Erasing the Finish Line

Moving beyond a prescribed path for success, Erasing the Finish Line highlights the essential skills to help each young person thrive in school and life For years, we’ve been led to believe that great grades, high test scores, and college acceptance are key to a successful life. Yet our laser focus on these achievements leaves students feeling anxious, demoralized, and unprepared. What if we’ve overlooked the critical skills young adults need to navigate an ever-changing world? What fundamental skills help young people adapt, persevere, and thrive? Academic advisor and early career development expert Ana Homayoun answers these questions and more in her accessible and solutions-oriented guide to transforming future generations. In her ground-breaking new book, Erasing the Finish Line, Homayoun flips the way we think about education. In this refreshing approach, Homayoun reveals new strategies to help each student develop their own blueprint for success, including how to: Develop a system based on executive functioning skills Build valuable social capital while fostering genuine connections Identify energy profile and how to recharge Expand perspective through immersive exposure Remain adaptable in the face of disappointments and setbacks Through a powerful blend of theory, strategies and storytelling from former and current students, Homayoun’s layered approach to revisioning education will bring sharp realization to parents, educators, and policy-makers alike. She shows how to look beyond assessments, grades, and college acceptance as indicators of long term success and shares new strategies, including, including how to: Ask open-ended questions without judgment Tie answers to those questions to the underlying foundational skills needed Acting as a resource, connector, and sponsor as applicable Suspend notions of disbelief, negativity, and general malaise Convey compassion and empathy while having high expectations With this new blueprint, we can focus on critical and undervalued executive functioning skills, along with social capital, sponsorship, shared experiences and greater exposure to a wider range of opportunities. In her work across tens of thousands of miles, she’s seen how these foundational skills allow kids to reflect, adapt, redirect and thrive in a world so different from the one their parents grew up in.