The Real Reason College Decisions Feel So Overwhelming

Choosing what comes after high school can feel overwhelming—for teens and parents.
In this episode, Cynthia Coufal breaks down the most common post-secondary planning mistakes families make and explains how to make calmer, more thoughtful decisions about college, gap years, work, or other paths.

If you’re feeling pressure to “just decide,” comparing yourself to others, or worrying that one choice will determine your entire future—this conversation is for you.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Why there is no single right decision after high school
Why college is often treated like a test—and why that creates anxiety
How deadlines increase pressure (and how to plan without panic)
What teens should consider before choosing college
Why this decision is not permanent—and never has to be

This episode is designed for:
✔️ High school students
✔️ Parents of teens
✔️ Families navigating college or post-secondary planning
✔️ Anyone feeling anxious about “what comes next”

🔗 RESOURCES & SUPPORT

If you’d like support with:

Post-secondary planning
Understanding strengths and decision-making
Reducing anxiety around college and life after high school

You can:

Contact me and ask questions.

Feeling unsure doesn’t mean you’re behind—it means you haven’t been given the right tools yet. 

YouMap® helps you understand:
• what energizes you
• what drains you
• how you make decisions
• what environments fit you best 

That self-awareness makes college and life decisions lighter. 

👉 Start with YouMap® here:
 https://cheerful-writer-462.kit.com/products/takethe-you-map-assessment 

00:00 – Take a breath: There is no one right decision
02:00 – Why pressure makes decisions harder
05:00 – Why confidence doesn’t mean certainty
08:00 – Mistake #1: Treating college like a test
10:00 – Choosing college for the wrong reasons
12:00 – Mistake #2: Deciding to reduce anxiety
15:00 – Mistake #3: Confusing confidence with certainty
18:00 – Mistake #4: Not knowing your “why”
22:00 – Independence, stress, and readiness
26:00 – Mistake #5: Believing this decision is forever
30:00 – My own college story (0.0 GPA → 4.0)
34:00 – The “next best environment” question
38:00 – What parents can do differently
42:00 – Final reassurance + support options 

 Struggling with anxiety in your family? If anxiety is causing tension, fights, or disconnect in your home, you don’t have to face it alone. I help parents bring more peace, confidence, and connection to their families. Let’s talk—schedule a free consultation today or email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com

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Email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com
Text me: 785-380-2064
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Transcript

 Hi, I have missed you all so much. If you are a teen or parent thinking about post-secondary planning, I want you to take a deep breath. I am gonna dispel some myths for you today. I. The first one is that there is just one right decision to make about your after-school plans, and that is so not true at all, and I think especially young people just listen to that.

There is no right decision to make. So take a deep breath, it's totally fine, and we're gonna talk about how you should be making those post-secondary decisions.

There are so many decisions to be made. Do you go to college? Do you not go to college at all? Do you go into the military? Do you go to work? Do you do a mix of part-time [00:01:00] job? Part-time school? Do you take a gap year? During your gap year? Year? Do you travel? Do you take an internship somewhere? Do you mix some of these things together?

There's like so many decisions to make, and I think that's what makes it so upsetting for young people and for their parents, is that everyone feels this pressure to make a decision. But there are no right answers to this, and I know that that can be freeing and also more anxiety producing, because when I started my business, people were like, oh, just do whatever you want.

You get to create it however you want. Well, that sounds amazing until you think about all the different ways to do that, and then it's like, can somebody just tell me what to do? So I totally understand if you are in that position. The problem is, is that a lot of us, [00:02:00] because we have this pressure on us, and this is with the young people and with the parents, is that we make decisions for the wrong reasons.

We make decisions because we're being pressured. We make decisions because we feel panicked. We make decisions because of what our friends are doing. We make decisions because we just want people to stop asking us what our decision is, and if we make a decision, then we can just say that and then they won't bother us anymore.

And in the whole month of February, I'm doing a whole bunch of different things to help you with this. And I just have the one podcast this month. But check me out on social media and if you're on my newsletter, you'll get all the extra things. If you wanna be on my newsletter, go to my website, sign up for my newsletter.

