. Yeah, David, go ahead.
00:12:06 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: So I’m just gonna build off what Michael was talking about a little bit, and then I’ll go in a slightly different direction, but complementary direction.
00:12:14 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: Just to that effect of executive functioning.
00:12:18 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: If you end up at an Oberlin College, or a Northwestern University, or any school where the professor takes pride in the class that they’ve created.
00:12:30 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: just out of respect for them, do read the syllabus. Read the instructions for the assignment. If you have questions, that instructor’s gonna want to receive them. They’re gonna want that feedback. There’s nothing that’s more frustrating.
00:12:44 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: Than to have put all this time and effort into something that’s hopefully going to be a guide
00:12:51 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: And nobody takes a look at it.
00:12:53 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: We… I mean, that… that does happen, and so as an instructor, it’s hard to be objective when you’ve given very what you think is clear guidance, nobody’s asked questions, yet when assignments come in.
00:13:08 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: it shows that people didn’t pay attention to that guidance. So, so make sure you take care of what you can take care of so that, you can really build upon the work that’s been done, in preparation for your arrival.
00:13:23 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: The one thing I was going to bring up before I heard Michael’s thoughts is a lot of the things that students want to work on are going to take place at the intersection of disciplines. They’re going to take place and require multiple bodies of knowledge.
00:13:43 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: And so the ability
00:13:45 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: I… not even the ability, just the acknowledgement that, oh, I might have to go back to this class that I took before, I might have to go back to this class that I took before. And this day.
00:13:57 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: Google Scholar is 25 years old. I mean, it’s… well, Google’s 25 years old, Google Scholar’s a little bit younger, but still very well established. That was a huge breakthrough. Now we have AI on our… that we can use.
00:14:11 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: There’s never been a better time to get information.
00:14:15 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: And so, leverage that. Be resourceful. Don’t look to the professor as someone who has all the answers. They are a facilitator. They have some of the answers, but the world has the rest of it.
00:14:28 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: And your ability to go and search out that information is going to make a huge difference for you as a college student.
00:14:38 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Yeah, I mean, this idea of being an active learner, an active participant, not just, you know, a passive consumer.
00:14:48 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: And, you know, bringing up this idea of interdisciplinarity, this is one of the things that many folks, including Bill Gates, including, you know, CEOs of technology companies, are talking about, that in the age of AI,
00:15:08 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Where discrete bodies of knowledge, silos of knowledge, are even more readily available than they were when Google came on. I mean, we’ve been moving down this path
00:15:21 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: For the last 25 years, as you say. But there’s something uniquely, distinctly human about being able to synthesize these things in meaningful ways, and again, part of that is…
00:15:37 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: the humanity of it. Part of what I’m struck with is, you know, you guys are calling out things that… that, again, are…
00:15:47 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: are particularly human, and as we think about the world of AI, you know, being mindful of other people. Even the idea of considering your professor as a human being.
00:15:59 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Who may have put time and effort into your syllabus, and… and that… and that your preparation, or lack thereof, has a fundamentally relational aspect.
00:16:14 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Is… is an exercise in empathy on some level, right? And that ability and that willingness to… to ask questions, to be vulnerable, to show that you don’t understand.
00:16:29 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Can be, incredibly valuable, and again, can be a real differentiator between someone who is truly learning, truly moving things forward, and someone who’s just kind of,
00:16:46 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: going through the motions. So I want to tie in the next question to, something that you said earlier, Mike. You talked about this… this concept of
00:16:58 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: you know, students kind of maturing and growing, as they go through the process. And so I’d love to know
00:17:10 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: What does that look like in terms of… what are the experiences or the environments on… on Oberlin’s campus that… that either intentionally or unintentionally, formally or informally.
00:17:27 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Help students, and are maybe particularly effective in helping students to develop some of these skills and behaviors and mindsets that we’ve been talking about.
00:17:40 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: Yeah, I think I’m really happy that you…
00:17:43 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: sort of noted the difference between the formal organized sort of events and the informal. Now, as a faculty member and as administrator, I know much more about the formal events, and I think they’re, you know, they have some value in challenging students, in terms of maturing and being in groups of other students who maybe have different ideas, different thoughts.
