A person who counsels and encourages clients on matters having to do with careers or personal challenges. Several months ago, I came across an article in a local publication about a woman plying her trade as a "life coach".  I've heard the term bandied about from time, sensing a modern-day snake oil salesman without the snake oil – just rhetoric.  Perhaps I was too harsh in my initial assessment, after all the good woman was helping teenagers navigate college and career choices, budgeting, and convincing them for lack of a better word to get their shit together.  Awesome. However, this life coach seemed to need direction herself.  She had one college degree, while working on two other graduate degrees.  She is a big fan of lifetime learning not in a practical setting, but an academic one.  Her clients are the children of well to do parents who seemingly just don't have the time for the important stuff – like parenting.  You know they have their own careers which often clash with their children's needs.  They are like ships passing in the night.  In a way, it seems like hiring a life coach is the 2020's version of boarding school. Back in my day (unintentionally channeling the Dana Carvey Grumpy Old Man SNL character), we always had plenty of help. We had parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, athletic coaches, ministers and a Ouija board.  Ok discount the Ouija board, but it might have been just as effective as a life coach.  We got by with advice that was freely dispensed.  We didn't pay by the hour for wise, stern but always loving counsel. Now it seems we traded a village with a firm foundation for gurus, motivational speakers and the like. We've traded the family dinner table for the fastest of fast foods.  We have traded meaningful conversations for banal, glib jibber jabber.  We have been sold a pig in a poke.  We cannot return to some idealized 50's family bliss that never was.  I get it…but at some point, we start resembling the father in Harry Chapin's The Cat's In The Cradle. But if you must consider a life coach, please be aware that: life coaches cannot treat mental health conditions.  They do not need any formal qualifications or academic training.  In fact, many ads claim that you yourself can become a life coach in six weeks.  They are also not obligated to follow health privacy laws.  The burgeoning field of "coaching" extends to business leadership, personal trainers, dating and relationship management, and divorce coaching just to name a few.  It's the wild west and the new gold rush.  You pay your money; you take your chances.