Parents On Parade

At Commencement a few weeks ago, I introduced my parents to a couple of my profs and thought it was so weird. Teachers are trained to welcome their students' parents into communication about their children, but I noticed that none of my professors in college sent home a letter with me: "Dear parent(s)/guardian(s), My name is BlahBlahBlah and I am your child's ENGL 402 professor..." I found it a little strange to imagine some of my professors even knowing I had parents, let alone meeting them, if that makes sense.

This morning I was enjoying a cup of coffee with my aforementioned vampire book (which by the way, is un-put-down-able) at the cafe in the Union. There are lots of first year students here everyday for orientation, and there are lots of parents around to accompany them. I'm not that much older than them, but for a second I found myself thinking, "Oh, of course. They needed a ride here." Um, no they didn't, first year students are eighteen and mostly have drivers' licenses. They're not little kids. They can vote, smoke, and buy porn. But I saw one dad standing behind the registration table taking a picture of his son receiving his nametag sticker as if his little boy was getting ready for his first day of kindergarten. Hilarious! And also a little embarrassing.

College, in my experience, is largely a parent-free zone, physically at least. In no way do I mean to discredit the emotional and financial support I received from my parents during college. No doubt my parents played a more important role than they realize in my degree-earning process. Nor do I mean to look snobbily down on these new first years who I know can and will figure things out on their own. No way.

But as I type this post there is a pretty intense scene going on at the computer next to me involving a heavily frustrated mother-daughter-older-brother combo trying to figure out if the daughter should take PSYCH or SOC or ANTHRO or FSHN. ("Hhhhh! GOD, Mom! I don't want to take that! That's so boring!" "Hunny, PSYCH 100 is a good class. What's wrong with that class?") I guess I'm just finding it amusing because deciding which classes to take was never really something I included my parents in.

I'm being a stereotypical young adult right now, pathetically marveling at my own relative independence, I know. But come on, freshman are funny. Being new at something is goofy. Man, I am not looking forward to being the new person again.