College as Rite of Passage and Hero's Journey During an Age of Upheaval

By Michael Weddington

COLLEGE AS RITE OF PASSAGE and HERO'S JOURNEY DURING AN AGE OF UPHEAVAL: This is the most daunting time to approach adulthood in the United States since at least World War II and the Great Depression. The worst pandemic in a century, with more than 400,000 deaths by Feb. 2021. Millions of individuals out of work, with twice the number of applicants for every opening in late 2020. The most polarized American electorate since the Civil War, heightened by tensions concerning race and social justice. Rising economic inequality. Growing distrust in institutions and democracy itself, especially among young Americans. Rapidly advancing technology that is transforming what it means to be human. And looming above all, escalating climate change that threatens vital food and water resources, millions of homes and thousands of communities, national security, and the stability of the ecosystems that underpin life on earth.

Michael Weddington's COLLEGE AS RITE OF PASSAGE and HERO'S JOURNEY DURING AN AGE OF UPHEAVAL is a college student development book that addresses the critical need to better prepare our young for adulthood using the only commonly shared Coming of Age rite of passage in our society today: the college experience. Drawing from a generalist's background including two psychology degrees, doctoral research in college student development, and college and career counseling experience, Weddington integrates ancient wisdom with contemporary research and popular film to provide a timely, engaging Coming of Age resource. Filled with 996 hyperlinked, evidence-based advising, counseling, and mentoring insights, tools, and concepts, this book is designed for those who work with young people, as well as interested students themselves who long to find energizing purpose on behalf of the common good, during an era when everyday heroes have never been more needed.

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Weddington
• Release date: Jan 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736173503

Michael Weddington

 Michael Weddington is a scholar and practitioner in the field of career and college counseling, with 20 years of experience researching ways to help young people transition into adulthood during times of turbulent change. He is owner of YourCareerStory.net and holds a B.A. in psychology from U.C. Davis and an M.A. in educational psychology from Sonoma State University. A credentialed secondary level social studies teacher in California, Michael has also conducted doctoral research in student development at the University of Northern Colorado, where he worked as assistant program coordinator for professional development. Michael informs his research with a diverse work history; he has also served as an at-risk youth counselor; a community event organizer; a financial services manager and advisor; has taught in Japan, Hawaii, and California; and conducted a 3,000-mile charity bicycle tour on behalf of runaway and homeless youth with two friends. Michael lives in Northern California with his family and is a proud parent of a daughter entering her college freshman year.

Book preview

College as Rite of Passage And

Hero’s Journey

During an Age of Upheaval

By

Michael Weddington

Praise for College as Rite of Passage and Hero’s Journey

Michael Weddington’s book provides a host of insightful ideas and practical strategies for advisors, mentors, and career development specialists. His recommendations are well-grounded in research and theory. They are applicable to students in high school, college, and beyond. His substantive thoughts and suggestions are particularly timely during the current climate of COVID and sociopolitical divisiveness, but at the same time, he offers recommendations that are timeless and universal. Weddington connects the dots, integrating ideas about the importance of inner development with outer concerns regarding interdependence and contribution to the common good. In so doing, Weddington artfully unites the importance of general (liberal) education for global awareness and identity exploration with the importance of practical career decision-making and pre- professional preparation. College as Rite of Passage and Hero’s Journey is a valuable tool for anyone seeking to enhance their impact as an advisor, mentor, counselor, and educator of emerging adults.

Joseph B. Cuseo, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus, Psychology; Marymount California University Author, Thriving in College & Beyond

Recipient- Diamond Honoree Award from the American College Personnel Association (ACPA)

Brimming with timely data and relevant cultural references, Michael

Weddington's College as a Rite of Passage and Hero's Journey invites readers to draw meaning from the paradox of the college experience both as a shared social and developmental phenomenon and as a deeply personal discovery of self and one's purpose. Weddington couples nuanced insights and practical advice with relatable examples for an end result that allows college students from all backgrounds to recognize their own heroic agency toward creating a meaningful life while also giving mentors effective tools to guide them along the way.

Michele C. Murray, Ph.D.

Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students The College of the Holy Cross

Co-Author, Helping College Students Find Purpose

Against today’s volatile background of evolving norms and values, young people are seeking even more urgently for meaning, identify, and purpose. While higher education has long served as the primary vehicle for discovering and realizing personal and professional goals, Michael Weddington’s book takes a fresh look at traditional wisdom associated with that experience and offers, in entertaining and highly relevant ways, new insights and strategies which serve to maximize and bring greater value to the college journey for learners, their parents, advisors and anyone interested in the future of this and coming generations.

