Youth Quote Search

• Aspirations and Goals
• Imagining their future selves

“For 25 I put working towards my career as a pediatric nurse. Living in Colorado or New York and preparing for motherhood and taking care of my family…[Money from] scholarships, hopefully, and I will be working. [At 45] Taking care of again and I put for my career being a pediatric doctor. I will be living in Colorado. For 70 I put being taken care of, watching my family grow from my home. I am not working and traveling. For right now no [kids in the picture] but hopefully. That is what I put for 45, taking care of and then 70 being taken care of.”

• Impact of peers
• Pathways

“Positive, outgoing, real, and…friends.”

• Characterizations of a bad job
• Understanding Job/Work/Career

“Late hours.”

• Comparing and contrasting 'job' 'work' and 'career'
• Understanding Job/Work/Career

[For “work”] “Cubicles, office…management, upward mobility, fire(?), industry.”

• Impact of teachers and non-familial adults
• Pathways

“Coaches. Help you get offers and tell you what school [to go to].”

• Attributes and characteristics
• Describing Identity

“Outgoing, friendly, princess, fancy, dive in, honest and hardworking…At first it was like okay no you guys can’t be calling me [princess], but eventually I just kind of got used to it. I don’t really think oh like they are calling me princess. It is just a name at work, so I don’t really think any—I was like okay if you guys are going to call me that, what can I do?”

• Challenges and Barriers
• Naysayers and bullying

“I think there’s two types of motivation. There’s like positive and negative motivation where there’s someone supporting you, and then there’s someone who’s saying that you can’t do it, and it pushes you to try to prove them wrong pretty much. And then sometimes that motivation is stronger than, you know, people just being supportive.”

• Pathways
• Steps and stages

“Yeah I have to be good in math. Right now I’m already in high school, so my next step would be over the summer I plan to get a job or an internship or something and that can help me get better in math and numbers and stuff like that. Then the next step is college and then going to medical school. After that I will still be studying but I will be studying more and still in medical school. Then I will be out of medical school and then starting an internship in a hospital. You have to do that after medical school. Then after the internship I will be — I forget what it is called but I know after internship you actually start working. After that I feel like I will be the highest. I want to be like the most, so people call me from out of state just so I can do their surgery and stuff like that.”

• Perceptions of the term 'social capital'
• Relationships, Connections & Networking

“I feel like it is credits you get from people. Speaking financially, the more you build with someone, the higher your social capital becomes. So it is like you can trade that in for something. So if you know somebody who works at the same job and you need to take off, you can trade like oh yeah we’re friends. Let me call me you and you will take over my shift and you will be cool with it because we’re cool with each other. It said be intentional about building out your social capital is really important.”

• Pathways
• Steps and stages

“I think some of the most important things that have impacted my journey to this point consists of a lot of things. One of the things I would say are my support team, having someone or a group of people to motivate you, push you to do the best you can is very important. Challenges that I have faced have made me want to do better than I was doing before. These challenges include not settling for less such as gifted programs, honors classes, AP classes, and taking college classes. [Some of the people in my support team are] my mom and sister.”