The Launch to Outa’ Here

A friend of mine is stressing out over her daughter’s behavior this senior year. Mother and daughter have been at odds for years and the daughter’s demands and thankless demeanor have finally gotten to the mom. “I’m doing the count-down,” she says to me. “Only five more months, and she’s outa’ here!” Put her on the catapult. Launch her.

But here’s the thing. She won’t really be “outa’ here.” A kid going off to college has a cell phone, and a computer with Internet. That’s the good news and the bad news. For my friend, it’s bad news because that daughter will call her mother with all of her daily problems to which the mother can only listen, offer a few suggestions, and then hang up and be stressed out because she’s worried about her daughter, who is so “outa’ here.” She can only look at the palm sized cards colleges give parents which remind them to respond this way: “What do you want me to do about it?”

When I went off to college in 1973, I was just three hours away, but calling collect to tell my woes, and I was terribly homesick, didn’t even cross my consciousness. I didn’t adapt well and I struggled to live with a roommate who had arrived before me, therefore having first pick of the skinny so called twin beds, and first pick of the wall space on which she plastered giant “Fuck War” posters. I struggled with my Freshman English Class, which for some reason made it apparent my high school English coursework was lacking, and I struggled with the amount of Slo-Gin being drunk and subsequently vomited up by my fellow residents. I walked around in a near stupor of a very strange and frightening sensation called homesickness and didn’t get home until the Greyhound bus took me for Thanksgiving. Before Christmas, the financial aid office informed me that I didn’t have the means to continue at that campus, (that’s a whole ‘nother story) and I happily transferred to the main campus, allowing me to live at home. No shame in the return that I recall, and in fact I embraced the large, impersonal campus which required me to walk great distances between classes in the frigid winds of January.

As a high school senior applying to college, I was sure living away from home was the only thing to do in order to experience true “independence.” I’m guessing that most seniors would believe that, at least while they are still at home.

Living on campus does contribute greatly to the college experience; you are forced to engage in the community that as a commuter you likely wouldn’t have an opportunity to discover. And you are forced into a new kind of independence.

So, like his brother five years ago, Hans wants to live in a dorm as a freshman, even though he is most likely to attend a school that is just a half an hour drive from our home. I cringe for him, imagining his new home away from home, a room smaller than the bedroom he’s occupied for the last 18 years, shared with a stranger who may not appreciate his nocturnal habits, his slovenly and smelly ways, and his moods. But I agree with him that it will enhance his experience, and we’ll have a starter semblance of him being “outa’ here.”

Meanwhile, I roll my eyes behind the backs of my friends whose kids are “outa’ here,” but call daily with complaints that the college to which they worked so hard to gain admission, isn’t working out at all for them. It’s hard to make friends, it’s hard to get along with your room-mate, it’s hard to miss your friends from high school, it’s even hard to miss your sister. So for reasons not at all having to do with academics, one freshman I know wants to come home, another is starting the college search all over.

Launching? I know better. (See earlier posts!) I had my independent first born away for that freshman year with few complaints. But a month into summer break and in love, he couldn’t imagine himself back on that campus, a couple thousand miles away. It took him until what would have been his junior year to return to school as a sophomore, and is only now on track to graduate by the ripe old age of 24. He wasn’t close to “outa’ here.”

I have watched family members and sons and daughters of friends make the slow, erratic, transition to life after high school. Granted, some are successful from the get-go. But it ain’t high school, no matter how brilliant your days as a teenaged star. It’s the first real stab at independence, with academics that actually require hard work, and how well a kid does rests largely on his personality and maturity level.

Keep the bedroom a bedroom just in case.