00:18:04 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: But it’s really the unstructured life of living on a college campus with, you know, a couple thousand other folks, that I think really helps students mature. And I want to go back to something that David said. I mean, it’s not just, you know, your technical
00:18:17 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: academic knowledge where you’re going to have failures, you’re going to have failures in your personal life, and those are going to be hugely helpful to you later on, because so much of what we’re talking about here is about your ability to just interact with others on a human level. That’s not going to go perfectly at college. There’s going to be difficult times, troubling times, and what do you take from those experiences?
00:18:40 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: And I’d like to believe that there’s so much that goes on at Northwestern’s campus, Oberon’s campus, all these campuses.
00:18:47 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: the faculties and administrators, we may not see it, but we know it’s happening. And, you know, four years of college is a time of great personal growth, as long as… as well as academic growth, but it’s that personal growth that I think is really important.
00:19:03 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: I love that perspective,
00:19:07 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: Just to those in the audience, we were given some of these questions ahead of time, and it’s really interesting to see how Michael’s
00:19:14 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: thoughts kind of complement the direction that I went in, but I couldn’t agree more. Just thinking about my own college experience and how much I did learn, how much I look upon it fondly. Sometimes I laugh at my foolishness, but it all… it all made a big difference, even decades later.
00:19:32 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: I’m fortunate, Brian, in the fact that I direct this program that has a focus on engineering design.
00:19:41 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: And so, a lot of my classes are…
00:19:47 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: we’re working on wicked problems. We’re working on challenges that require people coming together, that require people to use some of the skills that Michael has talked about in terms of consideration of teammates and communicating with one another.
00:20:06 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: And the thing that they end up having to do is, there is no answer in the back of the book.
00:20:12 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: What one of the IDO design thinking mindsets is embracing ambiguity. As you are moving forward with the process to solve this wicked problem, having a mindset, yeah, we’re gonna get there. I know it’s kind of in this morass, but this morass isn’t infinite.
00:20:29 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: I can kind of get my hands around it. It’s in there somewhere. And being able to have the creative confidence and the ability to embrace ambiguity, to trust a process that you’re following and that your teammates are following, you’re gonna get to something
00:20:46 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: That you never could have imagined. And those mindsets, in these types of experiences, these open-ended experiences, are going to help you to grow so much.
00:21:00 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Yeah, and I think that is one of the biggest differences between
00:21:09 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: The… someone who is… is really making a difference, and… and really leading, and making positive change, and…
00:21:17 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: you know, those that are, again, kind of just along for the ride. Is this idea of embracing complexity and ambiguity
00:21:25 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Recognizing that there’s not a single right answer, this idea of divergent thinking rather than convergent thinking. And again, there’s something inherently human and other
00:21:42 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: centered about that, because we’re valuing the perspective of others. So, I want to share very quickly a couple of slides, and then this is going to take us into our last question.
00:21:56 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: And then we’ll have time for a few questions from our audience. So, you may have had the opportunity to visit the Global Problem Solving Institute booth. Like David’s program at Northwestern, GPSI has scholars focusing on solving complex, wicked problems in collaborative teams.
00:22:18 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: And we have been piloting an assessment
00:22:22 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: That asks scholars to rate themselves, before and after the program on 44 different
00:22:31 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: behaviors or skills that are associated with innovation. And this same assessment is used by corporations and universities. In fact, they just did a big
00:22:44 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: you know, rollout of this with folks at Nike, right? So it was developed by some of the leaders in the field of design thinking, and I want to share with you some of what
00:22:56 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: our scholars in GPSI are coming away with, and I want to do that as a way of giving you some things to think about.
00:23:07 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: As you look for and consider
00:23:11 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: co-curricular programs and experiences, because I think you want to look for, okay, what are the types of opportunities that might allow me to practice some of these things? Because they’re not…
00:23:27 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: they’re not fixed. David started by talking about the growth mindset, right? These are not things that you’re necessarily born with. You can practice these, you can develop them. So, here are the top growth areas, and I want you to think about how these map onto the things that we’ve already talked about.
00:23:45 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: The students said, I enjoy co-creating
00:23:50 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Actively inviting others to create with me.
00:23:56 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: I actively look for opportunities to build on the ideas of others.
00:24:02 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: I productively challenge the perspective.
00:24:07 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Of others. That productively is important. As Michael said, you know, you can’t just be someone that nobody wants to be around, but you also don’t just blindly accept everything that everyone says, right?