Manny Contomanolis, PhD (he, him, his)

Senior Associate Vice President,

Employer Engagement and Career Design, Northeastern University Former President, National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE)

College must be more than career training! With social norms and values in flux, students seek meaning and purpose. COLLEGE AS RITE OF PASSAGE AND HERO'S JOURNEY compels those helping young into adulthood to blend traditional wisdom with the latest in research. When I need updates about work and higher education learning trends, there's no one better than Michael Weddington. His deep skills in navigating the college and career exploration and transition process make him a top-notch advisor.

Rich Feller Ph.D

Professor Emeritus, Counseling & Career Development & University Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Colorado State University

Former President, National Career Development Association (NCDA)

Published in the United States by Your Career Story, LLC

1780 Creekside Dr., #2328

Folsom, CA  95630

Copyright © 2020 by Michael Weddington

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Your Career Story, LLC at 1780 Creekside Dr. #2328, Folsom, CA 95630

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Michael Weddington at [e-mail].

Feel free to send book reviews, comments, and questions to Michael Weddington at [e-mail].  Your responses are welcome.

Cover design by Michael Weddington.

Cover photographs obtained from Dreamstime.

Interior photographs obtained from Dreamstime, Alamy, The Daily Republic Newspaper, and UC Davis Magazine; interior iconography obtained from Microsoft Word.

Photo of Chihiro in Spirited Away taken by All Star Picture Library and is the copyright of STUDIO GHIBLI and/or the Photographer assigned by the Film or Production Company and can only be reproduced by publications in conjunction with the promotion of the above film. No commercial use can be granted without written authority from the Film Company. 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

ISBN 978-1-7361-7350-3 (e-book)

ISBN 978-1-7361-7352-7 (print)

To Shalon and Asiana,

The shining lights of my life

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FORWARD

INTRODUCTION

PART I: DEPARTURE TO COLLEGE

Ordinary World

Call to Adventure

Refusal of the Call

Meeting with the Mentor

––––––––

PART II: INITIATION INTO COLLEGE

Crossing the Threshold

Tests, Allies, Enemies

Approach to the Inmost Cave

The Ordeal

––––––––

PART III: RETURN TO ORDINARY WORLD

Reward

The Road Back

The Resurrection

Return with the Elixir

––––––––

OTHER JOURNEY MODELS AND A VISION FOR COLLEGE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES

Forward

The year was 1977. The date was August 10th. The location was Fairfield, California, a distant suburb sandwiched between San Francisco and Sacramento upon a dry, windy plain next to Travis Air Force Base. It was a blazing hot summer. I was 15 years old, entering my junior year of high school, and I was miserable.

I was miserable because my father had recently retired from the U.S. Navy and moved us from Treasure Island Naval Station, San Francisco to this comparatively desultory civilian town in the hinterlands. I did not want to be here and the chip on my shoulder ran deep into my heart and gut. After a peripatetic young lifetime as a bi-racial/b-cultural ‘military brat’ who had attended 9 schools in 10 years across the

U.S. and Japan while trying to figure who I was and how I fit in, I was lost again. As a sophomore at Lowell High School in San Francisco, I felt I was finally starting to develop a sense of identity and purpose and I eagerly embraced that awakening. Now I was having to start all over yet again. I was bitter and inconsolable.

On this date and this evening at 6:30 pm, however, I looked forward to a reprieve from my sorrows. My father had gotten tickets for an early evening showing of the highly touted summer blockbuster film Star Wars. As a science fiction fan and lover of a good action flick, I could not wait to check out this novel cinematic adventure.

A picture containing text, newspaper Description automatically generated

The line ran around the block at Fairfield Cinema I for the premier showing of Star Wars in August of 1977. I was in line with my family.

(Photo: Ray Fitts/Daily Republic Newspaper)

The film did not disappoint. While I found the special effects to be somewhat clumsy, I was enthralled by the film’s storyline. On some level I could relate to and find inspiration in young Luke Skywalker’s desire; a desire to escape his deadening life and future on his Uncle and Aunt’s moisture farm on arid Tatooine in search of a greater and more exciting destiny. I was especially captured by the scene where Luke enters the forbidding Mos Eisley Cantina with mysterious mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi in search of a ship and pilots, in order to rescue Princess Leia Organa.

I thrilled to the mixed brew of pregnant danger and possibilities that the Cantina and its edgy patrons presented. Here was a jumping-off station into the unknown, as experienced by a character (played by an actor who in real life attended school on the same far-flung military base in Japan I was based at just a few years afterward, as I learned later in life) with whom I could relate. What would happen next?

