At the time I am writing this, it is one month since I dropped my daughter at college. The pictures on Instagram of the meticulously planned out and organized dorm room are now quite old. I now watch to see what she posts, just so that I know she’s alive, but stopped watching her progress in Find My Phone (I admit, I did do that at the beginning). With hopes that the room sometimes returns to that state of pristine order, I periodically check in with texts to just see “what’s new?” “how are things with your roommates?” “do you need anything?” –glad she does not, with a little part of me hoping she does.
My daughter is my second child to go to college and the experience is markedly different than with my son. While I try hard not to make comparisons between my two very different children, I also find that there is a common thread of how parents of college students are always trying to strike a balance between fostering their children’s independence and providing an appropriate level of support so that they are successful.
Focusing here on academics, by mid-October all the orientation sessions are long over. Students have settled into their classes and have largely made their way through the introductory course material. Outlines tell them the timeline for assignments, tests, and the way grades will be weighted. This is typically different from what they have experienced in high school—college classes tend to have much fewer graded assignments and tests and, consequently, the grades count for more. A student could be well into the semester before they see any grades at all, and one bad grade can be difficult to overcome.
