Are you feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work involved in getting ready to launch a young person into adult life? Do you need to simplify even as the performance demands increase?

In the Countdown to College workshop, we discuss One-Stop Resume Builders at some length. A One-Stop-Resume-Builder is a single activity that can give you all the major elements your student needs to develop for a launch-to-life resume. These activities usually provide both blessed relief from the stress of trying to find what you need a little bit at a time, and delightful occupation for most of your family members at the same time.

Competitive speech and debate in the National Christian Forensics and Communication Association is one of my family’s favorite One-Stop-Resume-Builders. In the context of a local club, your student will find one of the best academic validations available, leadership opportunities, often service opportunities and a matchless peer group.

I am writing to you as I return from teaching the final Values Debate camp for Training Minds Ministries this fall. It was four and a half days of intensive study of the history of philosophy, the structure of debate, and its everyday application in sharing the Gospel with unbelievers. We were visited by such illustrious thinkers as Aristotle, Karl Marx, Rene Descartes, Charles Peirce, and George Berkeley. (Plato couldn’t make it, but he sent his wife.)

We went on the philosophy treasure hunt, and discovered that immaterial treasures are just as satisfying as the material kind. We even built a value hierarchy model on a set of trading cards. And though we didn’t ask folks to try to comprehend Wittgenstein in 10 minutes, even the 12-year-olds grasped the philosophy of Peirce. As my Grandmother would say, “A good time was had by all.”

The Training Minds camps this year added opportunities for the young people to enhance not only their understanding, but also their resumes. Alumni were invited to serve their peers by preparing special reports in advance to spice up the lectures. They were also asked to lead by mentoring novice debaters through their first debates (this happened mostly at the Colorado camp). Adding the public service and leadership components gives the camp experience a three-dimensional impact to the students’ resumes.

If you would like to learn more about how to plus the value of your forensic club or support group as it applies to your student’s credentials, look for my new book, Join the Club: 10 Secrets of Running a Successful Speech and Debate Club. It is due to be released by Monument Publishing in early 2009.