A few years later, after I eventually made two life-long friends and came to appreciate Fairfield and Armijo High School on their own merits, I was more than ready to pursue my own galactic destiny in college at UC Davis. A first-generation student from a blue-collar family who knew next to nothing about college and college life, I was impatient to learn the knowledges that would shape my future.

A revamped version of the busy UC Davis Coffee House, where I spent many a spell contemplating my place in the universe.

(Photo: Karin Higgins/UC Davis)

I vividly recall my first impressions on campus at this noted research university. I remember feeling rather overwhelmed. So many students, constantly in motion on foot or bicycle hauling the undergraduate’s burden of transition: backpacks. Giant lecture halls filled with hundreds of murmuring freshmen, straining at times to follow the textual incantations of the lordly but often indifferent professor in front. There were the frequent weekend parties, where I observed otherwise bright young males and females engage in behavior near certain to lead to copious vomiting.

I learned to find respite and clarity at the popular campus Coffee House, where like Luke Skywalker I observed many an undergraduate or grad student coming and going while preparing for their own personal jumping-off adventure under the occasional guidance of a passing professor or mentor. Here is where I often mulled my own future career and life path with gathering insight. Looking back, I wish I had known how to take better advantage of existing resources the campus had to offer, and I too wish that the campus had more services regarding how to help me purposefully find my way. It is in this spirit that I dedicate this book: to offer a college and life guidance resource to our daughter Asiana and the Covid-19 classes of 20-21, as well as their respective advisors and mentors so that college experience might be more enlivening and useful in helping our young find their way in life.

Trust your Journey. It is there for you.

Introduction

The Purpose of this Book

The world is a pretty scary and confusing place right now. Change is happening so fast. For many, it’s difficult to know who or what to trust. In the United States today, there has never been so much general distrust of traditional institutions: Our political system; our media; schools; the legal system; religious organizations; our science; our financial system; our police; and, at the end of the day, each other.

As change accelerates and trust diminishes, conspiracy theories fill the void. A shared understanding of truth itself breaks down. Young people look up at the adults in their lives, communities, and on digitally shared spaces, and see rampant hypocrisy everywhere. Saying one thing and acting the opposite. They see adults who seem to be absorbed with themselves and their issues, if not perceived enemies. What young people often don’t see very much, is a concerted effort among adults to sacrifice and come together to ensure a better, safer future for all their children.

This book is designed to provide an additional resource for counselors, higher education professionals, teachers, parents, business leaders, mentors, and other interested members of our communities regarding a most important responsibility: How to help young people successfully transition from college into adulthood. It is a book also meant for young people themselves, who may seek insight on how to prepare for both college and adulthood from a different point of view.

There are many wonderful written works on Coming of Age rites of passage, and many on the so-called Hero’s Journey. This book is unusual in that it synthesizes the two concepts into a framework for understanding how college can be seen as society’s most common Coming of Age rite of passage today, and how college might be redefined and refined to better prepare our young to not only find work, but also meaningful purpose. Purpose that is oriented towards serving not only the self, but communities and others in ways that can contribute to a safer, better future for all.

A Society in Crisis

It is late 2020 and the United States is experiencing multiple crises.

There is the massive public health crisis posed by COVID-19, which is projected to take over 400,000 lives by April, 20211. While 300 American servicemen died each day during World War II, compared to 11 for the Vietnam War and 2 for the Iraq War, 900+ Americans are succumbing daily due to causes related to COVID.

There is the related economic crisis wrought by this novel coronavirus, resulting in the tragic loss of work, business and even home by tens of millions of Americans. As of early November, close to 20 million2 laid-off workers are still requesting unemployment insurance assistance. Meanwhile, millions3 of our fellow citizens and neighbors have or are facing imminent foreclosure of or eviction from their homes.

Then there has been the flaring of the malignant crisis of racial injustice which— some 400 years after its importation to our lands—the viral murder of George Floyd4 starkly illuminated for all with hesitant eyes to see.

Compounding misery, multiple environmental catastrophes of historic natures have created exceptional hardship for millions more Americans. An unusually destructive Spring tornado and hailstorm season, a devastating Iowa ‘derecho’ or windstorm, battering and flooding from record numbers of named tropical storms and hurricanes, and unprecedented numbers of large-scale fires across the West (fueled by record-setting heat waves) have resulted in a year filled with the highest number5 of billion-dollar natural disasters in U.S. history.

