My CAP squadron isn’t an academic thing, but there’s 3 seniors leaving this year - me and 2 others. One of them is going OOS on an ROTC scholarship, the other one is staying in state on an ROTC scholarship. The latter tried for better schools, but wasn’t able to go to the few he got into due to finances. (He didn’t get the highest rung ROTC scholarship like the former cadet I mentioned did.) I feel bad for the second guy… he always had so many big dreams and plans regarding college, but so few are coming true. In the long run he’ll be ok as long as he makes the cut for field training for the USAF, though.
Hi all! Been awhile since I posted but am catching up tonight, feeling very melancholy… we head out for drop off tomorrow. My D’s room looks so empty now that the boxes are all packed up, locked and loaded for the trip. Any good tips on how to hold it together during drop off (maybe just go fast so she doesn’t see me tearful)? It’s gonna be a rough few days… Thinking of all of you who are days/weeks away from the same thing! We can do it!!!.. (hopefully…)
I’m absolutely going to cry and DD knows it. I know she’s going to hug me tight and hold on, but we both have to let go. Moving her into her dorm Saturday, an eight hour drive from home, but it feels so permanent. It will be interesting having a relationship where we don’t touch base every day.
Don’t stretch it out. That’s all I can offer. I managed to keep it together last year with DD until we were driving away, at least.
It’ll be my dad dropping me off… I’ll be moving in early, so on the actual day he leaves I reckon it’ll be quick. He might get emotional… but I’m hoping he doesn’t too upset because then I will. I’ve been holding together so far…
Tomorrow I leave.
@kidsrexpensive good luck with the drop off…but you will be fine. I took S14 to school one year ago. We too are a 10 hour drive from home. We all stayed in a hotel the night before and moved him into the dorm the following morning. I knew I could only hold it together for so long. He also knows that I am a crier so it wasn’t going to shock him. Spent the day settling him in and we all went to lunch (DH was with us). They there was a short Convocation with the President of the University in the early afternoon. We had decided to say goodbye after that. My son wanted to meet back up with his roommate and there was a Dorm floor meeting in the late afternoon. It made for a “natural” time to say our goodbyes and it was good for all of us to have a plan. I said at some point in the day that we didn’t want to walk back to his dorm. I knew that I would be emotional…and I knew that DH would be…even if he didn’t realize it. We had S walk us to our car and said our goodbyes there. There were lots of tears and laughter as well…on the part of the 3 of us. I had a feeling my son would get emotional and I knew he wouldn’t want to be in his dorm. I will add that we had a hotel reservation for that night as we didn’t want to drive home in the dark and into the night…but it was kind of a drag. Before we went down my husband kept saying that we may want to see him the following morning before we left or that he may decide that he needs us to pick up something for him. My husband lived at home when he went to college so I didn’t think we was getting it when I said we should plan on one goodbye. That night he looked at me and said “now I understand what you meant”. The drive home the following day was not the best…but it was all fine after that.
I have gotten used to having him away and am much less emotional. Am not dreading taking him back to school in 10 days as he loves school and is happy to be going back. He also is good about keeping in touch which helps.
So…my words of wisdom are that it will be hard, the drive home will be lousy, but you (and your child) will all be fine! Hope that I wasn’t “too honest”… sort of like when your friend tells you that childbirth was easy…
Someone asked a few pages back about how to pack clothes.
If you are driving…
Keep clothes on hangers. We use the thin felt covered hangers from Costco. Secure the top of the hangers with a hair tie. Cut a hole in the bottom of a large trash bag and place over the hangers pushing the top through the hole. Tie the bottom of the trash bag to collect any clothes that fall of hanger in route. Simply hang up at the dorm and pull of the trash bag.
Place folded t shirts/ underwear/ shorts etc into laundry baskets. Simply lift the piles out of the laundry baskets into drawers. No unpacking necessary.
Don’t forget a cooler with cold drinks/ snacks and a door stop!
