Okay, there’s something wrong with the tone of this piece in Psychology Today.

Here’s the lede:

Parents aren’t necessarily in the clear when their children walk across the stage to claim their high school diplomas, according to a study by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

About 20 percent of students who were doing well as high school seniors were not meeting their stated or expected goals at age 26, according to a study called Monitoring the Future.

“What’s scary is that it’s unpredictable,” says John Schulenberg, Ph.D., professor of developmental psychology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and the study’s lead researcher. “We used to think that if things were going well in high school, they’d continue to go well.”

“Scary”??????

Give me a break.

“Not meeting their goals” is later defined as meaning one of two things. Either the kids have not yet become financially independent, or they’ve “strayed from previously stated educational goals.”

What bothers me is the idea behind all this: the idea that if you push your teenager in the right direction, get him to score well enough on his SATs, get him the help he needs with his college entrance essay, etc. etc. etc., all of his problems will be solved into the foreseeable future.

Since when?

Sorting out what you really want to do with your life is hard, and being bright doesn’t necessarily make it any easier.

The fact that 20 percent of high achievers aren’t there by age 26 is not “scary.” It’s reality.

I can still remember how awful it felt, as a teenager, to think that I needed to choose what I was going to be when I grew up, that I needed to incur debt (in the form of college tuition) based on that decision. It was too much. I knew I wasn’t ready. So after one half-hearted attempt to pretend I knew what I was doing, I transferred to a state school and became a Comparative Literature major. In a sense, I was slacking, but I knew I needed more time, so I decided to get a plain ol’ liberal arts education at a school that cost a hell of a lot less than the private college that had originally accepted me.

Fast forward a couple of decades, and I’m finally beginning to understand what I want to do when I grow up.

Do I wish I had known when I was 16? Of course. But since when can we serve up life in pre-measured packets? Doesn’t work that way, never has.