May 31, 2024
Photo by Bill Jelen on Unsplash
Failure to launch was a term used for rockets that fail to blastoff when the countdown ended. Many of today’s youth are experiencing failure to launch when their countdown to adulthood ends without that spark that ignites the adult in them. Click the link to view the article Supporting Young Adults in Their Transition to Independence by Ugo Uche found here. www.psychologytoday.com
Another term for failure to launch is un-initiated. Un-initiated adults may find themselves in my entry level carpentry class. Some of these adult students are intrinsically motivated by their our self actualization. Students who are motivated to learn just need to be encouraged, directed and reminded with their motivation.
Other un-initiated adult students are forced in some way to attend the program. Extrinsic motivation gets the student in the room but the threat of failing the program might not be the spark that the student needs to accelerate into an adult learner.
David Goggins who wrote the book “Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds” has built a large following of young men by sharing his story of low self worth as a youth to transforming into a navy seal and beyond as a man who will never quit. Goggins taps into that spark which intrinsically motivates people to get out there and do the work. Paraphrasing his interview on the Joe Rogan podcast Goggins explains that he can’t help people if they don’t have that spark to start with.
With out that spark or intrinsic motivation it is very difficult to motivate students to excel beyond the minimum requirements of the program. Students who aim low become overlooked by instructors and people like David Goggins. My view is, everyone has a spark, as much as they want to pretend they don’t have some drive, everyone wants to be better. One on one conversations keep students accountable , connected, and on task. Helping students realize that they can succeed at carpentry tasks, then helping them document their skills growth and revealing to them the direction that new abilities could take them are positive things instructors can do. Spending time with every student in this way could help motivation and the moral of the whole cohort. Giving students individual responsibilities, self-directed assignments, and placing the students in smaller groups is for one, great for adult learning and second this andragogy will free up the instructors time for one on one meetings. Lastly the failure to launch syndrome is widespread in our culture today. The last thing students need is negative comments from instructors. Instructors have a responsibility to be kind and accepting to students. Showing a student that they are accepted could be all it takes for that transformative spark to initiate the student into the adult classroom.
p xmlns:cc=”http://creativecommons.org/ns#” xmlns:dct=”http://purl.org/dc/terms/”>Adul7 3ducation by Glenn Smith is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International