If you are flying…
Vacuum Ziploc bags are your friend. All bedding can be placed in one case using these. Just be careful of weight restrictions when packing clothes this way. We found we had plenty of space in bags, but the weight limit was quickly reached.
Good Luck to our 2015ers moving to college this week. Let the fun begin…
Good luck, @albert69 – we all know you are ready to fly (figuratively this time)!!!
Thanks, @Loganator
What do you consider “going away” to school? How far is away? I always considered any school where you can’t live at your parent’s house to be “going away.”
A huge percentage of my daughter’s classmates will be attending the local community college - about 1/3, mostly for cost savings but partially because we’re a very blue-collar area, and a lot of good jobs are available with vocational certificates.
Most of the remaining classmates are going to mid-level colleges and universities, both state and private, and a couple dozen are headed to elite or top schools.
There were about 230 in her graduating class.
@albert69 - I have the opposite situation. I’ve been holding it together so far and I’m pretty sure S will get a bit teary-eyed when it is time to leave and then I will definitely lose it. I can tear up pretty easily but I hate doing it in public.
@singermom4 Well, I doubt that you will be the only parent and/or teen expressing emotion on move-in day. @-)
Also, I was texting my ex-girlfriend today, and it went quite well. I think we will be able to remain friends, which cheers me up some. I think it’ll be better than dropping the relationship entirely.
" I always considered any school where you can’t live at your parent’s house to be “going away.”"
Yes, that was what rule we used when we were growing up. My brother went to college about a half hour from our house, and lived on campus for three years, then lived at home for two years. That is, when he was failing out in the third year, my parents decided that living at home and commuting would be better than staying on campus with his friends who were druggies (he was caught with several hundred bucks worth of pot at home, and they were also worried he was starting to deal).
One of the problems with community college is that most are not residential, so students miss out on that part of the college experience. My nephew ended up dropping out of a CC because no one wanted to socialize (and I mean in a very mild conversational sense, not a party sense), now he is an apprentice learning a trade. To be honest, as an apprentice he has a lot more contact with people than he did at college; at the CC, most people got in their cars and drove away after class.
My son will be 3 hours away, and he already needs to come home a few weekends. We have talked about public transportation, and there is a bus from the town next to the college to a town about 30 minutes from us; that might be the best option as the trains would require a lot of switching to get from where he is to us.
T - 10 days until departure and T-12 days until move in.
It is coming way too soon!
I think it would have to be at least a couple hours’ drive, no? I mean, people have jobs where they have to commute 1 hour to work every day.
We know some kids who are at Stanford and living in dorms (I think that’s a requirement for freshmen there) even though it’s a 20 minute drive away – I work in Palo Alto and it takes me longer to get to work than it would to get to Stanford. Even though they’re not living at home and their parents may not actually see them for months at a time, I don’t think it’s “going away” to school when realistically your folks could stop by the campus during their lunch hour and meet up with you to give you that sweater you forgot at home or something.
I grew up in Wheaton, IL, and I knew one girl who went to Wheaton College and elected to live in the dorms because she wanted the dorm experience, even though the campus was about the same distance from her house as our high school.
And I’m off to Wichita!
Safe travels @albert69! Good luck!
FWIW, I consider a kid “going away to school” if they are no longer living at home, even if it’s just a half hour away.
^^ Agree with this. I think it’s more a matter of how the student’s life will change by not living at home. As an adult, we wouldn’t call moving across town “moving away”, but for a kid leaving home for the first time, I would still call it away.
My daughter disagreed with this. RPI was one of her choices, but we are just a half hour away. She would have stayed in the dorms and we assured her we would not be dropping in - it would feel like being away since we don’t normally spend time in Troy, NY, and she was not really familiar with the campus. I think she would have liked being close by for those times she is sick and would like to sleep in her own bed instead of in a noisy dorm. But, she chose to be “away, away” - just 2-1/2 hours, a good distance.