Um, but every week you're gonna be getting different ideas about post-secondary planning, and I am gonna. Maybe focus on college more because a lot of people are making that decision, but I want 'em to make the right decision. But there [00:03:00] are so many other decisions, and we're gonna talk about that too, so that people can feel calmer at this time while you're trying to decide, and that you make a decision that's more right for you than maybe if you were making it for all these other wrong reasons.

But no matter what you decide. It's okay because that decision can change later if you want it to. None of these, uh, I think I'm getting ahead of myself, but none of these things are forever decisions.

One of the things that many young people tell me is that they look around and they see that everyone else seems to be really confident in their decisions. Like they just seem to know what to do. And I remember this as a school counselor, that there were some students that I had that maybe when they were a freshman, they knew exactly what they were gonna do, exactly where they were gonna go.

There's been no decision, no. Um. No [00:04:00] confusion about it, and they're okay with that and it ends up being the right decision. Other people, they leave high school and they still don't know what they're doing, and all of that is normal based on who you are and how you make decisions and what kinds of decisions you're making.

And just because someone does know or seems to know or seems to be confident in their decision, doesn't mean that you should be. Confident in a one decision. And most of the time you're gonna find, and parents this is for you too, that those parents that seem so sure about what their kids are doing, sometimes that, and maybe I would say many times that confidence is coming from actual fear, like they're afraid.

So they're, they're sort of like fake it till you make it like I'm gonna. Say really confident things, and I'm gonna look confident, even though inside I'm like, I have no idea what is, what is happening. And that's probably what most people that seem confident is because [00:05:00] they're, they're masking their, their fear of what's going on.

And there are deadlines for things. And so that makes things feel urgent too, because there's deadlines for scholarships, deadlines for applications, and. It does feel like you have to make a decision at a certain point. That's one of the reasons why it's really good to start talking about these things and having really open, broad conversations about this early in high school so that the deadlines aren't infecting you, so that when you get to your senior year and there are deadlines for things.

You already have a pretty good idea of what you're doing, so the deadlines just guide you instead of like feel like it's forcing you. And I know some kids don't wanna talk about this stuff early, and I understand that too, but maybe it's because they're feeling pressured. And so I'm gonna talk to you today about how to have conversations that don't feel pressured.[00:06:00] 

And a lot of times, again, teens make decisions. 'cause they want people to leave them alone. So they're like, well if I decide I'm going to this school, 'cause I know this is what people want me to do, then people will stop talking to me about it. But really that's not the right reason to go. Or maybe they don't even really want to go there anyway.

And, uh, teens have said this to me so many times. They don't wanna make a decision about the future because they don't know anything about their future. They feel very uncertain about it, and of course they do. We don't, we cannot predict anything about the future. And so sometimes when we're deciding stuff about it, it almost seems like we're being, um, making the wrong decision because we don't know.

But we're not gonna know. We're gonna actually have to make the decision before we know. But I know that that. Feels kind of funny for everyone and parents are [00:07:00] also hearing a lot of baggage about this decision. Maybe they're regretting the decisions they made when they were that age. Maybe they feel pressure from other people in their family that or other friend in their friend group.

They might feel pressure to be making certain decisions because they wanna keep up with the Joneses or they wanna you know, fit in with their, with their friend group. They might be afraid of what happens if their kid doesn't make these decisions, and what does that mean? Fear, like their kids are falling behind if they don't make these decisions.

And so these are all the wrong reasons why to make this post-secondary decision, and these are the reasons why most people make those decisions. So I really wanted to offer something for families and for young people. That we can really just take a deep breath and we can calm down and we can really look at this from a, a bigger picture, I [00:08:00] guess.

So one of the mistakes that families and and young people are making is that they're treating college like a test. So they're looking at, if I go to college, that means that I'm smart. And that means like, you know, when we take a test and it says how smart we are, we're looking at college. Like, if I go to college, that means I'm smart.

If I go to college, that means I'm a worthy person. And remember, we're a hundred percent worthy from the minute we are born. So college doesn't make us any more worthy than we already are. So if you're making the decision to go to college because it's gonna make you be something, you are already a worthy person.

Now there are degrees that, or there, there are jobs that you have to have a certain degree in order to get that job. And so if you are certain or fairly certain that there is a specific job [00:09:00] that you want to do that requires a degree to do it, then that is a good reason to go to college 'cause it's going to get you closer to your goal.