This is not exactly an original perspective. Apart from virtually all other nations, ours was founded upon a conception of the nearly unfettered right to pursue individual liberty and happiness. Under the guise of equality, this conception has in binary practice pitted settlers against natives, Whites against people of color, Protestants against Catholics, science against faith, humans against nature, rural interests against urban, Democrats against Republicans, males against females, conservatives against liberals, straight against LGBTQ and young against old.

At this juncture in time, our society is an easy target for the rest of humanity. Where many other nations have found the collective desire and ability to unify6 in the face of the pandemic, ours has tragically failed7 due to a monumental abdication of governance and a confluence of self-defeating public half-measures.

This pandemic has served—as perhaps no other crisis in our history has save for the proliferation of slavery itself—as a mirror that has reflected and accentuated our worst attributes for the entire world to see. Entrenched polarization. Extreme inequality. Systemic racism. Scientific ignorance. Rampant selfishness.

And yet, even as much of the world looks upon us with varying degrees of disdain, disbelief and even pity, they are still transfixed by our struggles (indeed, the killing of Floyd followed by widespread protests throughout the U.S. swiftly triggered fellow protests8 in over 60 countries). Globally, millions are nostalgic for the leadership, inspiration, and opportunity we have long provided which they now see fading9 away. Where for generations we have essentially served—however imperfectly—as a beacon and haven of hope for aspiring dreamers around the world, we are increasingly viewed10 as a dysfunctional mess. What happened?

Collapse of a Unifying American Myth

Drawing from a work by Philip Gorski, commentator David Brooks posits that the enduring American story11 from the arrival of the Puritans into the heart of the 20th Century has been a reframing of the biblical story of Exodus. According to this narrative, our Founding Fathers and families escaped the bondage imposed by the Old World to establish a new promised land that in turn fulfilled their Judeo-Christian God’s providential plan. A promised land that offered justice, freedom, and prosperity for all who worked hard and abided by its laws.

The fatal defect12 in this myth is that freedom, justice, and equal opportunity were never meant to be fully afforded to anyone but white, heterosexual, non- disabled, Christian males in practice; preferably those who owned property13. The monstrous outcome of this inconsistency was that the American nation was built by forcibly removing and massacring14 the natives who already lived here on the one hand, with labor provided by millions of enslaved15 Black people on the other.

Despite its gross contradictions, this over-arching story of America largely prevailed into the 1960s16, as systematically reinforced through interlocking political, economic, educational, and cultural institutions. Since then, various movements have with uneven success organized for justice and equality on behalf of disadvantaged groups, within a larger world that has been interconnecting17 at an accelerating rate in terms of travel, trade, ideas, and technology. The U.S. itself has undergone tremendous demographic change; a nation that was roughly 80% White Christian in 1950 had become about 45% White Christian18 by 2018.

This coupling of increasingly organized calls for social justice with rapid sociocultural change has accordingly contributed to the weakening and growing inapplicability of the traditional American myth. In the vacuum that has been created, we now have four primary competing American narratives, according to19 the writer George Packer. As shared by David Brooks, they include the following.

First, there is what could be called the Republican establishment narrative that celebrates freedom in all its forms; a land of self-responsible free individuals ideally operating in a free market unconstrained by stifling and tyrannical governmental intervention and oversight. The challenge with this worldview is that it is heavy on

personal freedom, very lite on personal responsibility to a common good. We are atomized consumers, entrepreneurs, workers, and taxpayers; not so much citizens.

Second is an emergent story popular in Silicon Valley and with other proponents of the Digital Revolution. We are an intimately connecting species that is out- growing obsolete border states, striving for a more open, flattened, and interconnected world. Fading are the old obstacles to progress including hierarchies and entrenched systems run by out-of-touch elites. This vision, however, leaves behind millions uncomfortable with such reliance on technology to guide our future and how such reliance could further exacerbate inequalities in our society.

Third is a compelling story of multicultural America that seeks to validate, celebrate, and empower every group that has been oppressed by White Christian America since before the founding of our nation. This narrative is especially prevalent in many of our schools from elementary to graduate. Individual identity is equated with group identity, which is often organized around the concept of struggle in relation to more privileged groups. Critical discussion is narrowly focused on how to overcome inequities. Necessary as such a process is to calling out and addressing systemic social injustice, however, it is often wanting in terms of building common ground with people of different backgrounds and worldviews. It values inclusion but, as Packer noted, doesn't really answer the question, included into what?

