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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP I have 2 college age kids. One goes to a State school majoring in finance. Deadlines are strict. The other goes to a SLAC. Deadlines are whenever. The whenever deadlines cause a LOT of stress. DC keeps working and working and working and never gets a break. It’s also not the real world. So I don’t think you are doing any favors with whenever deadlines. It’s the worst thing about DCs SLAC. Which is a top 10. [/quote]

Except the SLAC's approach is actually really similar to how many industries work, and is a major reason a lot of people struggle to acclimate to a work environment after being in a very rigid, rule-based education setting.

I worked in law and consulting for 25 years. Yes, sometimes there are hard deadlines. They are great, I love them -- nothing motivates like simply having to complete something by a set date or risk losing a client or a project or a bonus or whatever.

But 90% of the time, my projects operate on a rolling basis with no firm deadline. It's like "as soon as you can get to this" or "let's try to finish this before the quarter ends" but if something more urgent comes up, things get pushed all the time. Everyone is juggling multiple projects at the same time of varying levels of importance.

You have to learn how to prioritize, how to set deadlines for yourself and stick to them (I'm going to finish the outline on this by Friday so that I can send it around for comments). The people who are most successful are the people who can self-motivate and organize themselves in a way that gets work done even though often projects just disappear off everyone else's radar until suddenly one day you get an email that says "Oh hey, is this done?" And if you've been ignoring it in favor of items with clear deadlines, you are screwed. I've had subordinates who expect everything to be laid out for them with clear deadlines, and for me to say "this is what you should work on first, and this is how, and then do this" etc. They don't last. That's not my job -- they have to learn to prioritize and figure it out on their own. It's about maturity and self-sufficiency.

So while I understand that hard deadlines are easier and lack of them is stressful, this is really just the reality of many white collar jobs, and both of your kids should be learning how to deal with the kind of nebulous deadline culture because it's not going away anytime soon.[/quote]

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