How to Help Your Young Adult Make Smart Life Decisions After High School (DF#188)

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:00]:
It's unnatural to be forced into the situation where you're around thousands of strangers. That's not natural to people. And then also when parents do this, I've also seen this fail fairly often. And then the young adult feels like something was wrong with them because they were forced into this unnatural situation in order to remedy another unnatural situation, which was COVID.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:21]:
Aloha folks and welcome back to degree free. Here's something that a lot of our parents from the launch program have said, and this is actually a quote from one of the parents, but this general sentiment has been repeated and repeated. Quote, high school did a terrible job of preparing him for adulthood, especially since he wrapped it up with two COVID years. And I've been thinking about this a lot lately. We just recently had this conversation and this has been the experience of so many of the young adults that we work with in the launch program. Just in general, the high schools don't do a really good job of preparing them for adulthood. But I think we're in a little bit of a strange time where we're really not sure what high school is now. And this is the first time that I've ever talked about this podcast and this isn't really a fully formed thought.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:02]:
So we're kind of just talking about it here. But to me, high schools in the last couple of generations have been pretty much one thing, and that's going to be a college pipeline. It was never questioned whether or not it was a good thing to go to college. There was no conversation about whether or not your life would be better with or without it. There was no conversation about life outcomes. There was no conversation about how much is it gonna cost the financial decision. It wasn't even a financial decision, really. It was just like, okay, well, you're gonna go into the best college that you can get into whatever the best means.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:33]:
And largely the better the college quote, the higher the ticket price. There was a hardly ever discussions about affordability or about anything like that. And now with the whole degree free movement, especially people, but companies as well, starting to really think about the value of a college degree and really frame it for what it is, especially people, which is, it is an economic decision. It is a financial decision in both money and time. Those two resources that you're thinking about for your young adult, is this worth it? And as the degree free movement has picked up steam from both ends, from families that are choosing to not send their children to college, from the young adults themselves that are saying, even if when their families do want them to go to college saying, Hey, I'm not going to go. And then the companies on the other end saying, Hey, you don't need a college degree to work here. Please degree free people are more than welcome. And it has left high school in this weird spot where they're wondering, and I feel like you can see it from the young adults that we work with in the LAUNCH program.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:31]:
Well, what is high school now? Is it a pipeline to college? And so what do they teach? Or is it supposed to be something that a lot of our parents say and what this parent says preparing him for adulthood? And I'm asking you in the question now, what is the point of high school?

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:46]:
I know one of the things we're going to hear when we talk about this is it's parents' jobs to prepare their kids for adulthood. And while that is true, you cannot deny the fact that young adults are spending forty hours a week, a full work week they're spending in school and to pretend schools have no responsibility, especially when kids are required to be there, to prepare them for entering whatever the next phase is is ridiculous.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:09]:
Hey there. I hope that you're loving this episode of the degree free podcast. We spend a ton of time every week creating this content for you. So my only ask is you take a quick second to leave a review or thumbs up on whatever platform you're on. It's one of the best and easiest ways that you can support this podcast, and this simple action can help bring more people into the degree free community. At degree free, we wanna help as many people as we can thrive and succeed without needing a college degree. Your review will be a step in that direction. If you could do this small favor right now, pause this and leave a review.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:40]:
It would truly mean the world to us. Thank you and back to the show.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:44]:
I did see a teacher who, truthfully, I can't stand most of the things that she says. She's a TikTok creator. Basically, she says the schools are poising to just not have as many teachers. And this is definitely a controversial take that I have. I almost wanted to stitch it and say, prove why there should be more of you. Prove why there should be more of this, which I think is an echo of the sentiment that you were saying. Because her issue, she said, high school is not supposed to be just career and technical training. And I said, well, then what is it supposed to be? Because currently what it is, is a pipeline to college debt and student loans.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:12]:
