Give Us A Break

In many other countries, young adults are encouraged to work a full-time job before they continue towards a college level education or some equivalent. Not so in the United States of America. Parents seem to think that if their children don't go to college right after they graduate high school, they will never go onto higher education. But this year off can be huge in a person's life of self discovery. In my own personal opinion, the more experience they have in the working field, the better chance they know what direction they want to take their education.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), people born between 1957 and 1964 held an average of 11 jobs from ages 18 to 44. It must be acknowledged that this statistic doesn't illustrate career changes, but the number of job changes is still fairly high (I tried to find some statistic about career changes but I couldn't find a strong, reliable source). As I wrote in my post, Yes, No, Maybe So?, most students change their majors while in college and many still aren't ready for college. Going to college immediately after high school  limits potential "real life" experience that can only be gained while working a full time job. When I withdrew from college after one month I went to work full time which provided me certain life-lessons which couldn't have been taught in a class room.Its true that I could write about these experiences, but without going through the experience yourself the lessons wouldn't hold as much water.
I was talking with a couple people about the concept of introducing a mandatory year of service to the country in some way, whether it be military, nationally, or locally right after a person graduates from high school. This idea is something I think the country should look into. There are many things that could get done which would help the community/nation that don't at the moment and it would be a good year for self discovery. The tasks could range from joining the military, helping to clean up the community, to helping do government backed research which would help the country.
Its hard to figure out who you are as a person and what you want to do for the rest of your life, especially if you haven't even lived for a quarter of your life expectancy. The "usual" path of young adults should be re-evaluated because not everyone should go straight to college and just because someone doesn't go right away, it doesn't mean they are throwing their life away.

Edward Abbey said, "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell"
We shouldn't be expected to do things society expects just for that reason. We need to want something more from ourselves to make life worthwhile.



Sources:
http://jobsearch.about.com/od/employmentinformation/f/change-jobs.htm