Whose College Tour is it Anyway?

Last week I took my daughter Lucia to look at colleges on the East Coast. Lucia doesn’t want to go to college on the East Coast. Like many Pacific Northwestern kids, she wants to go to college in sunny California.

But my nephew goes to college in Boston and there are 78 schools to look at in that city alone, so it was as good a place as any to start. Lucia goes to a large, public inner-city high school. She gets little to no individualized attention, and because of COVID, the quality of her educational experience is more severely compromised than it’s ever been.

I think of college as a long-awaited opportunity for her to finally sink her teeth into some good learning, to find some intellectual, cultural, and social stimulation that she is not getting in high school.

Don’t get me wrong. My daughter loves high school. She loves the social aspect of it. She’s engaged and involved, but it feels like she’s got one foot out the door; like she doesn’t really take it very seriously because she knows it’s just a stepping stone.

I remember when I went to college. The course catalog was thrilling. There were so many choices and topics and areas of study I hadn’t ever contemplated. I was thrilled and delighted and relieved that learning could be so exciting. I took Urban Sociology and Cultural Anthropology. I took Spanish Literature and Metal Design. I studied abroad for a year in Spain. Though it wasn’t necessarily easy, college was absolutely eye-opening and educational and it changed my life.

As we visited different universities and colleges in and around Boston, some small, some large, a few somewhere in between, I found myself experiencing those same feelings I’d had in my youth — the plentitude of opportunity thrilled me all over again. We heard about internships and special dorms, dual majors, and summer abroad programs. There were gap semesters and community service programs. The opportunities were staggering and I wanted my daughter to have them all!

The college I loved the most for my daughter was a small, women’s college outside of Boston. The two sophomores who conducted the orientation were articulate, happy, informed, and grounded. They were organized and humble and confident and light at the same time. They loved their small college and sang the praises of the opportunities they’d had and would continue to have during their tenure there.

When we finished the orientation my daughter said, “Let’s skip the self-guided walking tour. I’m definitely not going here.” My heart sank. What did she mean? It was so perfect. Everything about it was idyllic. I wanted Lucia to have that special utopian experience where she’d be one of just a few hundred freshmen, where she’d be gently guided through the newness of college with kind loving hands. Or maybe I wanted that’s what I wanted for myself.

The next morning we went to a large in-city University. The students who led the orientation were equally engaged and competent and resourceful and thrilled to be at their University. At the end of the orientation, we did the walking tour. Even though it was freezing and a blizzard, we followed the student guide through campus, trudging through a foot of snow to see the buildings, the dorms, the dining halls. “This is one of my favorites,” Lucia said. 

I still liked the small women’s college better. But Lucia’s reaction to the big university helped me see that my lens was skewed. In seeing her love this seemingly opposite experience of what I wanted her to have, I experienced a flash of something I feel more and more lately — that my daughter is not me. There are many ways that she is like me, but there are just as many ways that she is not.

It was bittersweet, walking around all of those campuses with my almost-grown daughter. Each tour was a reminder that Lucia is almost done living at home, that before long my reign of influence will be a mere blip in her peripheral vision. If I had the choice to go back to being seventeen and choosing a college I might choose that small women’s college outside of Boston. I think that environment would have worked really well for me. But Lucia isn’t me. She’s her. And she’s going to choose the college that works best for who she is, no matter what I think about it.