The kids who do not get swept up in the student loan debt funnel are left to the wayside because teachers don't want to be college and career training people. Instead, they would prefer to be, pseudo academic prep people. It's interesting because when I see the unwillingness of a lot of teachers, I think, to pivot and actually do what is needed, because I think a lot of people are questioning exactly as you said. What is the point of this? Because before, if you're going to go to school, the point of it is to prepare you for the work force. Actually, that was the original reason. And when I talk about this, I am going back to the nineteen sixties. So I'm talking quite a long time ago before we had this incentivized loan program that caused all of the incentives of high schools to be whacked out and gave them this metric of college acceptance that they could use to say, look at how successful we are, look at how good we are. And now, because they don't want to stop using that metric because it makes them feel good.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:01]:
It makes them feel smart. It makes it feel like they're pursuing some noble academic thing. It seems like, and this is from this teacher who was talking, she's fighting against essentially the evolution of high school education. It is broken. That's for sure. The amount of high schoolers that can barely read is embarrassingly high for our country. And when you get people who are refusing to focus on things that actually matter, like basic literacy and math skills, and then life skills, because that is what people actually need. They do not need college prep to get them to the next level, to relearn what they learned in high school for more money, because that's what's going on with a lot of high schools.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:37]:
And I think now the shift is going to be, and is going to have to be far more towards using AI to curate curriculum far more towards self led learning because this teacher was describing this dystopian future future where kids go to a library and for two hours a day, they have structured learning that teaches them basic math and literacy skills. And in my head, I just went, what's the problem with that? I think that's probably better than most of your students are experiencing now. I think that has more value. I think you'd have higher adherence levels. If that was the only requirement you had for high school students and they were allowed to work in something that interests them. I believe that is a better solution. I believe that would have better outcomes than the current high school system that we have. And I think obviously while I have an extreme view of this, I believe that we're going to have to find some sort of middle ground and parents know that the system's not serving their kids and gen Z know that it's not serving them either, but nobody really knows what's supposed to fill the gap because there's all of these new forces.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:35]:
There's all AI, which definitely threatens teaching in a major way because curriculum design and being able to present dynamic material at a rapidly updating pace is something that teachers just can't really do at the speed of the internet. It's going to be interesting to see how it pans out as to whether or not high schools accept that their place now is a testing ground for careers, or if they continue to fight and lean more into trying to be college prep and sending people into student loan debt who don't need to be going to college at all.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:01]:
The feedback loops are much quicker when it comes to retention or learning and the customization that you can have, or the individuality that you can have with a specific topic or a specific learnings saying, okay, I don't understand this concept. Can you explain it to me like this? And I mean, everything's biased, I suppose. But instead of being, you can ask it as many times to explain it in as many ways as you need to understand and comprehend whatever concept that you're trying to learn. And so, yes, with the design and what they're learning, but then also how they're learning and then getting the feedback that is absolutely necessary in order to become proficient in skills is huge. But yeah, I think at its core right now, high school is in a really, really precarious place because they're wondering what is our purpose. And the admins are definitely wondering that with the declining college enrollment rates and then the teachers themselves, as you've been talking about with this one person, but many other teachers are wondering as well. What is the point of my job? What do I do? Because before it was to educate them about this, that, and the other, and that is still the case. I mean, there's the job is always to be teach, but the underlying reason why is undergoing a monumental shift right now.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:12]:
