By Eric Monheim, Director of College Counseling

A New Mantra in College Counseling: “Yes, and!”

I typically think of “Yes, and!” as a guideline for ordering food as in “Yes, I’ll have the steak and lobster.” Better yet, “Yes, I’ll have the brownie and the ice cream.”

The reality is that the idea of “Yes, and!” has long served as a foundational principle of improvisational comedy allowing an actor to accept what his or her partner has said or done and expand upon it.  Proponents of Design Thinking have more recently adopted the philosophy.  They argue that “Yes, and” allows for more out-of-the-box or beyond-the-status-quo thinking.

I would like to suggest that adopting the “Yes, and” mantra in the college counseling realm would do us all—students, counselors, and schools—a whale of good.  To get us to the point of putting the mantra into practice, however, we have to reflect a bit about the traditional notion of how we evaluate success in the college process. (more…)