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<p>Preface ix</p> <p>1. Emerging Adulthood in a Changing World: Potential and Vulnerability 1</p> <p>2. The Deep Motion of Life: Composing Meaning, Purpose, and Faith 20</p> <p>3. Becoming at Home in the Universe: A Developmental Process 46</p> <p>4. It Matters How We Think 70</p> <p>5. It All Depends . . . 94</p> <p>6. . . . On Belonging 114</p> <p>7. Imagination: The Core of Learning and the Heart of Leadership 134</p> <p>8. The Gifts of Mentorship and a Mentoring Environment 165</p> <p>9. Higher Education as Mentor 203</p> <p>10. Culture as Mentor 224</p> <p>Coda: Mentoring Communities 243</p> <p>Professional Education and the Professions 243</p> <p>The Workplace 251</p> <p>Travel 258</p> <p>Families 261</p> <p>Religious Faith Communities 267</p> <p>Media 279</p> <p>Social Movements 286</p> <p>Notes 289</p> <p>The Author 319</p> <p>Name Index 321</p> <p>Subject Index 325</p>

<p><b>Sharon Daloz Parks</b> has been described as a keen observer, a probing listener, and a rich and subtle theorist. She is principal of <i>Leadership for the New Commons</i>, a senior fellow at the Whidbey Institute, and has held faculty and senior research positions at Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Business School, the Kennedy School of Government, and the Weston School of Theology.

<P><b>THE “TWENTY-SOMETHING” YEARS</b> of emerging adulthood are increasingly recognized as a distinctive but puzzling era in the human life span. In this tenth anniversary revised edition of her 2001 classic, Sharon Daloz Parks, a pioneering voice in young adult development theory, builds on the foundation she established over two decades ago in <i>The Critical Years</i>, in which she recognized this significant stage in the human life span and underscored the role of mentors in the lives of young adults. <p>The emerging adult years constitute a new challenge to individuals, institutions, and cultures. It matters whether emerging adults move through the twenty-something decade on default settings or are well prepared for citizenship and leadership. Focusing on critical features of human development—transformations in thinking, feeling, and networks of belonging—Parks describes the potential and vulnerability of emerging adults and shows how mentors and mentoring environments can provide access to big-enough questions and inspire dreams worthy of engagement with a challenging and complex world. <p>Parks casts the emerging adult years within the task of making meaning in a dramatically changing world—a task that all human beings share. She helpfully recognizes “faith” as meaning-making in its most comprehensive dimensions, whether expressed in secular or religious terms, and how over time our meaning-making orients our sense of purpose, moral stance, and competence. <p>This tenth-anniversary revised edition of <i>Big Questions, Worthy Dreams</i> is written for faculty and administrators in higher and professional education, supervisors in workplace settings, community leaders, parents, and for all who are open to deepening their understanding of emerging adult lives. This updated edition addresses recent issues and events, including (among others) violence in our culture, mixed spirituality and religious identities, social media and networking, the economic crisis, changing racial identity, cultural shifts, and other forces shaping the narrative of young adulthood today.

"The things at stake in this tenth anniversary edition are even more profound and urgent than they were the first time around. This is not a little story about young people. It is a big story about humanity and the persistent quest for meaning and purpose. . . . the key is mentorship, and the payoff should be big—for all of us." —Richard A. Settersten Jr., coauthor, <i>Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It's Good for Everyone</i> <p>"Scholarly, wise, elegant, and deeply insightful, this book is . . . for all who work with people in the awe and angst-filled years between 18 and 32. . . . Upcoming generations have fateful choices to make that we need them to take up faithfully and fully awake. Parks, a master teacher, lights the way—theirs and ours." —Diana Chapman Walsh, president emerita, Wellesley College; board chair, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard</p> <p>"No one who cares deeply about people in their twenties should be without this book. In Sharon Daloz Parks's lyrical company we learn so much more about their biggest possibilities—and our own." —Robert Kegan, author, <i>In Over Our Heads</i>; professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education</p> <p>"Parks's clear voice .... is simultaneously that of a scholar, clinician, ethicist, and priest—that of a rare and capable generalist who can nurture both teachers and students ... [and] reveal the architecture of the process by which we merge the questions of ultimate reality with the immediate needs and duties of our generation." —Janet Cooper Nelson, chaplain of the university, Brown University</p> <p>" . . . [A] valuable resource for parents, professors, administrators, employers, and all others who care about emerging adults and want to see them thrive." —Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Clark University; author, <i>Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties</i></p>

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