- Reflections on Focus Group Experience
- Takeaways
“Just keep your eye on the prize and just persist and do what you want to do.”
Participant:
- New York, NY
- white
- female
- 26-29
- higher income
Youth Quote Search
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.
- Reflections on Focus Group Experience
- Takeaways
“Filling out my pathways allowed me to really assess my future goals and how far I’ve come.”
Participant:
- Online
- Black
- female
- 26-29
- mixed income
- Education
- Perceptions of college and postsecondary
“The drawbacks are definitely the money. I think that’s the only negative.”
Participant:
- Online
- white
- male
- 15-22
- lower income
- Impact of personal attributes and characteristics
- Pathways
“Positive: energetic, perfectionist. Negative, introverted, perfectionist.”
Participant:
- Online
- Hispanic
- female
- 26-29
- mixed income
- Challenges and Barriers
- Family
“…you know, and it’s the truth like everyone sees no matter one time you mess up, they’ll see that one no matter even if you did 100 times good things. They’ll always see the one time you messed up.”
Participant:
- Yakima, WA
- Hispanic
- male
- 15-22
- lower income
- Attributes and characteristics
- Describing Identity
“Friendly and listener make me proud because I think they’re important qualities and they are really critical for my type of work.”
Participant:
- Online
- white
- female
- 26-29
- mixed income
- Challenges and Barriers
- Death, loss and uncertainty
“I look at my parent’s life. My mom before she had my sister and then me, she wanted to be a marine biologist, but she couldn’t finish college. Her life changed in a matter of 9 months. I don’t want my life to be like that. I look at their lives and some of the struggles they go through. It is not something that I want. I want to really push for my dreams. I don’t want anything to get in the way. I am that type of person. If you were to get in the way or weigh me down in any way, I wouldn’t be afraid to drop you easily.”
Participant:
- Los Angeles, CA
- white
- female
- 15-22
- lower income
- Describing Identity
- Race, ethnicity, gender, culture
“I’m African-American, female, Hispanic, Puerto Rican, and Christian.”
Participant:
- Baltimore, MD
- Black
- female
- 15-22
- higher income
- Impact of personal attributes and characteristics
- Pathways
“The words that might have a positive impact on my career could be the listener, curious” and drive. Words that would impact me and in a negative way at work would be…drama, ego driven, loud, impatient, greedy.”
Participant:
- Online
- Hispanic
- male
- 26-29
- mixed income
- Impact of family
- Pathways
“My mom has high expectations of me because I’m known to score like really high on my ACT but like get really low grades. And that’s because I have all my classes with all my friends. Like every single class, I have a friend in. And me and my friends just be joking around. Sometimes we take it seriously, but most of the time, it’s just me and friends joking around. But, yeah, I personally would like to reach those expectations of her to make my mom proud and happy, and because I’ve watched my mom go through college, graduate college. I was there for her graduation. And it really inspired me to reach those expectations. [I was] 15 [when she graduated. It was inspiring] Just seeing how happy she was to walk across that stage, and to see her son looking down on her, you know, being that figure that she is, yeah.”
Participant:
- New Orleans, LA
- white
- male
- 15-22
- lower income