Dismissing good schools because they are "too close"

I grew up in Wellesley. Wellesley College gives full tuition scholarships to a few women from the town each year. Naturally, my parents thought free college sounded like a nice idea, but I put my foot down.

I didn’t want an all women’s college.

At the time, they would not let the women with scholarships live in the dorms, even if they paid in full for them. My parents’ offer to rent me an apartment and buy me a car didn’t move me. I knew that I’d be missing an important part of the experience if I didn’t live in the dorms with everyone else.

No way on earth was I going to live somewhere that my mother could conveniently drop by on her way to grocery shopping.

All of which admittedly made my lack of interest about more than proximity. But still, a kid can have reasons.

OTOH, I wanted to stay in the northeast. I ended up very happy at Wesleyan. (And I had to laugh at the Cambridge, New Haven, Princeton or maaayybee Middletown restriction.) I had bunch of friends at college who weren’t from the northeast or mid-Atlantic and thus were pretty far from home. They were all just fine.

I live in NY now. As it happens, my son wants to stay in the northeast and I can’t say I’m sorry about that. But if he were really interested in another part of the country or interested in a school that just happened to be far away, I wouldn’t want to stand in his way. That I’d miss him like crazy (which I would) and that he’d be terrible about keeping in touch (which he would) just don’t seem to me to be good enough reasons to keep him from doing what he believes would make him happiest. Obviously, if the finances didn’t work, that would be a different issue. For those of you who would like to see me eat humble pie over my admittedly judgy opinion, cheer up, he’s already decided he’s going to grad school and then living in Southern California. Of course, he’s barely 15, so I’m not holding him to any of it.