And it's just a shift back to how it was. And there is nothing new under the sun. I mean, it's just always revolving and always revolving and always revolving. Anyway, that was a long tangent, but I think it was neat to be said, or at least I wanted to bring it up for myself because this is the first time that I ever expressly brought it up and brought it up into the world because I've been thinking about it, but I'm glad that I was able to get it out today. But, yeah, terrible job at preparing him for adulthood. And then she goes on to say, especially since he wrapped it up with two COVID years. And to be honest, some people were affected more by this than others, depending on the states that you lived in, depending on the county, or even depending on the individual school that your child went to. But this was definitely a sentiment that we heard multiple times from multiple families all over the country in our launch program.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:56]:
It didn't matter from East Coast, West Coast, from North, South.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:59]:
Alaska, Florida.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:00]:
Yeah, exactly. Like I said, some places not as much, but some places even more what we just talked about, which is high school is going through this identity crisis of not knowing what they are. And then when you compound it with the COVID restrictions and everything there, it was just the perfect storm. I wanted to address this sentiment and I don't want it to address these concerns on this podcast. It's something that we've been thinking about. I think the first thing here is identifying what is preparing him for adulthood. This goes back to this parent and the parents that come through our launch program also not being able to be satisfied or being able to define what the role of high school is. At the end of the day, she wouldn't be saying this if it weren't for that, she had an expectation

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:40]:
that it would do this and then it didn't

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:42]:
exactly terrible job of preparing him for adulthood. But what is preparing him for adulthood? Right. Let's say that it is the lack of practical learning and time management, financial literacy, things that really matter, like learning how to find a job or learning what you need to learn to find a job and limited career exploration, specifically talking about the COVID years now, a lot of internships, job fairs, part time work got canceled. It just wasn't available. And then now you think with everything going remote, as most things did the guidance counselors already, how many times has your child been families that we've worked with? And granted, it was obviously a skewed sample because they're coming to us. They're not happy with the advice that their guidance counselor gave, but still, you're hoping that your school has a good guidance counselor and they're not just funneling you to college. But still, now with COVID pushing everything remote, the amount of times that they would go to the counselor's office is even less now that they're completely remote. And now that it's like out of sight, out of mind, at least before in school, you're walking by the office or maybe it's in a different building, but at least you're on campus and you're possibly talking with your friends and like, Hey, did you go see the guidance counselor yet? Or, Hey, have you thought about doing this? And those conversations that they have in school will be like, okay, maybe I need to think about my future a little bit more, but instead now they're completely isolated and they're having to like, maybe I have to think about things.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:07]:
Maybe I don't. But like I said, out of sight, out of mind.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:10]:
I think too, anybody that wasn't directly on a college path really got overlooked during this time as well. Cause they're just too difficult and the counselors are not skilled in actual guidance counseling and what they're skilled in is college funneling. Because of that, I think unless they had a dedicated CTE person, which is college and career and technical training, which still is just funneling people into the trades and vocational training. I think unless you had one of those and you kind of just got left out in the wind because nobody's gonna follow-up with you because you're not a point on the board. You're not gonna sign student loans. They're not gonna be able to put that up on their board, so it doesn't really matter. And so they just kind of left you alone. And as a result of that, I think that a lot of those young adults didn't get the option to do things and nobody checked on them because people whose job it is to check-in with them did not check on them.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:52]:
And because of that, I think that they missed options that they would have had otherwise to do things that were maybe a little bit more out of the box, box, a little bit more suited to what they were interested in into their needs. And because of that, they just kind of felt lost.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:04]:
Yeah. They just didn't have a clear path forward. And I think that was my second point. And so my first point of preparing him for adulthood is gonna be the lack of learning of time management skill, financial literacy, learn how to get a job. And then it's a sub point of that would be the people that would teach them that. I'd say the guidance counselors teach that. I mean, the school teachers teach it as well, but the people that would teach it weren't as available. The second point that I wanted to make is the preparing for adulthood.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:28]:
