Keller @ Large: Must-Have Skills For 18-Year-Olds

BOSTON (CBS) - What skills should every 18-year-old have by the time you turn them loose on the world?

Former Stanford Dean Julie Lythcott-Haims came up with a list of eight things: the ability to talk to strangers, find their way around, handle workloads and deadlines, help run a household, handle interpersonal problems, cope with ups and downs, manage money, and take risks.

Lythcott-Haims argues that a generation of helicopter parents has produced too many young adults ill-equipped to deal with all that because we haven't let them try.

"Remember," she writes, "our kids must be able to do all of these things without resorting to calling a parent on the phone. If they're calling us to ask how, they do not have the life skill."

I'm not sure I totally co-sign onto all of this; I'm still learning life lessons from others, even though I left 18 behind back in the mid-1970s.

But I would add a couple more items onto the dean's list of must-have skills.

How about the ability to listen, really hear what someone is saying and reflect on it, without a knee-jerk response or even rushing off to tweet about it? Immediate gratification isn't always the most gratifying outcome.

And one more: how about the ability to think outside your comfort zone, to truly appreciate the diversity of thought and feeling that makes us human?

I'm pretty sure they don't teach that at college these days.

Listen to Jon's commentary: