Welcome to the Striving to Thriving Youth Quote Library. Here you’ll find a curated collection of more than 5,700 quotes from young people ages 15-22 living in communities across the United States. In the library you can see how young people describe their multifaceted identities, how they understand and apply meaning to language around job, work and career, how they think about and assign value to relationships, networking and connections, and their future goals and the education and career choices they believe will lead them there. You can also view additional notes on curation, categories and filters.
“I’ve definitely been doing some reflecting on my high school and college experiences! It makes me think about how I would want my own child’s experience to be similar or different than mine. I’m interested in hearing how the participants who aren’t yet in college see the college experience.”
“If your mood change [when you get to work.] If you see your coworkers outside of work, and you act like you don’t see them.”
“[T]hat pressure and knowing that other people are paying their bills because of you, like that type of pressure. Kind of, you know, I’ve always, I think I have an entrepreneurial spirit, but that’s kind of what makes me shy away from it, because that’s like a lot pressure, especially like if you have a bad day. You know, you still got people, this person…coming out. So, you know, it’s like that pressure, that responsibility. And also, you know, kind of the same thing, like because you built this, it is your responsibility all the time.”
“My end goal is to own my private practice and have doctors underneath me. Right now I am a case manager. The next step would be go back to school and get a bachelor’s degree and then to get a Ph.D. and do some internship. I think it will be beneficial to do some hospital work. It will make me better understand clients. Do more research and then work as a psychiatrist under other people and ultimately be my own boss and have other people work under me.”
“I already picked tomatoes. I already did what I had to do… so I’ve got to work smarter. I’ve got to beat this system. It is like a system. For the Mexicans, the Hispanics that is all they know, agriculture. I want to be able to beat that.”
“Family members didn’t go to college and they’re happy in their life and jobs. They just didn’t feel the need to go and I guess thought not going will be better for their life.”
“For me, it’s hard to categorize white males into one group because everyone goes through different life experiences. In general, however, I think we have less potential for specific roadblocks. For me, being a white male doesn’t play a significant factor in my current career role. There’s different ethnicity males throughout my industry. I’m concentrating on learning, growing, and executing work. I do think that being a white male throughout life may have helped me, but it’s hard to say exactly how.”
“…we were like putting job and work into categories of like how they make us feel and stuff, and career just sounds better.”
“Getting dirty.”
“But like if I think about it…at the end of the day, no matter what, you always have just you, yourself, and that’s it. And your mom usually. So like me…I just put down my mom, my stepdad, my brothers, and sisters…I don’t know. They’ll probably end up motivating me, or just that’s why I put me, myself, and I. And then later, I ended up putting myself because I know at the end of the day, it’s just you who’s pushing yourself at the end no matter what…What helps me to push me is my family. My mom, my sister, my brothers, everything I do is I do it for them.”