00:24:21 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: You’re aware of your own biases, your own blind spots. You recognize you don’t know everything, and you may even be wrong about something.
00:24:33 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: You explore non-traditional and unexpected ideas, and again, often this will happen in informal ways. You avoid getting nailed down to a particular solution too early, even when you’re under time pressure.
00:24:49 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: And you can control your need for closure and stay open to ambiguous and messy data. So…
00:24:58 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Again, these tie very closely to a lot of the things that we’ve talked about, but again, very often, a typical high school experience
00:25:10 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: may offer very little opportunity to develop and practice these. So, as you’re thinking about, and the last question I’ll pose to our panelists is, you know, if you had to give a piece of advice
00:25:24 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: To our high school students in particular about, okay, how could they
00:25:32 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Begin to practice, begin to seek out opportunities, to give them rehearsal opportunities.
00:25:39 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: for these types of skills, so that they might be better positioned when they come into the freshman, you know, design thinking and communication at the McCormick School, or they… they come into the interdisciplinary freshman seminar at Oberlin. What advice would you give to our high school students?
00:26:05 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: I guess… I’ll start this time.
00:26:11 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: I’m gonna get back to… go back to the fear… I mean, don’t fear failure.
00:26:16 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: And many of you have heard that perfection, or perfectionism is…
00:26:21 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: Not gonna lead to things being good, or is the enemy of good, or whatever the phrase is.
00:26:28 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: I was thinking about this because
00:26:31 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: When we work with our Pioneer students, I’m always amazed at how accomplished and intelligent these students are.
00:26:39 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: Through their own words, when they do reflections, they talk about perfectionism.
00:26:43 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: And how they have to overcome perfectionism.
00:26:46 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: Through their success in the classroom, they are accustomed to always being right. I was one of those students, too, and I hated being wrong. I had a visceral response to being wrong.
00:26:59 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: When I got exposed to the design process, the design process said, hey.
00:27:04 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: You want to be wrong, you want to fail, because you’re going to learn so much more through your failures. And all of a sudden, that perfectionism in me got diminished.
00:27:14 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: And so, what I would like to recommend for all of you is get into situations where there’s no established right answer, there’s no answer in the back of the book, you’re gonna have to follow a process, you need to work with others, you’re gonna need to potentially fail along the way.
00:27:34 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: And demonstrate resilience. I think those are skills that are going to help you out, not only in college, but in life.
00:27:43 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: Yeah, I want to go back to something Brian just alluded to, and he said, you know, Mike said you want to be that person that other people want to be around, and I think that’s true, but I think to be that person, you want to be thinking about the well-being of others, right? That’s what makes you sort of magnetic, is that, you know, you take care of other folks. But the thing that I want to add to that is
00:28:05 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: you have to be your genuine self, right? I’m not saying, go and be the most
00:28:10 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: charismatic person, be the funniest person. If you’re not funny, you’re not funny. Don’t even try to be funny if you’re not funny. But what I’m saying is, be genuine. I think of people who I’m really drawn to.
00:28:21 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: And some of these people are very quiet and shy.
00:28:25 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: But I really like them, because they give me the sense that they care about what I’m saying. Some of the people I’m drawn to are loud, and funny, and great, and I’m drawn to them, because I feel comfortable in their presence. So, don’t try to be somebody you’re not. That’s gonna lead to definite failure. But be a genuine self, and be somebody who thinks about the well-being of others, and I think you’ll succeed
00:28:49 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: Given your intelligence and your work ethic, you’ll succeed very well in life that way.
00:28:57 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: That’s great, thank you. Maya, let’s turn it over for any questions we have from our… from our audience.
00:29:02 Maya El-Sharif, Pioneer Academics: Yeah, so one of the questions that some scholars asked was, when you have opportunities like extracurriculars, is it important to do many of those extracurriculars and showcase that on your application? And if those aren’t available to you, what are the best ways to show some of these external skills, when you’re applying to college?
00:29:24 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: I would say, Maya, it’s more important the depth that you get to go into with any of your extracurriculars.
00:29:34 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: Right? I mean, giving yourself enough time to where you can grow into a position of responsibility, a position where you’re making decisions, a position where you’re creating.
