September Came Too Soon

September Came Too Soon

          The first day of school is always traumatic. All the big tall buildings and strange new faces...starting college is always difficult –for the parents.
         Like many parents, I prepared for my daughter’s first day of college eighteen years ago when she was born. After holding her in the hospital for the first time, I knew it would take me that long to get used to the idea of her leaving and going off to college. Over the course of the last eighteen years, many milestones were reached in my daughter’s life, and little by little the idea of her leaving was segregated to the back of my mind; replaced with more urgent thoughts like how to get her off the phone, and how to get her to help around the house. When the teenage years hit, (along with the disaster she called her room) the idea of having peace, quiet, and order restored to the house pushed out the few remaining anguished thoughts I had about her leaving. At certain times, especially when arguing seemed to be the main form of communication taking place in our house, (the times we have affectionately renamed the hormonal years) I started to daydream of how I would re-decorate her room once she went away to college. Then, a reminder of what life would soon be like would invade my daydream.          “Daddy, you’re not coming in are you?” asked the little girl to her father in the McDonald’s commercial, now clearly too old to eat lunch with her father if her friends were present. “She turned sixteen today” said the singer of the butterfly kisses song, reminding me that before long, the day I was dreading would soon arrive.
         Before going off to college could happen, we first had to go through the exhausting and convoluted process of finding a college. That milestone began the summer of her junior year of high school. To begin our search, I took out a map of the United States and drew a circle on it, which represented a three-hour distance from our home. Somewhere within this three hour circle was the college she would have to attend. My daughter immediately began to look for Hawaii on the map, which thankfully was not included with the forty-nine contiguous states shown on my map. I explained to my daughter that within the circle I had drawn, there were no less than 150 excellent colleges of all sizes and types from which she could choose. I told her my only criterion was the school she would eventually choose had to be within that circle. After that logical approached failed, I explained to her if she had any intention of coming home for any type of family event, I would not pay for her travel costs if she were outside the three hour radius. Finally, I had an argument she could understand. Her only criteria, as it turned out, was the school had to be a big name school on a lush sprawling campus, and have a tuition cost no less than the cost of a small house.
         We visited several colleges over that summer, all within the three-hour distance I had mandated. We found many to her liking, which was a great relief to my wife and me. Most of the individuals we met at the various schools we visited were very friendly and courteous; all convinced their expensive institution was the best and that we would be lucky to have our daughter among the student body there. After visiting no less than twenty colleges, her list was narrowed to five. Five was a good number as far as I was concerned. Each application required an application fee of about sixty dollars which would have added up to a nice tidy sum if we stayed with the original list of twenty colleges. Little did I know that writing the checks for the applications would be the easy part of the process. What followed was a series of steps and decisions that rivaled the invasion of Normandy. The first part of the college application required the applicant to answer two personal essay questions, and then write an essay on one of five subjects chosen by the applicant. “Write page 350 of your autobiography.” What if at the age of seventeen there wasn’t 349 pages worth of other stuff prior to page 350? Along with that came getting letters of recommendation, official transcripts, Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, and a host of other required information. Painstakingly, we made our way through the process of college applications, one application at a time. Having completed every required step of each and every application, we put application checks into all the envelopes, mailed the envelopes, and then we waited.
         Having spent hours reading and re-reading college essays, and visiting college after college, I couldn’t help but wonder: when did things get so complicated? Not so long ago, applying to college was a simple process that required little, if any parental involvement. In those golden years, the only input parents would offer to their offspring was such timely advice as “print neatly” or “make sure you spell your name right”. Now, most parents are so involved in the process of applying to college, it might seem to the casual observer it is the parent who is going off to college and not the child. Several weeks went by as we waited for the envelopes from the colleges to arrive in the mail. My wife and I learned two things once the letters finally arrived: first, college envelopes do not steam open as easy as regular mail. Second, skinny envelopes are bad news. After two skinny envelopes, came the one we had all waited for –the fat one. Inside the fat envelope was the acceptance letter we had hoped for. As luck would have it, it was to the college she had ranked first on her list.
         Inside the envelope, along with the letter of acceptance, came an entirely new set of papers, all of which needed to be signed by a parent. Each document enclosed in the envelope ended with the same phrase, “attach check here.” After reading every line of every document, we reached the one of greatest importance as far as my daughter was concerned: room assignments and roommates. On that document was the name of her new roommate, the dorm she was to be assigned to, and the fee for room and board. That document ended with the phrase, “attach a large check here.” As we continued to read, the letter indicated there would be an orientation period for the freshman prior to the beginning of school. This period of time was intended to make the freshman feel more comfortable, by having them familiarize themselves with their new school, without the rest of the students on the campus. This was a great idea I thought; until I reached the last paragraph of the letter, which indicated the parents were to attend this orientation as well. I could understand having the students go through an orientation process; having the parents go through it as well seemed to me to be a bit much since we were not the ones going off to college. The only help we needed was finding the money to pay for everything; the college was uncharacteristically mute on that issue.
         The summer of senior year came before we knew it. We had scheduled our visit to the college for early June, reasoning it would be better to get it over with early before everyone else who needed to visit showed up. The orientation was to take place over a two-day period. During this two-day period, there would be activities for both the students and parents to attend. Once orientation was completed, there would be a barbecue and family get-together for everyone involved with the orientation. Two days, what could possibly take two days to discuss? The last college orientation I was involved with took two seconds: “Wear clean underwear” said my mother. “Don’t do anything stupid” said my father.
         The drive from our house to the college took a little less than three hours. We arrived on the college campus on the appointed day, right on time. After surveying the crowd of people around us, I immediately knew why both the parents and the students had to be there. The 500 students who surrounded me all had the same excited look on their faces, the parents, to the contrary, were panic stricken. These parents were the same people who stayed up late at night working on science projects with their children, reviewed questions and answers for math tests, and sweated through the process of finding a college. Now it was expected that we leave our children all alone, on this great big campus to fend for themselves for the first time in their lives. It would take at least two days to cut this umbilical cord. Immediately upon arrival, the parents and students were separated, beginning the delicate process of letting go. The college, aware of the difficulty parents have in letting go of their offspring, scheduled several workshops to keep everyone distracted and busy during the two day stay. These workshops covered: financial aid issues, dorm and safety related issues, and how much money a freshman will need in order to survive “issues”. The students had two days of “get to know your fellow freshmen” time. After two days of “you have to let them stand on their own two feet and don’t worry parents visit day is the fourth week of September”, the parents were allowed to rejoin their child for the family barbecue.
         On the ride back to our home, all we heard for three hours from our daughter was how great school was going to be. Football games, dorm parties, concerts... actual schoolwork was not even mentioned. To our great dismay, we realized it was time to cut the umbilical cord and hope that our daughter would make the right decisions when she began college in September. We both knew it was going to be difficult to let go. We comforted ourselves in the knowledge that we didn’t need to completely let go. After all, she was only a phone call away thanks to her cell phone.
         “But what if we can’t reach her on the cell phone?” asked my wife as we continued our drive back home, still not completely convinced of our daughter’s ability to survive outside our house. I had an alternate idea, but was not sure how well it would be received.
“What about installing one of those web cams in her room? This way we could see exactly what she was up to everyday.” For the first time during our trip home, there was complete silence in the car. My wife and daughter both turned and stared at me, obviously reaching the same conclusion simultaneously: I needed therapy. Perhaps it is going to take me a bit longer than I had anticipated to get used to the idea of her leaving and going off to college. The End