I thought he invited me to lunch to catch up. He came to argue a case — and the client he was trying to save was me.
Those words still hung in the air between my father and me when I realized what kind of lunch this actually was.
I was a senior at The Citadel. My dad was in town — a lawyer in Charleston on business — and I figured he’d used the trip as an excuse to catch up. I was glad to see him. It had been a while. But somewhere between sitting down and the first few minutes of conversation, it became clear that he hadn’t come to catch up. He’d come to argue a case. Just not the one I thought.
My dad is a lawyer. My older brother is a lawyer. And I had spent most of my life assuming I was going to be a lawyer too. I was in speech and debate. I could argue anything to anyone. I had this vivid, romantic picture of what it meant to be a warrior in the courtroom — hold the jury in the palm of your hand, make the case, win the day for your client. I thought I was going to be LA Law. I thought that was my destiny.
What I didn’t account for was the internship.
My senior year, I finally landed a position at a prominent law firm in Charleston. And the reality of what I found there was nothing like the picture I had been carrying around in my head. The day-to-day grind of actual legal work — the paperwork, the process, the grinding pace of it — was about as far from my romantic notion as anything I could have imagined. I came home from that internship disillusioned. And apparently, more transparent about it than I realized.
So there we were. Lunch that wasn’t really lunch. A lawyer arguing the most important case he’d ever brought — that his son was about to walk down a path that wasn’t right for him. And me, sitting across the table, slowly realizing he was probably right.
Now I’m the one watching students head toward the wrong path
I think about that lunch constantly. Because now I sit across from students every single day — and I feel exactly what my father must have felt.
A student tells me he wants to go into engineering. I look down at his transcript. He’s barely passing Algebra 2. And that part of me that is a father, that is a teacher, that has watched this movie before — wants to lean across the desk and say the same thing my dad said to me. You need to rethink this.
But here’s what I’ve learned, both from being that student and from working with them for 13 years: I can’t make that decision for them. And neither can their parents. What I can do — what my job actually is — is help them get honest with themselves early enough that they make the discovery on their own, before the cost of the wrong turn becomes too high to recover from.
Because college is too expensive now to figure it out after you arrive. The days of declaring undecided and wandering from major to major until something sticks — that luxury has a price tag most families can’t afford anymore. Students need to go in with at least a direction. Not a destination — a direction.
Self-discovery is not optional anymore
I’m not asking eighth graders and ninth graders to know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. That would be unreasonable and, frankly, beside the point. What I am asking — what I wish someone had asked me earlier — is that they spend real time looking inward. Not at what will make them rich. Not at what will make them look successful by someone else’s definition. At what will actually make them happy. At what they are genuinely drawn toward versus what they’ve been told they should want.
We have more tools now to help with this than we’ve ever had. YouScience assessments. Self-reflection surveys. Career exploration resources. The problem isn’t the tools — it’s that students won’t slow down long enough to use them. They want the answer without doing the work of asking the right questions first.
And I understand that. I was the same way. I had a picture in my head of who I was going to be, and I held onto it long past the point where the evidence was telling me something different. It took my father making his case across a lunch table to make me stop and actually look.
Five steps toward figuring out the right path — before college forces the question
The romantic notion and the reality are almost never the same thing. You don’t know what a career actually feels like until you’re inside it. Shadow someone. Intern somewhere. Work a summer job in a field you think you want. Find out before you’ve committed four years and a tuition bill to the picture in your head.
Assessments like YouScience are designed specifically to help students identify their natural aptitudes and match them to careers they might never have considered. This isn’t a personality quiz — it’s a genuine tool for self-discovery. Use it before you commit to a direction, not after.
Not “what career sounds the most successful?” Not “what will make my parents proud?” Ask: what do I actually find myself drawn toward when nobody is watching? What problems do I care about? What would I do even if it didn’t impress anyone? That’s where the answer lives.
My dad did exactly the right thing. He laid it out plainly, honestly, without sugarcoating it. Then he let me sit with it. He didn’t make the decision for me. He made sure I had the information I needed to make it myself. That’s the model. Share what you see. Then step back.
The students who arrive at college with clarity didn’t find it their senior year. They found it through years of small experiments — classes they tried, activities they explored, jobs they worked — that gradually pointed them toward something real. The earlier you start asking the questions, the more time you have to actually hear the answers.
My dad was right that day. I was making a terrible mistake — not because law was the wrong career for everyone, but because it was the wrong career for me, and I was chasing it for the wrong reasons. A romantic notion. A family legacy. A picture in my head that had nothing to do with who I actually was.
I didn’t end up going to law school. I ended up in the classroom, and then in this office, doing work that I genuinely believe I was built for. The path was winding and uncertain and nothing like the plan I had at 21. But it was mine.
Your student deserves the same thing. Not the most impressive path. Not the one that sounds the best at the dinner table. The one that’s actually theirs.
Help them find it. Start now. Before someone has to take them to lunch.
Carpe diem.
Helping your student find the right path — not just the most impressive one — is exactly what Entering the Arena was written to do.
Get the book →Or talk it through with us — book a free college planning consultation.
Frequently Asked Questions
When Chris Parsons was a senior at The Citadel, his father — a Charleston lawyer — took him to lunch and told him plainly, “You’re making a terrible mistake.” Chris had spent his life assuming he’d become a lawyer, until an internship showed him the reality was nothing like the romantic picture in his head. The lesson he carried forward: the romantic notion and the actual day-to-day of a career are almost never the same thing, and you have to test it before you commit four years and a tuition bill to it.
Christopher Parsons believes self-discovery is no longer optional because college has become too expensive to figure out after you arrive. The old luxury of declaring undecided and wandering from major to major until something stuck now carries a price tag most families can’t afford. He isn’t asking eighth and ninth graders to know exactly what they’ll do for life — he’s asking them to spend real time looking inward at what genuinely draws them, not at what looks impressive or sounds successful at the dinner table.
Chris’s test is honest self-questioning paired with real exposure. Ask the honest question, not the impressive one: what do you find yourself drawn toward when nobody is watching? Then go test it — shadow someone, intern, work a summer job in the field you think you want. The romantic notion and the reality are rarely the same. Even a summer job that doesn’t lead to your career is valuable, because knowing what you don’t want is just as important as knowing what you do.
Chris points to exactly what his own father did: make the case, then let them decide. Lay it out plainly and honestly, without sugarcoating it — share what you see in the transcript, the interests, the evidence. Then step back and let your student sit with it. Don’t make the decision for them. The parent’s job is to make sure their child has the information they need to make the call themselves, early enough that the cost of a wrong turn is still recoverable.
Students who arrive at college with a clear direction didn’t find it senior year — they found it through years of small experiments: classes they tried, activities they explored, jobs they worked. That clarity shows up in stronger applications, a more coherent story for admissions, and fewer expensive major changes once enrolled. You don’t need a final destination, just a direction. Starting the questions in eighth or ninth grade — and getting honest guidance from the College Planning Center — gives a student time to actually hear the answers before college forces the question.
