News Decoder asked four young women for advice for high school students. They say the future is what you make it but it might not be what you expect.
A highway starts out of a high school corridor. (Illustration by News Decoder)
In News Decoder’s Top Tips, we share advice for young people from experts in journalism, media literacy and education. In this week’s Top Tip, News Decoder founder Nelson Graves talks to four young women about their experience transitioning from high school to careers. Top Tips are part of our open access learning resources. You can find more of our learning resources here. And learn how you can incorporate our resources and services into your classroom or educational program or by forming a News Decoder Club in your school.
Be flexible. Seize opportunities. Take risks. Trust yourself. And put yourself forward.
That’s advice for high school students offered by four young women who are pillars in News Decoder’s global community.
The four shared thoughts on their biggest challenges and their worries about the future — and what they are doing about it. Together, they offer a blueprint for teenagers facing decisions about future studies and careers.
Who are the four women?
Savannah Jenkins once worked as News Decoder’s communications manager and is one of the nonprofit’s advisors. Currently she works in London for White Ribbon UK, a nonprofit fighting violence against women and girls. She’s running the Athens Marathon in November to raise money for the humanitarian NGO Aid Pioneers.
Giuliana Nicolucci-Altman is an environmental consultant focused on climate adaptation and helping humanitarian actors adapt their approaches to climate change impacts in fragile/conflict-affected countries. She was one of News Decoder’s first student ambassadors when she attended partner School Year Abroad and also currently serves as a News Decoder advisor. She works for the International Rescue Committee in New York.
Lucy Jaffee served as News Decoder student ambassador while at La Jolla Country Day School in California and wrote a prize-winning story. She is a student at Claremont McKenna College in California and works in the news department of LAist 89.3, a non-commercial radio station in Southern California.
Kaja Andrić is News Decoder’s Editorial Intern and a student at New York University. She has written for The New York Times as a stringer, covering the Trump Trial and student protests over the Israel-Palestine conflict, and has contributed to NYU’s Washington Square News and Cooper Squared publications. In 2022, she was Florida Scholastic Press Association’s Writer of the Year.
I asked them three questions. Here’s what they said, with editing for clarity.
If you had one piece of advice to give to a high school student in their second-to-last year, what would that be? Why?
Nicolucci-Altman: I would say to not have too rigid a vision or a path for the future. So an opportunity that falls into your lap or that is referred to you by a mentor that may not be exactly the thing that you want to do might be something totally different than what you thought you wanted to do.
Seize that opportunity because you will learn from it. You might learn that you want to do something new. You will make connections that might be able to take you closer to what you want to do, or in a totally different direction. And those opportunities tend to be the ones that, in my experience, have been the most valuable and the most enriching, maybe precisely because they taught me something new. It never goes to plan.
Jenkins: Just trust yourself. And don’t be too rigid. Allow yourself to be surprised, about changing interests, changing passions, and be open to new opportunities and not so fixated on a plan. Whatever your major or minor is, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. Let things happen as they occur. It’s never going to stick to the plan you want in mind.
Andrić: I grew up in Florida. I emailed the Florida Weekly newspaper editor and said I have a story idea. I didn’t know if that was how I was supposed to do it. It ended up being a two-year stint where I was working for Florida Weekly, and I was 16. I had no idea what I was doing, but I feel there are people who are very eager to help high school students on their way.
If you vocalize that you’re passionate about something, it might be a pleasant surprise that people are very much willing to help out, even if it’s just advice or to help you out along the way. Trust yourself.
Jaffee: Live in the present and embrace all of the unique opportunities that being a high school junior has to offer. Take risks. Surround yourself with people who make you happy. Try new courses and extracurriculars. See high school as more than just a stepping stone toward college. I think I spent a lot of high school in college preparatory mode, which, while academically advantageous, placed life in college on a pedestal.
I believed the harder I worked, the better the college I could get into and the happier I’d be. I regret not using high school as a period of self-discovery but rather something to get over with until my next stage of life.