I think a a lot of that just comes from the feeling from both the young adult and the parents of just not having a clear path.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:34]:
Yeah. They have no idea where to start. Not even the slightest hint of a clue. If it's not one of the two options that a school is laid out and typically it's going to be college or trade school. If they're lucky, they'll get that as an option. And in general with high schools, and I think this has a lot to do with very limited experience that teachers have. They only have experience getting work in the teaching sphere, which has a very specific culture, very specific requirements, and honestly is a very narrow part of the job market that if your child is not going to do that, doesn't have a lot of applicable principles that they can teach. They can't really teach negotiation super well because they don't really negotiate that much.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:10]:
They can't really teach you how to interview, because the way you interview for a teaching job is very different from the way that you interview for any other job. It doesn't really teach you how to learn specific skills, because the skills that you need to be a teacher are kind of irrelevant until you actually get the job. The things that you have to to have in order to be a teacher are licenses and certifications. And so it's different because you legally have to have those things. So it doesn't matter if you come in and you have all of the compelling skills to be a teacher, if you don't have the legal license required to be a public school teacher. And because of that, teachers just don't have a really good grasp of how and also what is possible for kids to do in the market. They just don't know because they themselves didn't know that it was an option. They themselves don't know that, oh, you don't have to, like, check all these boxes outside of this really, really controlled system.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:52]:
And so they just don't understand. And they just limit students typically by their own limitations, which is what all people do. That's a huge reason why I think two high schools do a really poor job of prepping students for the job market because they have no idea what's possible.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:05]:
Yeah. And this comes back to our conversations that we've had many, many times, once again, with the families in our lunch program where you're expecting and the expectation a lot of the times is to have your child be an out of the box thinker, but being taught by very in the box people. That's not even like a slight or anything like that. There's no value judgment put on that. I'm not saying it's good. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying the career path to be a teacher is very well laid out. It's very well trodden.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:30]:
And all you have to do is just go ahead and follow the path and just do this, do this, do this, do this, cross these checkpoints, and then you can become a teacher. And, yes, you have to interview or you have to get a job. I'm not saying that it's easy. You you still have to do all that. I'm just saying that it's well trodden and it's done. Whereas if you're looking at maybe somebody's marketing career, you can go like, oh, I was a janitor to, oh, then I was like, oh, yeah. What are you guys doing over here? And they're like, oh, we're a digital marketing agency. What is that? And you're like, oh, we do this, we do this, we do this.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:56]:
Well, that's cool. And then they learn the skill of that thing, and then they go and get a job in that thing. And then now they're working in marketing. And from there, they just keep going and keep going. I think they just pong around until they get to the place that they're at now. Whereas teachers, it's not like that at all. These are the gates that you have to go through, go through them.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:15]:
Yeah. It's like going into the military because you have have to follow the levels and the things that are already laid out. It's extremely structured and there's not really wiggle room at all.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:23]:
It's not all teachers fault. I'm actually not putting blame anywhere, but that just stems from not knowing what it is that they're supposed to be doing. Teachers would be like, no, I do know what I'm supposed to be doing. It's not that which is valid.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:34]:
Sure. The overarching purpose of high school is cracking. Yes.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:37]:
It's under attack. But cracking is probably a better thing because it's not like it's a offensive thing. It's just

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:42]:
like it's crumbling. No, the force of technology and development is cracking the current old system.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:47]:
Even exacerbated by the COVID years, because now you have this very rigid structure that is already ineffective at preparing kids for adulthood. And then now we're taking the already ineffective system that is in person, personal at least. And then we're taking it and we're shifting it to an online environment. And now, okay, we have to be at this class. You have to be at this class. We have to be at this class. And then you're also not in the halls. You're not surrounded by teachers that could possibly be mentors.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:15]:
All of those things that come within your high school experience and all of that. It's very rigid. It's like, Hey, you have to be on this zoom call and then you press this link to be on this zoom call. And in between classes, instead of talking with your friends and everything like that, you get to get off of the Zoom call and turn around and look at your dad shirtless, getting coffee for the fourth time because he works at home. It was really, really exacerbated by the whole COVID thing. And with this lack of preparation for adulthood has led the parents to be apprehensive or fearful of what is going to be their child's future and what they are going to be doing with their life.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:51]:
Fear is a very good word for that because fear is panic from just not knowing what direction to turn and then not being even equipped with the most basic tools to figure out what direction they may be should turn. And it's very tough because parents during COVID were either laid off of work, which is really hard or their work changed dramatically as well. And because of that, just a bunch of household responsibilities shifted around multiple other kids. And then if there are multiple other kids with different ages, and then there's issues with childcare. And then if any of the kids have, gracious forbid, any of the kids have special needs, and now it just turns into this whirlwind of chaos. And because there's all this chaos, it's difficult to support your child's education. And not only is it difficult to support their education, but the last thing you're thinking about, you're just trying to get them to graduate. Okay, well, what are they going to do after that? Cause you're just trying to make it to whatever graduation date is that year.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:39]:
And I think it was good in a way though, because I think a lot of parents woke up during this time. They realized one, the high schools were just teaching a bunch of nonsense, to be perfectly honest, that waste kids time. And they're like, what are they teaching you? What, What is that? And then there was just a complete absence of anything useful.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:56]:
That was something that really blew my mind, talking to all the parents, that exact sentiment of now everybody's at home, right? So the parents are at home, the kids are at home and more now than ever in their life, the parents have been involved with their schoolwork because they're actually physically listening to the conversations if they don't have headphones in and everything like that. And even if they do have headphones in, they can hear what your child is saying, at least if there's a discussion or anything like that, I'd be like, what are you learning?

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:22]:
What are they telling you?

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:23]:
Or just in general, like, why are you learning that?

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:25]:
How is that a good use of time?

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:26]:
Yeah, exactly. Like, why are we learning this subject? How is that useful? And more than ever, parents have been more involved than with this has been shown by the recent uptick in the amount of homeschoolers there have been. There has been a mass exodus from the high school system, from the public school, from the private school education system. And more now than ever, parents are being like, look, I think we can do a better job here.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:51]:
And I think what people will say in response to this, oh, I can't believe that. But when you see what a lot of these parents will tell you that they saw and that they heard you go, yeah, you know what? They can, because anybody good because of the things that they were learning. And I'm sorry, but I know a lot of people say, well, you don't always have to learn things that are useful. I will push back on that. If someone is telling you that you need to learn something and they cannot answer the question, why is this not useful? And this is something I'm starting to feel more and more, but this is how our education system got so bad. I believe because I remember in school asking that question and someone just said, well, you just need to do it. That is a bad answer. And the reason I think that a lot of kids started asking that question, a lot of parents did, is because what was being taught was growing more and more useless every single year, year over year.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:36]:
So when someone asks nowadays, I think that is flipping now. And so when parents ask, how is this useful? And there is not an answer that is no longer acceptable. That is no longer valid. And that I think is really good for the future of our entire education system, because there should be a clear answer to why is this useful?