Fourth is essentially the vestige of the original American myth, as recast in reaction to a rapidly changing America and world. It has morphed into the story of America First, of Donald Trump and his ardent followers. It is the story of a country that has lost its way due to the contamination of 'the Other': foreigners, Muslims, immigrants, Democrats, LGBTQ people, global elites, Never-Trumpers, Blacks and Christians who have lost their conviction. To make America Great again, it is necessary to aggressively confront and fight the corrupting forces of pluralism, even if it means sacrificing traditional Christian values. Trump is our chosen battering ram and before him power is personified, and truth is bent to validate he and us.

Of course, any attempted categorization of tens of millions of Americans into such broad patterns of meaning is doomed to over-simplification. In reality you will find

many Americans who exhibit overlapping characteristics of each (e.g. moderate Republicans who embrace a technological future; White evangelical Christians that fervently support Black Lives Matter ambitions; Trump voters who support LGBTQ and immigration causes; minority voters who find some agreement with White Trump supporters and so forth). However, such artificial groupings are useful for making meaning of how and why our society is so fragmented today and where we could conceivably start in terms of building common cause and understanding.

The problem for young people today is, how do they find an inspiring, guiding, and unifying narrative amidst these conflicting worldviews? One that does not perpetuate fragmentation, fear, and mistrust? Is it a wonder that young people hold less belief20 in our societal institutions than their parents and grandparents do (who themselves have gradually lost belief over time)? How do our young construct personal stories that relate themselves to the whole community and the Other?

The Human Thirst for Story

The human compulsion to organize and make narrative meaning of everyday experiences is universal21. We hunger for inspirational myth. Talking story22, as Hawaiians exemplify, is the oral, interactive process of sharing and processing experience that builds community over time and infuses living with spiritual value.

Humans across cultures are habitual storytellers and listeners. Our minds seem to be hard-wired to make narrative meaning of even inanimate objects, as a famous

experiment from 194423 revealed. Storytelling has many vital uses24, including transmitting culture and knowledge, providing entertainment, imbuing our lives with structure and meaning, and even serving as a way to improve relations between people of differing backgrounds.

One study found that reading fiction significantly increased empathy25 toward others, including individuals initially considered as outsiders or ‘other’. Most teachers come to learn that the fastest way to lose your student audience is to lapse into a didactic and jargoned recitation of facts, figures and theories; whereas, to regain your listeners’ attention you need merely to share a coherent, relatable story26. Many of our most effective political and business leaders have long realized this, from Lincoln, FDR, Reagan, and Obama to Andrew Carnegie and TED talkers.

Americans are especially attracted to stories. Our preferred way to spend our leisure time is to watch programs on TV, video, or at the theater (at least during non-COVID periods), with almost 80% of us27 watching shows on any given day. When we engage in or view popular athletic events28, each game is structured in familiar 3- or 4-part periods that arguably follow traditional narrative arcs, featuring identifiable heroes and villains that align fans into ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ binaries. At work, storytelling29 metaphors often dominate discourse, commonly translating abstract business entities into relatable family-like teams; teams that are striving to achieve worthwhile goals on the path towards building stronger communities.

Over-arching stories that effectively connect disparate peoples to each other amid

life’s ever-changing circumstances are termed ‘living myths’ by Joseph Campbell.

The Four Functions of a Living Myth

According to Campbell, who immersed himself in myths from around the world, over-arching stories of meaning that have managed to resonate with the people of a given society provide the following critical functions30:

Evokes a sense of awe and wonder in people regarding the great mystery that is their own existence. From a microscopic embryo that grows 10,000 times in

size during its first 30 days of existence, into an autonomous creature that regrows its skin about every 27 days while guided through life with an organ containing roughly 86 billion neurons. And what is life in its most elemental form? An eating and absorption contest between millions of animal and plant species hurdling through space; upon conceivably the only location of sentient life in a universe composed of billions of galaxies each containing billions of stars and planets. How do we relate to all that? With meaning-making story.

Presents an image of the cosmos that retains a connection to the mystery of being, while providing a model and attendant explanations for life and the cosmos. Where do we come from? What makes us tick? What happens to us when we die? How do we stay alive and thrive amidst all the challenges in our lives? What are all these strange things around us and how do they relate to ourselves and each other? What makes us happy? A living myth answers these questions in real time, amidst constant change and challenge.

Validates and maintains a societal order through time and change, giving rise to customs, mores, traditions, and laws that bind and sustain societal connection. A vibrant over-arching story giving impetus to moral and ethical teachings from adults to young that justify how and why life should be lived; teachings flexible enough to incorporate new insights amid a changing world.

Teaches how to live a fulfilling life from birth to adolescence to adulthood to death from a personal, psychological perspective; to do so according to the dictates of one’s society and with awareness of the greater