In the past two years, what has been your biggest professional or personal challenge and what is your strategy for tackling that challenge?
Andrić: I started college two years ago, and one of the biggest challenges has been trying to find time to explore my major, time management, trying to write stories. It has definitely been a challenge.
I go to university in New York City, and I think that there’s been so many different people and so many different things to dive into, different paths of specialization, and trying to find avenues for different things. I ended up changing my major from journalism and international relations to journalism and Romance languages. So I’m basically on a three-major track with two languages, so that’s been shifting gears and accepting what’s coming.
Like Giuliana said, nothing goes to plan. Everything is bound to change at some point. So I guess just accepting that in stride. Diving into it has definitely been a challenge of sorts.
Nicolucci-Altman: Finding a balance between higher-level policy work and work that has some sort of tangible impact. I’ve jumped back and forth between a corporate job, where I felt like I was so far removed from any sort of tangible impact, and now I’m working very hands on with families through settlements.
But now I miss the strategic thinking and the policy writing that I had when I was working more at a higher level. There’s this saying that working, for example, for an organization like the UN is kind of saving the world one workshop at a time. You’re not really doing anything. At the end of the day, the effects of that policy paper that you wrote are not going to trickle down for a very long time.
I did my master’s in human rights and humanitarian action, so I want to see that impact. I want to feel like I’m moving things, and sometimes finding that balance is really hard. I’ve been jumping back and forth from higher level to working in the field as we say, trying to find the right balance, to be satisfied and to feel challenged and to feel like my work is meaningful.
Jenkins: I’ve always been drawn to purpose-driven organizations. My jobs have all been for small but mighty charities — the classic under-resourced NGO but with big, big goals. I’m very much used to that kind of environment where it’s all hands on deck, start-up, very creative, very, very active and very community-based and inspiring work.
The balance has been trying to not get burnt out too easily. I am a very passionate person, and I get very excited about things. When I’m doing a project or at a period of work where there’s a big campaign going on, it’s very exciting. I feel like I’m in my element. It’s cool to be part of the grassroots movement and encourage important global change that aligns with global goals, even if we’re just advocating in the UK.
It’s finding that balance. Sometimes work is just work. Just be careful because you can easily burn yourself out by giving too much and then feel you need to distract yourself with something else. You can be passionate and recognize it’s just a job. You don’t have to bring it home with you. It’s not your identity.
It’s cool that you want to work for something, with purpose and not profit-driven per se. Create that healthy boundary and don’t don’t take on too much.
Jaffee: I think my biggest personal challenge has been embracing uncertainty and self-discovery, rather than criticizing myself for it. I change my mind a lot and am constantly discovering new things which consequently shifts my goals for the future.
This often upsets me when I compare myself to friends or public figures who have been on a straight path their entire lives. My best strategy for tackling that challenge is to limit comparison and embrace individuality. I remind myself that not everyone’s life needs to or should look the same, and that’s OK. Also, that there is no one set of experiences that will get you to a goal, or job or life.
What’s your biggest worry looking to the future, and what are you doing about it?
Nicolucci-Altman: The defunding of my organization because of the U.S. elections. If we want to speak a little bit more generally, then the impact on the nonprofit profit sector and on immigration law in the U.S. because of the swinging of the political pendulum and the impact that that might have on my work and my clients, who I care very deeply about.
Andrić: I was just on campus during a lot of student protests, and it’s starting to spread abroad. There have been a lot of tensions on college campuses in the past year, especially second semester at the end of this year.
Being in New York, my friends and I were thrust into the middle of it. I was actually stringing for the New York Times. So I was there every day during the big events in May. It’s a worry how my generation is going to work together at all in the future on these hot-button issues. There needs to be some middle ground.
My father was a refugee during the Bosnian War, and my Mom came from Serbia, so my parents are ethnic enemies as it is. All my life, my parents have been talking about ethnic enemies and ethnic tensions. I grew up in Florida, a swing state in America that is already polarized as it is. I think it is a worry to see how we’re going to facilitate those types of conversations.