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:52]:
Yeah. And one of the things that we address in the launch program is that fear, that apprehension for their future feeling lost in the dark and trying to give guidance and actionable steps. Here's what you do. You go from, I have no idea what I want to do. Do. No idea how to get there to here's your next step. And I wanted to go through what I think high schools should be doing. Going through what we help young adults do.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:14]:
And this is the first couple of steps in the degree free way, how to help your 16 to 20 year old build the life they want. And we've talked about it ad nauseam. I mean, we've seen how powerful this is. And the last call is that we have with the families. Usually everybody's on the parents and the young adult and the participant that is in the program with us. And just to see the relief on their faces and to be like, man, okay, we have something. And I want you to feel that too. So this is super important when it comes to preparing them for adulthood.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:42]:
There's a lot of aspects to that and it's difficult to know where to start. So to make it simple, down, I thought about if we're going all the way to the beginning and having to start from scratch to prepare them for adulthood, we'd start with two things, super simple, figure out what they need to survive, especially figuring out how much money they need. Because in the society that we live in, we need money to survive. The second is how are they going to get those things that they need to survive? How are they going to get that money? Sub to that is what kind of work are they going to go after and how are they going to get that work? That's the two questions, two and a half questions that we have to answer and we can do it very, very simply. We've walked through these exercises before, but we'll walk through it again.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:24]:
So the first thing you're going to do is you're going to figure out what they need. Do not ask them about money or budgeting first. That's a really difficult question. Even for you, if somebody put you on the spot right now and asked you about how much money you need to make, no adult wants to answer that question.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:36]:
I want a million dollars.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:37]:
And $1,000,000. So don't do that. Also, because they'll probably be flippant or just say, I don't know. And then that'll be the end of the conversation, which is not the goal of this question. So what you're doing is you're asking them questions about what they want in life. And the type of questions you're asking them are the type of questions where there is a mental image associated with it. So, oh, do you wanna have a pet? And they could picture the type of pet that they wanna have. What kind of car do you wanna drive? Blah, blah, blah.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:59]:
Things that they can physically picture because it helps them to put an image in their minds of like what their life looks like in the future. And then from that, you can extrapolate how much they're going to need to make. For instance, and we use this example a lot, but if your family lives in an area where there's now a high cost of housing and they, one of their priorities or their biggest things is they want to stay where you guys are. Okay. Well, now you got to find something that's going to help them earn enough to be able to stay where you guys live. That's very much a huge constraint that now you need to optimize for that. If that is their main goal, but if they're willing to move now it's different. And so just picturing where they want to be, what they want to have, wanting things that you want to have are easier to picture, especially for young adults this age.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:34]:
They can get an image in their head of what that looks like. And then backwards from that is how you create the, you know, this is how much you're probably going to need to make.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:41]:
I think back to all of the times I've been really into personal finance for a really long time. And I remember so many of my friends asking like, Hey, can you help me get my life in order? To be very honest, I was actually horrible at it. The reason why I was horrible at it was because I approached it from the wrong side of the problem. I approached it front to back or I approached it like, okay, well, we need a budget first. And then once we establish a budget downstream from that, we can then go ahead and fix our life. And we can be like, Hey, here we go. Here we go. Here we go.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:12]:
And that is effective. If you can get somebody to engage with you and get somebody to accurately give you the numbers, the real numbers that was really, really difficult for the very few people of which we actually got to the end of it. And we said, okay, here's your budget. The amount of people that stuck to the budget was pretty much close to zero.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:30]:
Cause there's not a visual reason why.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:31]:
Exactly right. The motivation behind it wasn't clear for them at the end. So you're telling me Ryan, the goal is to just be out of debt. And okay. That's cool. But like I make the payments now, so what's the problem? Okay. Well, you're kind of stressed out, which is why you're talking to me, but fine. And I didn't have a really good reason.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:46]:
I wholeheartedly believe this. I don't know because I didn't do it back then, but I wholeheartedly believe had I taken this approach that we take now where I were to ask them, Hey, paint me a word picture of what you want your ideal life to look like. You tell me, and I'm just going to sit here and we're just going to write these things down, which is why in the workbooks in the, free freeway, we give all of the necessary worksheets to write all of this down. And then if I had just written all of those down and then worked backwards from that. So you're saying that you want to live in a two bedroom, one bathroom house on this side of town with a roommate. Okay. Well, that's $3,000 because that's an expensive part of the town and that's $1,500 for your portion of it. And you're saying that you want to own an animal.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:29]:
