theDARKcorner

I received a package today containing a “card sorting” exercise designed to help a person learn what kinds of things he likes to do. The card sorting exercise grouped tasks into four categories: ideas, things, people and data. I played one game of solitaire, with the following results: My interests are focused 70% on ideas, including questioning, connecting, inventing, creating, designing, developing, and writing; and 30% on data, including collecting, analyzing, and editing.

In a similar vein, I sat down with my son this morning and (after about an hour) got him to rank six possibilities on a scale of from 0 (he will never do this thing) to 100 (he will definitely do this thing):

don’t go to college; live at home (score: 1)
go to college; live at home (score: 0)
go to college in Florida; don’t live at home (score: 10)
go to college out of state (score 60)
don’t go to college; move away from home (score 50)
join the military (score 30)

Since there was only one alternative that scored anywhere near the realm of action, I then asked him to create a list of states in which he would might maybe consider going to school. Those states are:

Massachusetts, Montana, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Hampshire, Nebraska, and Colorado.

He is now supposed to be compiling a list of colleges in those states. Found a cool college search engine here. It lets you filter schools by various criteria (e.g., major, tuition, bagpipe band).