00:29:45 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: I think it’s much, much more important, because if you were to put something on a resume, for instance, just a list on a resume doesn’t convince someone to hire you. It’s what you do when you’re at a place in a meaningful way. That’s what stands out.
00:30:02 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: Yeah, I would like to add something to that. I think that’s absolutely on point. So I’ve had this conversation with our admissions team many times, and the example I’m thinking of here is… let’s say you’re a young person, and you’re really interested in chemistry, and in your high school experience, you’ve taken chemistry classes, and you’ve done really well in chemistry.
00:30:20 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: and you have an opportunity to do an additional, you know, training event. Do you do it in chemistry, or do you go to France to learn French and oil painting?
00:30:33 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: My admissions team tells me that the chemistry student who knows chemistry, but also has this interest in French and can do oil painting, that’s an interesting person. And so, you want to think about
00:30:45 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: you know, kind of yourself as a holistic being, and what that says to people. It’s great to really love chemistry and to focus on chemistry and do extracurriculars in chemistry, but also challenge yourself to do things that might surprise you and others, because that’s kind of a sign of a really interesting person, I think.
00:31:02 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Yeah, and that ties into the tinkering that we heard about earlier this morning, in the keynote, and
00:31:09 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: you know, it also ties in with what, David, you know, you were talking about, about, you know, taking risks, and… and,
00:31:17 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: you know, putting yourselves… yourself in a position where… where maybe you’re likely to fail. And, you know, again, we’ve referenced this a couple of times, but Pioneer’s done some, some research and… and has a white paper out about 3 or 4 co-curricular activities is… seems to be kind of the sweet spot, right, for… for scholars who have been, you know, really successful.
00:31:41 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: in meeting their college admissions goals. And, you know, much beyond that,
00:31:47 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: you know, not so much. So, being selective, and I think probably a mixture of depth and breadth is what we want to look for.
00:31:59 Maya El-Sharif, Pioneer Academics: That’s awesome advice. In turning to our last question, one scholar asked, and I think you all touched on this, with the diligence of syllabi and how you can dedicate yourself in the classroom and outside the classroom, but what are some ways you would recommend students improve their discipline and time management skills, now as high school students?
00:32:20 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: I’ll start on this one, because I have kind of an immediate reaction.
00:32:24 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: When you come to college.
00:32:26 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: all of this, what appears to be free time, is not free time, right? You should be filling this free time with work. Yeah, play Frisbee on the quad’s really fun, it’s really cool, but I think high school students get to college, and they think, wow, I only have 4 classes, and they only meet at these times? Oh, this is going to be easy, and it’s not. You’re expected to be spending a lot of time preparing for those classes, so…
00:32:49 Michael Parkin, Oberlin College: Don’t fool yourself in thinking that all free time is free, because it… it ain’t.
00:32:54 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: Yeah, I guess I would add to that, and I totally agree, Michael. In fact, I had that mindset when I was… and I quickly woke up from it.
00:33:05 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: It’s kind of obvious when we work on a project with others that maybe there are some tools that we need to use to manage that project. But the idea of managing ourselves
00:33:17 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: that isn’t something that’s immediately obvious. In fact, sometimes it seems silly. Particularly when your memories are as good as your memories are. You’re like, I can keep everything in my head, I can keep it straight.
00:33:29 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: But developing the strategies. I have seen too many students that don’t have the proper strategies not do well, but they’re incredibly bright, and students that are bright, but not maybe as bright as the students that aren’t doing well, who have the best strategies, who just shine.
00:33:47 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: And so…
00:33:49 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: sit down, understand, are you good with time management, or are you not? And if you aren’t, what are some strategies for time management? Do you have to go through the tedious process of setting a schedule for yourself? Don’t be so…
00:34:05 David Gatchell, Northwestern University: arrogant, and I’m gonna use that word because I’m gonna… I was that way, I was arrogant. I was like, I don’t need this, and I needed to fail in order to understand that I needed that structure myself.
00:34:17 Maya El-Sharif, Pioneer Academics: Thank you so much to all of our panelists. We really appreciated this conversation, and I hope all of the people who have logged on attend our next session, The Role of Leadership and Civic Engagement in Talent Development. Thank you so much. Bye, everybody.
00:34:33 Brian Cooper, Pioneer: Thank you.
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