But a lot of people choose college without knowing what that end goal is. And so they're choosing it for other reasons. Like, my friends are going there, I wanna have a college experience. The reason I chose college the first time was, I wanna get out of my house. I wanna get out of my small hometown. I wanna be independent.

Now, none of those things are bad, but those are not the reasons to choose college. Those are the reasons to make some post-secondary plans. But if you are making them for those reasons, then you might have the experience like I did where I dropped out by Halloween and had a 0.0 GPA the first semester of college because I chose it for all the wrong reasons.

I didn't choose it [00:10:00] for any of the reasons why people. Do go to college. And so instead of asking yourself first, what college should I go to? Think about what am I hoping this next step after high school will do for me? What do I wanna learn? What do I wanna practice? What do I want to figure out? What do I wanna figure out about life?

Or what do I wanna figure out about myself? Those questions open up a, a much larger area for you to help you to decide what direction you might go in. The second mistake that I see for families and young people making is that they make decisions. To reduce anxiety. So I am very anxious and uncertain about the future, so I'm just gonna make a decision.

So I'm done making decisions so that I don't have to have this decision hanging over my head. And just making a decision to make a decision is not the right reason. And [00:11:00] so a lot of times we're making hasty, decisions because we just want to be over that uncomfortable feeling of not knowing what we're supposed to do.

And it has nothing to do with being aligned with who we are, what we wanna learn, what we wanna do in our life. And so we need to be thinking about this decision is about just thinking about it as a next step instead of like the whole entire future of the next 80 years of my life. It's what is the what?

What do I want in the next year? What do I want in this next step? So it's movement towards some sort of learning or training or growth in who we are. And that can be anything. It doesn't have to be college. A third mistake I think families and young people make is they confuse other people's confidence with.

Certainty. [00:12:00] So their parents are confident that they need to go to college. So then they're like, oh, then this is true that I need to go to college. My parent says that it's true. So it must be true. Um, and I'm not saying that parents are not telling you the truth, but it's maybe their truth and not your truth.

So you really have to like try to separate those things out. Other kids around me are very confident about what they're doing, so I should be confident. So, um, because they're confident about their decisions, then I should be or need to be confident in my decisions. Um, sometimes your counselor is confident about something you should do, and maybe they don't have all the answers or all the things, or maybe they're, they're taking.

What you're saying and using that and trying to be confident for you so that you'll feel confident, but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily for you. The fourth mistake I see families and young people making is not understanding [00:13:00] why you are making the decision. And I kind of talked about that before, but these are some questions that you should be asking yourself early on in high school, but especially as you're.

Making more final decisions of what you're gonna do after high school. What do you enjoy learning while you've been in school so far? What is fun for you? What, what kinds of things really, like what do you get lost in, what do you really enjoy doing? What drains you? What, what are the things that you're like, I can't stand this another minute.

I had so many kids. That would, they hated school. They hated homework. They hated studying. They hated the structure of school, and then they were going to college or said they were going to college. A lot of them really didn't end up going or didn't stay very long, but they were going because their friends were going or their parents told 'em or whatever.

But I would say to them, you realize that college is school. [00:14:00] College requires homework. College requires studying. College requires reading. College requires going to a class and having a schedule. And if you don't like any of those things, then it really doesn't make sense to go to school, at least right now.

You know, I think a lot of times that's a maturity thing. And after you've been out of that kind of. Routine and doing homework and stuff after you've been out of it for a year. Sometimes you're like, kind of think I did like that and I wanna go back to it. And you go back to it in a different way and you go back to it where you're like, okay, I'm ready to do this.

But if you're hating it right now, jumping right into it in another two months, you're probably not gonna be ready to do school if you don't like doing school Now how do you handle stress? Do you just break down and shut down and don't do anything? Do you ask your [00:15:00] parents to take care of it for you?

Because if you're doing those kinds of things, going to college is not gonna be helpful to you. Even if you're going to your hometown college and you're gonna be living at home and you could tell your parents to fix everything. Once you're out of high school, the college doesn't wanna talk to your parents.

They don't want your parents to take care of things for you. They want you to do it. So if you get stressed out and then you just shut down and you don't do anything, then that's gonna be a difficult place for you to be. Even if you go get a job and you just shut down when you're stressed out and you know, don't go to your job or whatever, that's not.

