6 days since drop-off, we’ve gotten only short texts up until today as it was a busy week for new students. This morning we had a long FaceTime call! She is doing great, so happy! NSO ended yesterday, classes start tomorrow. She was proud to tell me that today she had tea with a friend, did her PT exercises for her torn ACL which still in recovery, did laundry, bought her books at the bookstore, and took herself downtown to the cute craft lemonade place for a celebratory lemonade. Also mentioned she tended to her roommate last night who had too much to drink and slipped while climbing into bed (first aid skills came in handy and roommate is fine). Only negative so far is food, apparently it’s pretty bad. She’ll be doing as much cooking as she can in the microwave in her room and kitchen on her hall it seems. She’s also asked for us to send her bike, we decided to order one online and have it shipped to and assembled by the LBS near campus. Things seem to be really good right now and I’ve adjusted too. Empty nest is a little bit sad but mostly very freeing, tbh.
I used to (and still now) not get any form of communication from DS2022.
I bribed him with $25 TechCash per picture of him sharing something of his life, doing something. Didn’t get to talk to him, but at least the pictures were some proof-of-life.
It was hard (especially since all my gfs’ children were girls who would call/text/FaceTime their parents constantly, so in comparison, I was in a miserable communication-desert.
Hang in there!
Just wanted to vent that D24 is still dealing with trying to get her AP Chem score. College Board says her school has provide “insufficient info” to release the score and her school says they have provided all the necessary info. It’s infuriating that she’s having to deal with this as she starts her first week of college. At this point, she is coming to terms with the possibility of never getting the darn score. I HATE College Board.
Happy to hear things are going well for D24 and I’m sure D22 will have a great experience in Madrid. It’s a whole new world for us empty nesters!
In case anybody’s kid need this:
Has anyone figured out where Harlan Cohen’s kid is attending college?
S24 wanted a long talk last night (secret yay!) because he is encountering all these kids who seem to have mapped out everything for the next four years and beyond, and he still has all sorts of questions about what he wants to do, academically, socially, and so on. So we discussed how classes had not even started yet, how lots of activities had not even started yet, and how it is in fact fine to take time to explore and figure out what is really right for you.
And so Cohen’s message is predictably timely. I think that is really basically what S24 needed to hear as well–that it is normal at this point to feel overwhelmed by the transition to college, but understanding that is normal and being patient with yourself and your process is really all you need to be doing right now.
And, you know, getting a good start in your classes.
Your son is not alone. Neither of my kiddos have their lives/plans mapped out and that is OK. College is a time for exploration - and not for nothing, half the kids who think they know what they want to do will change their minds. Your son has got this!
College professor chiming in here - once in a while I’ll have a first year who has an interest that they’re still pursuing 2 decades later but that is so rare. It’s way more typical to change interests - and there’s incredible value in not knowing what you want to do and exploring so many options - that’s such an enriching and rewarding process.
Speaking of, I have to contact my advisees!
My D24 did (don’t want to dox anyone, though) … but really what that made me realize is that my steady stream of Harlan videos made her just follow him on her own account. The friends one is a great one! Orientation is often an overwhelming firehose of info and activities, classes start tomorrow for my kid and I am telling her she will find the actual semester less frenetic than the orientation schedule. Her social battery drains faster than my own so she will be looking forward to a reset on Friday when she has no classes or activities.
I sent this to D24 yesterday and she said, “Everybody here has been telling me different versions of the same thing. I think I’ll be fine.”
And then I sent her a Chunk the Groundhog video and she laughed. 
This is similar to my average kid’s slight panic that her classmates are already so accomplished (based on the welcome ceremony) when she’s just figuring it out and will be for a long while - we try to really celebrate being average here, and that growth comes with discomfort.
I have made up a bingo card that I am sending to her with a financial incentive of completing a row = $20 venmoed, to help her stretch those wings - basically remembering all the reasons she wanted to go to college, and to THIS college, by dangling a carrot to get her to Just Do the Things. (from simple campus stuff like ‘use the shuttle’ and ‘dine in the non-dining hall locations’ to ‘use commuter rail’ and ‘visit boston.’) I used to do this around the holidays when they were little (no rewards though, just to remember things we liked to do during holidays and it was more interesting than a list) so I think she will be game.
And also it can be disadvantage to know. Sometimes that prevents you from pivoting even when it’s clear you should and it generally prevents you from trying new things and growing in new ways.
Also, even those kids who “know” will end up in a completely different place they expected. Such is the beauty of a liberal arts education.
This too. It’s a bit of a rude awakening when you realize everyone did everything you did and then some. That’s how they all got there after all. But there is also something wonderful about being surrounded about similar minded and hard working kids.
I reminded S24 both of the NiceUnparticularParents did that, and I think he does find that comforting.
We also talked a bit about how at this point, it is likely the kids who are most confident in their college plans (rightly or wrongly) that are most vocal. I’m sure they don’t mean to be making other kids feel stressed, they are just excited about getting started. But I really do think there is a sort of silent majority who are feeling it out, they just are not necessarily talking about it.