And then, so you back that out and just make some estimated guesses. I'm positive. Like I know now one making the budget sheet wouldn't have felt like pulling teeth as much as it felt like pulling teeth.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:40]:
Cause it's more like, okay, this is what you want. This is how you get it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:42]:
Instead of having them just pull numbers out of their butt.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:45]:
Not useful.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:45]:
Yeah. They're just like, oh, well, I don't know. Maybe $200 a month. Okay. And I was not worried about the effectiveness at this point that I was just like, okay, dollars 200 a month. And then write that down. Moving on to the next. Groceries.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:57]:
What are we going to spend on groceries? I mean, yes, we did a financial audit and everything like that. We looked at their statements and we said, okay, well, like, look at what you're doing and then we can trim the fat. We did all that, but it still didn't matter because we didn't have a vision of what the end goal would be like, which is why we do it this way, which is why ask these types of questions to get an idea of what they want their life to look like. And even if they're wrong, the thing is just they're going to be wrong. At least it's them choosing it. And we're able to back out or back in to the numbers from what they said. And you're like, look, this is what you said, and this is what it's going to take.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:29]:
This is how your life will material change. If you choose this,

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:31]:
that's a much more accurate picture, or at least we think so. And even if it is wrong, at least we're going to be directionally, right. If we take this approach. And then the second thing to do now is just figuring out what that is for the young adults that come through our launch program. The number one thing is income as it should be in our mind because you need that to live. And then second to that is location. If they have more needs than that, the more needs they have, the harder it is to go and find career paths and jobs and work that is going to help them cover all of these things. So really you want to keep the amount of needs hopefully till 02/03, '1 is ideal and it's just I need to make $60 a year.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:07]:
Perfect. Let's do that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:08]:
Now that you have what they're visually looking for, go and objectively look at jobs that will fit those, whatever that one need is and do not filter by theme, do not filter by job type at this point. And the reason is because a lot of young adults have been taught to do that. And that's the wrong thing to do because one, they don't know that many jobs, most of us don't. And two, they just have a very limited view of what's possible. And what we're trying to do is open their minds to what's out there as opposed to, Oh, I want to go into art. Because then they are limiting themselves by jobs that are art jobs, not by jobs that fit their needs. So do not let them do that. What we're doing instead is, okay, what are jobs that pay this much? Or what are jobs that are in this location? Or what are jobs that allow you to be in this work environment? Or what are jobs that allow you to have a schedule that works for you? That's what we're looking for.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:51]:
And then secondarily to that, then you can look by industry, but for sure looking for things that satisfy those needs.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:57]:
Those two things. I mean, it's easier said than done. That's going to take you a little bit. In the degree free way is designed to go through in a weekend. But if you're do this separated into parts can take much longer than that. But just doing two of those things will lift a shroud of darkness that is, hey, he's not prepared for adulthood. And then you're going to feel much more like your son, your daughter is prepared for adulthood after this, because the main concern is just exactly what you just said. What now? The last thing that I wanted to talk about before we go is especially about the COVID part of that statement that a lot of the families are concerned about.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:30]:
And it's about the socializing. And I've heard from a lot of parents that had kids graduate during COVID years that they missed out on it. And there's two things that they say after that one, because they missed out on socializing. It is the reason we're thinking about sending them to college, or it is the reason that they're going to college so that they can socialize and gain some of that time back. They were locked up in the room for a couple of years or they were locked in the room for a year. So they miss out on the development. So we want them to go to college so that they can build those relationships, get the development, so on and so forth. And the second thing is because they missed out on that socialization.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:02]:
It is the reason they feel so alone and their relationship aren't as strong as they used to be with their friends, or at least they're not as strong as we think they could be due to them being so isolated. Literally they did not go and see their friends physically. They were stuck in a room or stuck on the kitchen table. So for that, we've talked about it a little bit in the last episode and we're talking about networking and stuff, but for here, just for socializing, the main thing here is to just get them around people that are like minded. And that is super general because it's meant to be super general.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:35]:
