My Kid Is Going To College And I Didn't Even Get A T-Shirt
Tuesday, June 18, 2013 at 7:29PM I took Reagan to New Student Enrollment Day at the University today. We were required to check in at 7:15 a.m. and I predict that’s the last time she will be anywhere on campus except her bed at that hour again.
She inherited my love of sleep.
I wanted to take a picture to commemorate the event but she would not let me. I pointed out that if I were one of any number of her friends that she would take a picture with me and Instagram it and Tweet it and slap hashtags on it. She readily agreed and then pointed out that I was not, in fact, one of any number of her friends.
Well then.
So the only picture I took today was this one I sneakily shot of another mother whilst pretending to text.
I took it because … well, because I just couldn’t believe those bangs existed outside of 1986 and originally I posted the photo here (with the face blurred) but then my conscience got the better of me and I took it down.
This state is like one extended small town and you just never know who knows someone who has a cousin who was at NSE today and hey … that looks like her being mocked on Mindee’s blog. And that would most certainly come back to bite me in the butt.
Plus it just wasn’t very nice.
Anyhoo, after the intro session, they separated me from my child for the rest of the day. I spent the next several hours shuffling from one seminar to the next throughout the student union surrounded by not a soul that I knew. I attended an informational meeting on Financial Aid, an informative over view of Residence Hall Life and a chipper presentation of all the services offered through the Rec Center.
To sum up: College costs a lot of money. A lot of that money goes to pay for the cable, refrigerator, loft beds, wireless internet, yoga classes and Success Coaches that students get these days. Seriously. Where’s the fun in that? What are they going to have to complain about? Where’s the roughing it?
Sheesh. We’re going to turn out a whole generation of softies.
Except they kind of lose out in the cafeteria. Yes there is still a whole wall of cereal bins in every classification. There is also a wide variety of food offerings; everything from a deli, to a grill, to “Classics” to the International Line (Asian food today! Score!)
But!
There are no trays.
As I heard it explained, powers-that-be discovered that if students don’t have trays, they take less food. This means they eat less and they throw away less. This totally makes sense. I had to make my way through the line balancing a plate, glass and utensils. I didn’t have an extra hand to grab dessert and when I finished eating I was too lazy to get back in line. So the theory works on 43 year old women, though I have the feeling that 19 year old football players get quite skilled at plate stacking.
In the end though, I found that there was something sad about not sliding a tray along the counter and putting little bowls of jell-o and fruit cocktail on it and grabbing an extra brownie just in case.
After lunch it’s possible that I took a look at the schedule for the rest of the day and decided to bail. And then it is possible that I snuck home and took a nap. Hey - when your kid’s college is closer to home than her high school was, you just don’t have as many concerns as the average out-of-state parent. Besides, I got the distinct feeling that the whole purpose of the parents’ session was to distract us while our kids registered for classes and took tours of their own. It’s the beginning of that whole “separation process”.
I’m taking it much better than I did when she started pre-school.
Probably because I am very sure she’ll be as comfortable as is humanly possible.
Kids these days.
Mindee |
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