College Visitation

OK....sooooooo....if life is good to you and you are blessed with a child or two... and they live to be a certain age... and they have not (yet) flunked completely out of school, been incarcerated (in too serious of a manner) and are still living in your home as they approach college graduation, you will be blessed with the opportunity to "help" them choose an institution of higher learning for them to matriculate (mature with alcohol). If you are blessed with intelligence, in addition to all these other blessing you will say NO and just stay out of it.

I mean, of course for your C+ student it might not make sense to build up their hopes regarding Harvard or to let them do the same. In the same manner you probably need to give them a heads up about scholarships and you and your child probably need to let go of that sure thing, the full ride athletic scholarship for your baseball playing son (news flash, hitting high school pitching for a 300 average is not going to do it). But past that you need to be very careful. This is really hard.

You want them to learn from your (30 year old and totally irrelevant) mistakes. You want what is best for them but you also have some selfish wants. Maybe you want them to go somewhere you will enjoy visiting. Maybe you want them not too far from home. Maybe you want to show up once a month and totally embarrass them by living out the college fun which you might (or might not have) actually enjoyed in college.So if your not going to stay out of it altogether, pick your spots. For us there were only two rules. You have to leave town coupled with you cannot be too far away. 500 miles or so seemed the arbitrary definition of too far.

I recall going through the college search process with some gusto with my eldest who is soon to be graduating (another story entirely). I looked at catalogues, went on line and watched as my wife thoroughly reviewed and evaluated exhaustively about 376 institutions. We went to college fairs and read literature mailed to us and bought books and went on college visits. Jon ended up going to Valparaiso which has been an amazing place for him, having a great time and evolving into a fine young man. All of that had NOTHING to do with anything my wife and I said or did. He went there because it made sense to him. He chose well for him and all of the other stuff was just window dressing. I think we visited 5 colleges for him to sniff out but there was rarely any doubt where he was going. He knew people there and knew of a lot of graduates from there and it played out along with his goals of being on staff at a camp we frequented and... it was done.

My second one chose Truman strictly on the basis of the fact that "he had friends there" and despite (or perhaps because) of my promise that "I will never visit you there"... away he went to Kirksville Missouri, armpit of the world to a very competitive academic environment in which he seems to be thriving. Who knew? I guess the point is that we had already given up by the second one. Now i am on the third one and it seems pretty clear to me and the wife that we are mailing it in and out daughter will go wherever she damn well pleases. The whole idea that you can have any real, meaningful insight into what College you child should be attending is an illusion propagated by the University INDUSTRY to feed the illusion that you as a buyer of a very expensive commodity can make an informed choice.

It is a lie. it all has to do with luck, who your kid falls in with when they get to school and how mature the child in question is. The rest...luck and conjecture. At best.