I note S24’s faculty advisor has been great so far, and very supportive of S24’s academic plans for this year. I mentioned above he has (somewhat surprisingly) expressed a possible interest in a health career, and I can tell already the pre-health advising also has a core message of slowing down and taking this all step by step at your own pace in alignment with your own developing interests.
In other words, the institution is really doing what it can to assure kids like mine they do NOT need to be launching into a highly detailed accelerated program. It is really the peers who are (at least inadvertently) communicating such a message, but I have a feeling the institutional voices will gradually take on the most weight as things really get rolling.
That was also a theme for our conversation. I completely agree a lot of these kids are going to find actual classes a sort of comforting return to a regular routine they more or less know how to handle. We did discuss how a few kids get really distracted and their academics can suffer as a result, but he seemed to find it calming to be told our expectation for him for this first term is really just to establish good academic habits that will sustain him through the rest of college. And obviously make sure to leave time and energy to have fun too, but that isn’t something that has to be forced, it will come along.
Yeah, I tried to gently remind him that while some kids are coming into these colleges with a very pre-professional mindset, and that is fine if that works for them, our own family values when it comes to higher education are centered around getting a great foundational liberal arts and sciences education first, and then gradually figuring out how you want to apply that professionally down the road.
This came up in part because after taking the entrance exam he got placed in the more advanced/fast-paced introductory Chemistry sequence, and apparently some of the kids are talking about how that is a mistake, you should just take the slower-paced sequence and get a good grade. Again, no judgment on those kids, but I pointed out that he is almost surely very well-prepared for the advanced sequence, indeed that he might well be bored with the initial review section and overall slower pace of the other sequence.
And we talked a little about how we are not hoping he will just get a credential at a minimum of effort, we are hoping he will get the best possible education. Obviously that doesn’t mean he should kill himself in classes for which he is not prepared, but he also should not be shying away from challenging classes that he is ready to take on. That’s the whole point really.
And he of course already knows that is how we think. I can just tell he is suddenly being exposed to a lot of kids who have strong opinions that are not based in the same values, and again that is their business. But he doesn’t have to do what they are doing.
Got D24 all settled into her dorm on Friday, had our “see you later” moment and she was off into the packed orientation schedule. She is looking forward to classes starting Wednesday so that she can get into a routine and get a little downtime from the very busy days of orientation. H and I attended family orientation on Saturday morning, and then found a local winery in the afternoon to start figuring out this empty nest thing. Good luck to everyone navigating these early days of transition, and keep all of the stories coming.
To be fair, some of these kids are just reflecting back what they’ve been told during high school, that they need to do something practical so they can get a job after college. They may have preferred to explore different options or do something else, but feel they can’t. So they are in part trying to convince themselves by stating confident plans. Don’t be too harsh on them, some may feel jealous that your kid has the luxury of exploration without financial pressures.
When my D announced she was going to do ballet in college, she got immense amounts of pushback during senior year of HS from teachers, college counselors and other parents, saying she should do something practical like engineering or CS!
D20 went to a pretty socio-economically diverse public high school, one where there were a lot of ‘top performers’: super smart, super driven, highly competitive. While D20 is very smart (totally unbiased opinion here obvs), she wasn’t and isn’t into competition for competitions sake. And she has never been willing to push herself to do things she didn’t want to do/didn’t see the purpose of.
So, her high school grades were fine, but not spectacular (and some, frankly barely adequate). She wasn’t someone the teachers and other students had on their radar to blow college out of the water. She didn’t have a super clear idea of what she wanted to do in or after college when she started.
She knew she wanted to study abroad when she started college. That’s about it.
College was a huge turning point for her. Taking classes she was excited about. Having professors who inspired her and helped her realize how much was out there for her to explore. Also realizing that there are lots of niches and no one expects a person to fit them all. She found her niche by the end of her second year and just ran with it.
She graduated this past May, and is spending this year on a fellowship abroad continuing to study one of the languages she learned during college. If you had asked us 6 years ago what we envisioned - it wouldn’t have been this in a million years. Is this what most other people would want to do? Probably not. Will it make her rich? Doubtful. Is she super excited and energized and inspired? 100%.
Oh, I love this report! It reflects my hopes for my own kid - I realized during HS that her brain is really suited for college pace and not HS, her semester long classes always had significantly better grades, and doing four classes at a time will be so good for her - even if she’d gone to a school where 5 classes was the norm, I’d planned on encouraging her to take 4, but her school’s pace is 4 per semester by default.
(Already got my first bingo line reward request, time to pay up…) 
Absolutely.
Between us, I do have some concerns about what sometimes happens with such kids if they find that their actual talents and interests as they develop in college do not align with their pre-conceived plans. And sometimes I think some such kids are not necessarily well-informed about alternative routes to at least a comfortable, financially secure life, which does not necessarily depend on maximizing gross household income.
But for sure I do not blame them for coming into college that way. And if I was talking with such a kid, although I might try to sneak in a comment or two about how of course plans can evolve, I definitely would not be trying to discourage them.