Monday, June 3, 2013
Changes
My younger son is at college orientation today. Even though he is going to the University I work and teach at, things are changing. Today for orientation he went off with friends leaving me in the dust. As a parent we have to let go but it is still hard. So come fall, my wife and I will be empty nesters as he is living on campus for his freshman year. After that we'll see what happens. He has the option to move back home till he graduates or to live off campus with friends.
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Hard as it must be - and really, I've got no basis from which to comment - I've always thought that living on campus for at least the first year was one of the most important learning experiences of my entire university career. When I was deciding where to go to school, there was subtle pressure from some of the family to go to the university that my parents and grandparents on both sides had been to, but it was very close to my parent's house and expensive, so I would have felt compelled to live at home. My uncle sent me a letter that my father (who was dead by the time I was trying to decide) had sent him when he, being Dad's younger brother, was making the same decision. (Ironically, between the same two schools, but with the opposite school close to home.) Dad's posthumous advice was, all else being equal, to go to the one farther away just to avoid the pressure to live at home.
ReplyDeleteI think times have changed since then, and there is less automatic assumption that close-to-home means living at home, but good on you for giving him the option; many wouldn't.