Skip to main content

Newsroom

We’ve always encouraged our children to follow their dreams. And we’ve always told our children that they could grow up to be whatever they wanted to be — even President of the United States — if they worked hard and played by the rules.

But I believe that, given today’s economy, we ought to encourage our children to think about following their passions in a broader context. The challenge is to help them to find and follow their passions with pragmatism.

Indeed, for the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930’s, economic necessity has taken hold and placed a firm grip on the burgeoning professional aspirations of many young people, frustrating not only those who dream of glamor, fame, and celebrity, but also those whose hopes are more grounded. A St. Olaf’s College Professor named Gordon Marino ruminated on this a while back in a piece entitled, “A Life Beyond ‘Do What You Love.’” In it he references Dr. Martin Luther King’s observation that every life is marked by dimensions of length, breadth, and height. Length, he says, refers to self-love, breadth to the community, and height to the transcendent, something larger than oneself.

The point Prof. Marino makes is that, to paraphrase the Rolling Stones, when you can’t always get what you want, you still have to get what you need ... and what others may need, including family, community, and society. Additional satisfaction often also comes from mastery of a body of knowledge or a skill, or from the realization that service to others brings both personal and professional satisfaction, a fundamental principle of service learning at Bentley and elsewhere.

The story is told of the masons who were working on a monumental cathedral. When asked what they did each day, one said, “I’m a stone cutter, working on this building.” The other said, “I am helping to create a cathedral for the greater glory of God.”

This encapsulates one of the fundamental points made by Daniel Pink in his book, “Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us." In today’s workplace, he says, there are three primary elements for motivating workers (especially millennial workers): autonomy, mastery, and purpose. To me, this suggests that a single definition of passion may have to be replaced by a broader definition that includes other motivators and satisfactions.

The discussion becomes highly relevant when passed through the prism of Bentley University’s PreparedU Project. Autonomy responds to the well-documented millennial entrepreneurial (or intrapreneurial) instinct, that desire to have both responsibility and authority to achieve desired goals. Mastery references the demand by executives for employees who have both technical skills (mastery of which can often be certified) and skills such as communication, analysis, and synthesis that many associate primarily with the liberal arts. Finally, purpose means what it says but is often in the eye of the beholder.

Balancing passion and pragmatism is one of the hardest things we’re asking young people to do today. It’s tough to tell a 21-year-old that while he or she may certainly pursue the career of his or her dreams, reality demands the consideration of options that may, at first blush, seem less obvious. Yet these variations on a passionate interest may offer unanticipated satisfactions that are both accessible and, in their way, fulfill dreams of their own, making this the wisest counsel we can offer in these uncertain economic times.

In pragmatic terms, that could mean that the student who wants to write also should master web analytics and social media. A student who is fascinated by chemistry might also want to understand how pharmaceuticals make their way to market. And a student who wants to make the world a greener place learns not just about sustainability but about how it’s financed, discovering how to expand his or her impact beyond what had first been imagined.

The role of higher education cannot be underestimated in helping millennials grapple with the challenges and opportunities posed by a rapidly evolving economy. The goal is to help students understand the rewards, both personal and professional, that can be available through any discipline, and to prepare them in ways that help them become valued by employers.

Joann McKenna is Vice President for Enrollment Management at Bentley University.