I found it disturbing when my daughter recently listed one of her long-term goals as simply "going to college" with no goals beyond that. At 12, I don't expect to have her life planned out but I feel like she already has bought into the "getting into college" arms race. I pointed out that there is no reason why she wouldn't have the option to go to college given our family situation and her abilities. Given that assumption, i.e. she will get into college somewhere, I want her to think about why she is going to college and how it fits into the rest of her life. Unfortunately, IMO, college is too expensive these days to go and take classes just because you don't have any better ideas about what to do after high school. I've started talking to her about how to make college worthwhile and how to use it to achieve a goal, i.e. finding a way to make a living that aligns with a passion.
Of course, all of this may be for naught. As my husband and I have seen with ourselves and our older siblings' kids, our kids may get through college with a marketable degree and then chuck it because it turns out they don't want to work in the area that they studied after all.