I also think that as much as it was contentious in New York these last few months, I think that so many people have found middle ground, at least in my area of New York and at my school. Journalism has a hand in trying to bridge that gap between various groups.
Jenkins: I am worried about how closed off people can be and how we spend so much time on our phones now. They’re part of our life. I dropped my phone in a swimming pool on Friday, and I spent the whole weekend without my phone at a wedding. It was so strange, but it was so freeing because I was just totally there. I wasn’t taking pictures, I wasn’t doing anything.
When it came time to leave, there was the panic of not being able to travel without my phone because I didn’t have my tickets. But there are solutions to that. And it was just so nice to be free of that. There are some real added benefits of having a smartphone, but I do make a conscious effort to reduce my screen time and not spend as much time on social media. I find social media can really set you up to compare yourself in all aspects of your life, make you feel lonely and just disempowered.
You know how algorithms work. You like certain issues, you post about certain issues and viewpoints, and it just spirals. You have to remember that the algorithm works to keep you on your smartphone. It’s all about the economy of attention. It’s great that we can share people’s stories and make people aware about it, but protect yourself.
Jaffee: My biggest worry is that people will continue to lose faith in pursuing careers driven by public service and purpose. As a college student, I’m often frustrated when the intelligent and innovative people I am surrounded by instead choose to lend their knowledge to efforts they don’t care about, purely to make money.
I’m concerned that a narrative of wealth over happiness will lure many smart minds away from changing the world. Personally, I seek out the advice of mentors and individuals who have managed to succeed in impact-driven careers. I also encourage my peers to pursue their passions, offering my full support and do not judge if they ultimately choose otherwise.
And a final question for Nicolucci-Altman and Jenkins: Both of you have ended up in nonprofit work. What is the attraction of that for you at this point as opposed to going into a corporation?
Nicolucci-Altman: I’m having trouble articulating it in a way that sounds a little more sophisticated than that I just want to help people. I’m not saying that there aren’t corporations that are also focused on social impact. Nonprofits obviously focus the entirety of their resources on their impacts.
Working in refugee resettlement really does feel like giving back to the community because I moved to New York, I made the city my home and there are people arriving every day who are arriving in much more challenging circumstances. They just fled their homes. They don’t know where their next meal is coming from. They don’t know how to navigate the asylum system or how to get a job.
So it’s meaningful for me to be able to help orient them in that process. I work specifically with youth, helping orient kids in the New York public school system in English and all other sorts of social and emotional challenges. That giving back aspect really does resonate.
Jenkins: I had a private-sector experience and it was very specific because it was in fashion in Paris. It completely zapped me. It doesn’t mean every corporate experience would be like that. I do some really interesting corporate freelance work that I absolutely love.
I freelance for a communications agency in Paris. I do ghost writing, expert articles and social media posts for multinationals. That’s quite interesting. It still has that storytelling component, but I find social movement campaigns so fun to work on versus corporate comms, which I can find quite dry. But I’ve had very limited corporate experience.
Giuliana and I both interned at the OECD, and we were working for the Statistics and Data Directorate, which is purely data-driven. It was formative for a lot of reasons — working with some of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, statisticians from around the world, the global aspect. I liked the perks of working at the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) but I just found it very dry and not creative.
You have this creativity that comes from trying to find a super impactful media campaign and the low-cost, no-cost solution. What I find really cool about those moments is the people you get to meet along the way.
You don’t expect Coca-Cola to come around and have their communications team actually be super engaging, understanding of your issue. They might be checking the corporate social responsibility box, but then you work with these people and you see, no, they actually do care about giving back to their communities. It’s cool to facilitate that.
Three questions to consider:
- How can high school be more than just a stepping stone to college?
- What are some challenges people face after high school?
- Do you think it is better to be focused on a goal or to just take opportunities as they come along?
Nelson Graves is the founder of News Decoder. A dual American-French citizen, he has worked as a foreign correspondent and educator on three continents. Recently he published a memoir entitled “Willful Wanderer”. He lives in France.