It couldn't work out very well. So you have to figure out, you know, how am I handling stress? And if you're not handling it well, you need to learn those skills. Like, how am I going to get the skills to deal with stress? And maybe that's a different kind of experience after high school. Besides, um, going to college what does independence actually look like?

Again, [00:16:00] this has to do with how much is, are your parents doing for you and how much are you doing independently? You should be able to get up by an alarm by yourself without somebody yelling at you or tearing your bed clothes off or whatever to get you to get up.

You should be able to make appointments for yourself, calling on a telephone, talking to people about. Things you need to be able to go into buildings that you have no idea where the the room is that you need to go to and know that you can figure it out by looking at signs, reading directories, figuring out, uh, where you're supposed to go without someone like your parents telling you how to do these things.

So when you think about your future, you need to think about. This person that I am, not who I want to be or I wish I was, but this person that I am right now, is this person capable of doing things independently, handling [00:17:00] stress? Does this person know a little bit about what they wanna do? Now, obviously.

You don't know everything that you wanna know. I still am figuring things out about my life. This will never end. But I have ideas that get me to the next year and the next year and the next year, and then I can kind of move and pivot as each year goes by, as I learn more about myself and what I wanna do next.

Um, but you need to have some understanding of who you are and how you will navigate this new setting, whatever it is. And the fifth mistake I think families and young people make are believing that this decision is forever. It's for the next 80 years. This decision I'm making right now is the only decision and it will totally lock everything in.

And that is so not true. And I hope that that takes some of the stress off of this decision. [00:18:00] You can change your mind. You can do something different every year. You can transfer, you can pause, you can go back. You can do part time. There's so many ways to do life and we sometimes get sold ideas that there's only one way.

And I, when my kids were in the leaving high school time, I really believed that if they didn't get well for my daughter, I felt like if she didn't go to college, then her life would be ruined. Now. No one's life is ruined if they don't go to college. I do think it can open doors for certain things and I knew that she would, she liked school and she likes learning, so I knew it would be an okay decision for her to make.

And she did make that decision and it was fine, but I. I, I think I, I would've been one of those difficult parents if she would've wanted to do something else. [00:19:00] And I realize now that that would've not been the right decision to make. And I'm glad it worked out the way that it should have and did. But I've had parents tell me that they pretty much told their kids there weren't any other choices about life other than going to college.

And then. They didn't do very well when they got there and maybe didn't even finish 'cause it was really the parent's idea about it and not what the kid wanted to do. So just know that you can change your mind. You can do different things. You, this decision that you make today doesn't have to affect other things, and you can.

There's really no wrong decision because even if you choose school and it's not for you, then you learn something from that and you do something else. Now it does. It can get expensive, and so that's the other thing you need to think about is that if you're very unsure, then don't do things that are gonna cost you a lot of money.

Maybe you do a cheaper [00:20:00] school or you find other ways to save costs in that decision until you know for sure that that is gonna feel good and you're gonna be able to do it. Mistakes, as I've always said in this podcast, are the way that we learn things about our ourselves. And so if we choose something and we end up not liking it, it's okay.

If there's nothing wrong with you, it's still worthy. You can make a different decision. You can go back later that time when I left school in October and I got a 0.0 GPA in two months after that, so in January I decided I'm gonna go to a community college. 'cause I went to the state university 'cause that's where I'd wanted to go since I was in elementary school and it wasn't a good fit for me.

Now I. Well, I chose college for all the wrong reasons, but, and later that same state college is where I got my master's degree and I was totally fine there, but I needed maturity. I [00:21:00] needed to grow up some, I needed to have more confidence in myself. I had no confidence in myself when I was 18 years old.

So, you know, that was the, going to a state university at such a large size was not the right decision for me. So. Then in January I go to the community college that's just down the road and I do fine and I actually thrive. And then I end up then transferring to a four year school that was near me that I could drive to every day.

Because I wanted to have a different lifestyle than most college students. I get married. And so I drove to school as a married person and I. Did fine there. And then later going back to that state university for my master's degree, I got a 4.0 in my master's degree. And it's so funny to see my transcript with my first semester, years before 0.0 to a [00:22:00] 4.0.

