<p>From a waitlisted student:</p>
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<p>[Your</a> choice of college isn’t always crucial - chicagotribune.com](<a href=“http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-schmich-0429-20120429,0,1124348.column]Your”>http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-schmich-0429-20120429,0,1124348.column)</p>
<p>Mary Schmich’s response hits the nail on the head exactly, and she says it much better than I ever could (which may explain why she has a Pulitzer and I don’t?):</p>
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<p>On the other hand, Dante wrote La Vita Nuova and Paradiso (third part of The Commedia) after glimpsing the nine year old Beatrice standing on the Ponte Vecchio. Their encounter was seconds long, just a brief meeting of the eyes.</p>
<p>Of course, Mary Schmich is right, but Dante was right too.</p>
<p>I think love does not need to end in possession. It’s beautiful to love a cardinal on a branch just from seeing him. And it’s alright for me to still love the man I never ended up with and it’s alright to have a love of a college that one isn’t admitted to.</p>
<p>I don’t think the answer is in extinguishing love but in developing new loves. </p>
<p>Some loves are love at first sight; some come on slowly. </p>
<p>Being wait listed at a fervently desired college is painful, but as Schmich tells us, the pain passes. What is left is the love. Nothing wrong with that.</p>
<p>Love or infatuation?</p>
<p>I have a hard time calling something “love” when the lover has only spent a couple of hours with the beloved. It’s a bad idea to marry a person, or a college, on the basis of a crush.</p>
<p>And, of course, we can all learn to Love The One You’re With.</p>
<p>Most of the time it is a crush or infatuation. But painful, nonetheless to let go.</p>
<p>I’ve know families who have been hurt terrilby when after years of association and commitment to a school, a child is rejected. It is happening more and more as legacy counts for less. That sort of thing can really cause everyone a lot of pain.</p>
<p>This has to do with accepting a child with Downs Syndrome, but is applicable to attending a second choice college/university: [Welcome</a> to Holland](<a href=“http://www.our-kids.org/Archives/Holland.html]Welcome”>http://www.our-kids.org/Archives/Holland.html)</p>
<p>I never liked that piece, KKmam. The problem with it is that there are conditions and things that can happen when one has a child with medical issues and difficult needs to meet, that you are landing not in Holland but in a place of war, pestilence and danger. COme to think of it, the piece is more applicable to college that don’t work out, then children with heart breaking problems. I can’t compare the two as they are so completely different.</p>
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<p>Wise…so very difficult to learn. Many of us still trying (I include myself).</p>
<p>My daughter feels she can’t wear her Santa Cruz slug shirt because she chose USC. She knows she made the right choice yet still wonders what might have happened in the mountains. I told her it’s okay, you should wear the shirt, you still like those people up there! But I haven’t seen it on her in well over a week (she was living in it).</p>
<p>Hm. Love or infatuation? I have never loved anyone that it hasn’t been at first sight. Maybe that’s just me.</p>
<p>KKmama, I really like Welcome to Holland and have held onto the poem for years. It is a glass half full way of looking at the world. Sometimes it is unbearable and maybe feels like a war zone for some but most grow to love Holland anyway! I think it is sooo relateable to the college process! Thanks!</p>
<p>There is something about a child “loving” a college that creeps me out (upsets me?) at a gut level. I don’t know why I feel so strongly about this, but I do. Love is for people, not things.</p>
<p>If you’re into psychobabble, I think the technical term is “cathexis.”</p>
<p>^I can live with that.</p>
<p>I know what you mean Bay. “Love” in “I love my school” and “I love you” is not the same word.</p>
<p>The title of this thread is pure hyperbole. A student can be physically and emotionally attracted to a school after spending a few hours there, sitting in on classes, meeting students/faculty, seeing the environs, etc. just as a person can be initially physically attracted to another person and then further attracted after chatting with them for a while. </p>
<p>To be attracted to something/someone and long for more is human nature. The op’s own kid, by the OP’s report, has chosen a school that has attributes that attracted her (students seemed to be more serious about learning, or something like that, IIRC) even though it doesn’t even offer the major she is interested in pursuing. So obviously, besides it being the cheapest option of the schools to which she got accepted, there has to be <em>something</em> that attracted her to it, unlesss she is just placating a parent by “choosing” to attend it. So why poo-poo the attraction of a school?</p>
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<p>No cardinals for me, so I had to settle for my safety bird (a sparrow).</p>
<p>is that your flagships State bird, sorghum?</p>