There's one thing too, I want to point out here is it is unnatural to send your child alone to be with a bunch of other teenagers alone, unsupervised, just going into debt. That's unnatural. It is not the natural order of things. Also, I think a lot of people, oh, you know, so they can socialize. And oftentimes, actually college students report that they feel far more alone when they're on a college campus. And that's because being surrounded by thousands of strangers who are also teenagers is not necessarily a good way to socialize. You can only have so many close friends. You can only have so many close friends.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:03]:
You can only have so many people that you know well. And your child has this very unique opportunity when they leave high school to be, as you said, around people who are like minded, and that could be anything. That could be people who are like minded because they're learning jujitsu at the same level, or because they are learning to speak a language, or because they're learning to speak period and Toastmasters, or they're starting their career. So they're volunteering at the local thrift shop or they're volunteering at Habitat for Humanity, or they're starting to go to small business chamber of commerce meetings to meet local business owners. Cause they're interested in learning about business or they're just starting at the same company because your son wants to get in construction management. And so he starts at a construction site so he can be around that. So he can learn from people who are in construction, so he can move into management. These things are going to be much more social, much more enriching, much deeper than being around in a dorm room.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:50]:
It's unnatural to not be able to choose who you live with. It's unnatural to be forced into the situation where you're around thousands of strangers. That's not natural to people. And then also when parents do this, I've also seen this fail fairly often. And then the young adult feels like something was wrong with them because they were forced into this unnatural situation in order to remedy another unnatural situation, which was COVID.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:09]:
When we first started working with the young adults, I was very surprised. We have a lot of young adults that come through the launch program that have done a year or have, are just getting out of their second year. And they're not going back to college and a few of them are still going back to college.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:24]:
They have to be there.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:24]:
Yeah. There's one, a little bit of guidance from us. But I was really surprised to learn that so many young adults felt they were alone on a college campus and they were doing the full college experience. They were dorming.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:37]:
Couple have been in frats or sororities.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:39]:
Right. Exactly. But they still felt alone. I thought that was so interesting. Cause I was like, dude, the dorm, you're never alone. I mean, you're literally never alone in a dorm, but especially freshmen dorms. I mean, depending on the school, but if you're going to traditional freshmen dorms where there's one to two people in your dorm room and then there's community showers and stuff like that, boys and girls. And so it's like, you're like never alone.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:59]:
There's really only a few other situations in life where you're going to be around thousands of strangers like that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:04]:
I get it to a certain degree where when you're in a city like New York, you're surrounded by millions of people and it is so possible to feel so alone because there are so many people, if you don't know anybody there and you just stand on the street corner, nobody talks to you. Nobody says anything. Everybody's going about their own business. Yeah. I think the key here is to get them around people that are like minded in some way, whatever that is. And there are tiers to this. And so I'll just give it to you here. The first and foremost is in person, even if they don't want to go, you got to go, just go and do it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:37]:
Just try it out, please. One time, two times commit to three sessions of whatever this is. I'm not even saying that it has to do something paid. If you're learning a language, for example, just go to the local meetup for Spanish lessons or not even lessons. Like I said, if you go to the local meetup for beginner Spanish speaking on every Tuesday and just commit to one month, commit to four times on Tuesday. They just go and if you hate it, it's fine. And then the second to that in person is the best. The next is going to be something on the internet, online communities, subreddits, those types of things.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:09]:
If you want to put this on steroids in person or online, is they can find a friend that also wants to do whatever this is with them. And like I said, this doesn't have to necessarily be professional. I'm just talking about socializing here because of so many parents are concerned about that. And because of the lack of the socializing that they did for two years or for a year plus. So finding a friend to be accountable to that they also commit to those four sessions of whatever it is is huge. That is one of the concerns from one of the parents specifically. I mean, that was quoted, but a lot of the parents that come through the launch program think this as well that the high school is not preparing their kids for the world after for adulthood, especially given the two years of COVID when they were in school. And so I just wanted to address that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:53]:
If you have any questions that you want to get answered, go to ask.degreefree.co. Please ask us your questions there. And please, you have the option to write us a message, but if you could show us your face and record a video, that would be so great. I would love to see your face. We are gonna be doing a mailbag episode very soon, and we're gonna continue to do mailbag episodes even more. And that's pretty much it. Until next week, guys.