I sometimes think when people get that, when I would apply for jobs that they must laugh to themselves. Like obviously she wasn't ready for college over here. Um, and so that. It wasn't a wrong decision that I went there. I learned something from that and I also learned that I really wanted to be in school and I really wanted to learn things.

And so it wasn't a cho, it wasn't the idea that school wasn't for me or that I shouldn't go to school. It was just what school it, when, and how. And those are the decisions that I want you to be thinking about way ahead of time. So. Instead of asking yourself or asking kids, what do you wanna do after high school?

Why don't we ask them things like, what do you think is the next best environment for you right now? Is that environment going to support your mental health? Because mental health is huge right now and many campuses. Probably all campuses have some [00:23:00] way to help people with their mental health, but do you know you need help with your mental health?

Do you know where those supports are? Is living completely on your own, making all your own decisions, is that gonna be good for your mental health right now? Like, think about those things and the next step after high school should push you out of your comfort zone. It shouldn't feel. Amazing. It should feel uncomfortable, but it shouldn't feel like panic.

So what's the happy medium there? How are you going to do something that pushes you out of your comfort zone and yet not to the point where you're shutting down? And then how will you access support if you need help? You know, will it be your parents? And how will that work? And what about your professors and what about other.

Other things on campus that you can access if you're doing that, if you go into a job, do you know how to talk to your boss about [00:24:00] things that you need or what's going on? Do you know how to navigate getting an apartment and getting your groceries and paying your bills and making appointments? Do you know how to do all those things?

And do you know how to ask for help or where to ask for help if you don't know those things? What is something that you wanna learn about yourself in this next phase? What is it that you wanna grow about yourself in the next phase? That's plan. That's the kind of planning that we need to be doing. Not just making some choice because our friends are doing it or we wanna get out of our house or whatever.

And parents, your role is not to push any kind of answers or even. Unless they ask you your advice and your opinions, this time is for you to help them have a safe place to explore everything. What if I don't go to school? What kind of jobs [00:25:00] could I get? What if I take a gap year? Can I go somewhere? Do you know about internships and like, just talk about all the things.

And even if some of those things bring about some panic inside of you, it's okay. Just let them talk about it. Let them figure out their own timing and the way that they want to do their life because this part is about them. And if you are doing a lot of stuff for them, now's the time to be asking them to do some of those things.

Maybe they have more chores to do now. Maybe they. Have some sort of financial responsibility of some kind. Maybe they're getting up on their own now and you're not, if they don't, uh, get up on time, you just let them deal with whatever the consequences are, whatever it is that you've been doing. A lot of, you know, backing off on that and letting them be [00:26:00] uncomfortable and let the, let yourself be uncomfortable and just be curious.

Help them be curious and you be curious about what's going on and not feel like there's any final answers or anything that needs to be done right now. Just think about it.

This episode stirred some things up in you. That's good because that means I'm helping you actually think about what's going on, and if you wanna focus on. These kinds of decisions and you would like some help with that. I would love to support you with post-secondary planning or understanding your strengths and how your strengths play into these post-secondary plans.

If you need to reduce your anxiety around these decisions and what happens after high school. That's what I do every day. For young people and their families, and I would love to help you with that too. So just reach out to me on my [00:27:00] social media. You can go to my website. My email is there. You can sign up for my newsletter.

You can always reply to my newsletter if you're already getting my newsletter. I, I'm having a live. On February 19th, I'm having a live talk with a college concierge. I love that name. Uh, Lee Norwood. And she's gonna be talking about what do colleges want or what they're looking for when you're going there.

So if you have at least decided colleges, the is the decision, you're not really sure the rest of it we are gonna be talking about that. And if you come live. Young people or their parents can ask questions of either of us about this whole process and what it is that colleges are needing. And I would love to be able to help you with all of that.

So just find I find the information for that. And if you follow social media, there'll be links, um, to these [00:28:00] different offerings that I'm doing. And I just, I want you to be able to make this decision. In the most calm, peaceful way, and then it can be a decision that you can just be really proud of and happy about.

And remember, even if you make a different decision, it's fine. You're always a hundred percent worthy and I can't wait to talk to you next month. I.