2019: The Year My Son Applied to College
I had no idea where he wanted to go. And if he knew, he wasn’t saying.
A friend recently posed this question to me: “Would you rather skip 2019 or repeat it?” Without hesitation I chose the “skip” option. Since having kids, every year revolves around whatever big thing is happening in the “raising-of-kids” realm. Last year was no exception.
In 2019, kid #2 was finishing his senior year of high school. Being an over-anxious but well-intentioned parent, I was consumed with his college application process the entire school year: private ACT tutoring, a highly recommended college counselor (a convenient 25 miles or 45-minute commute away), and a vast amount of research on about 75 colleges, carefully curated over the months by yours truly. He kicked off 2019 by finishing the last few remaining applications that had yet to be completed. They were submitted at exactly 11:45pm, January 15th. The deadline was midnight. That’s what life was like in our house.
In the midst of all of this, my husband and I had no idea where our kid wanted to go to school — he wouldn’t reveal anything about what he was thinking or which school he was leaning toward. He wouldn’t even divulge what major he had in mind. This made me feel completely powerless and ineffective. Only after he amassed a pile of acceptances, did we learn that our son’s top choice was one of the few schools that had rejected him. My husband, son and I made the trek to “finalist” colleges to check out his options.
It used to be, when he was a few years younger, that we would invite our son to a nice restaurant and once we sat down with him, just the three of us, he would spill all. He’d tell us who was doing what, what he was up to in school and in life, and how he was feeling about things — we literally could not get him to stop talking. Not on our college tour trip. In spite of running into Bernie Sanders in Vermont, and appearing to be at ease and at home at a charming liberal arts campus in the Midwest, we still couldn’t get our son to show us his cards about where he wanted to go to college.
Once we returned home, I pulled out my spreadsheet listing all of his options (Yes, I am that mom. . . notorious for creating decision-making tools and lists for everything). My son told us he decided on a school that ranked 24th on his list of 24 colleges (okay, that’s an exaggeration — it was probably only 10th).
Rather than being satisfied with where he landed or elated that he finally came to a decision, my son’s choice created all kinds of self-doubt for me — the kind of angst I’ve had as a mother my whole mother career. Trying to re-assure me, my husband said, “Relax, it was his choice. He made it. He will live with it.” But I couldn’t stop wondering if I could have done more to support this kid.
Fast forward to August, at one of those intimate dinners again, but this time with my son and his sister. While dining at a tiny dark Italian place in New York, he revealed to me he wasn’t sure there was a major for him at the school he selected. But with some luck, he said, he might be able to “MacGyver” one. My heart sank. I just knew it. All the doubts, worries, and second-guessing came flooding back just when I thought I could put them to rest—with less than four weeks until our son would leave home for college.
Whenever I read articles that describe a high school student’s choice of where to go to college as “the most important decision your kid will ever make,” I want to vomit—and hope that in the end, my kid will be okay. My brain tells me it’s impossible to view life through such a narrow lens, but my heart worries it might be true.
People talk all the time about how hard it is to be a parent. For me, it’s always been the struggle between what you can control and what you can’t (even at infancy, when you try to put this tiny human on your schedule…a flawed plan from the very start). Lately, I’ve realized it’s less about what you can and can’t control, and more about what you should or shouldn’t control. Or knowing when to let go.
That’s why I would rather skip 2019. Because I do know in my heart of hearts, that with time, my son is going to be fine. Actually more than fine. It will just take the future to get there.
