In a couple of months a new wave of graduates will be making their entrance. And I’ve been thinking about what kind of coaching would help them. Remember your twenties? If that question made you smile, maybe you lived them like I did:

• Learned to be on my own and moved about a dozen times; traveled a lot
• Made some decisions about what I wanted to try on professionally and where I wanted live
• Took interesting jobs and started learning what I was good at and wanted more of and less of
• Learned the nuts and bolts of life via numerous roommates
• Figured out what made me a joy to be around
• Figured out what made me irritating to be around
• Got close to people–we worked hard, played hard and got scared together
• Learned the difference between trust and wishful thinking  Got my heart broken yet survived
• Found a few mentors  Pushed my limits yet survived
• Experienced the fruits of some really good and really bad decisions  Got lost and found several times
• Learned about keeping my word
• Started making agreements with my future self about money and health
• Found out what mattered to me
• And figured out what constituted “magic” for me in the flow of life

I wrote last spring about today’s twenty-somethings, aka the “Millennials”. Of course they want all the things on that list too. But the world they are stepping into is different:

1. In 1960, the vast majority of men and women had experienced a major life transition (left home, graduated college, established a career, gotten married, had a child–usually in that order) by the time they were thirty years old. In 2012, that’s true for only a minority of young men and women.

2. Not surprisingly, 37 percent of twenty-somethings are currently unemployed or under-employed.

3. College was more of a given until 1990, and people left college with manageable debt. Graduates today are likely to be lost in tuition debt, wondering if and whether they will ever be able to repay it.

4. Curiously, one in four Millennials think it is likely that they will be famous.

5. There are long-term social and societal implications to all of the above–for all of us.

I know it’s early. But if you know and love a Millennial, here’s an idea for a graduation gift this year. We at SeattleCoach are designing short-term intensive coaching opportunities for our favorite twentysomethings. We’ll launch this spring.