Youth Quote Search

• Education
• Perceptions of college and postsecondary

“I will start with debt.”

• Aspirations and Goals
• Imagining their future selves

“I plan to get a house as soon as possible, but being with my girlfriend, you know, planning to get married. Starting to work as a counselor. And then while I can, you know, get a little traveling done to go see places that I haven’t been to before. And then I’ll also start to plan my, start having my own family and then have, you know, get a cat and a dog for sure. And then by 45, I’ll already be married. I start thinking of retirement when I’m about 60 at that time. And then, you know, be able to watch our kids as they’re growing older and help them, so they don’t make the same mistakes that I’ve made. And then serve, I want to be able to watch them make careers for themselves. And, you know, by that time be able to help my mom and grandma, so they can have a good life and live good. They don’t have to worry about working anymore.”

• Reflections on Focus Group Experience
• Takeaways

“Finding connections on my path. Like we talked about internships. We said going to college is always a good idea to do internships when you can because when you graduate college sometimes that can turn into a job for you.”

• Perceptions of the term 'job'
• Understanding Job/Work/Career

“Opportunity.”

• Describing Identity
• Race, ethnicity, gender, culture

“I put female and then Hispanic. For culture I put Spanish/Mexican. A little bit but not much that I know because my dad is Mexican and my mom is Spanish.”

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

“What made me not want to be the manager anymore was when I think about my family and I think about the hours they work. I don’t like the hours because I would want to be with my family especially when they close super late. I know management is a lot. Since he is doing it, I feel like I am going to let him do it. But my second option was to be a teacher, and that is what I have always wanted to do. Just because I started working at In and Out that is what drove me to be the manager part. When I thought about my family, I thought teacher because when they start going to school, I work the hours that they are going to school, and then I like the vacations I have. I don’t have anybody in my family that is a teacher, but I follow one of my other teachers from high school on Instagram. I have talked to people that are teachers; they don’t make a lot of money but they make a decent amount to get them by. That is okay with me just because I see that, for example, when they are on summer vacation they have time to go out with their family. They get that time off. I look at her life and it is like [talkover].”

• Attributes and characteristics
• Describing Identity

“Hardworking.”

• Perceptions of the term 'career'
• Understanding Job/Work/Career

“Learning.”

• Attributes and characteristics
• Describing Identity

“Positive, you know, person to be around, motivated, because I want to see you do good…I’m not the type that I just praise you to be good. It just don’t…I still want to be good, just not.”

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

“So I’m thinking like a job is like what you really want to do. You want to say I got a career, so I got a job or something.“