3 Life Lessons I Taught My Son on His College Admissions Journey
And how they can help any of you.
This piece isn’t about guiding your kid through the college admission insanity we’ve all heard about. Enough has been written about that.
What it’s about is three basic life lessons I’ve tried to teach my son, starting roughly two years ago when all the college mania started. Those lessons can help any of you at any stage of life, which is the only reason I’m writing this.
Before getting to those lessons, I need to describe the frenzied college admission process that has infected America’s teens and their parents the past few decades.
What does that look like?
-Kids having anxiety attacks before and during taking the SAT or ACT tests.
-Kids fretting that if they don’t get into their college of choice, or at least a “good” college (whatever that means), their life will be one slow roll to homelessness.
-Parents fretting that if their teen doesn’t get into their college of choice, or at least a “good” college, their kid’s life will be one slow roll to homelessness.
-Parents spinning up other parents about everything from which schools junior is applying to, to which schools junior got into to what junior’s GPA is and what his tests scores are and...yada, yada, yada, in the inestimable words of Jerry Seinfeld.
Pardon my French, but it is, and has been for many years now, an unmitigated shit show. As the youngest of six, I witnessed it time after time with my eleven nieces and nephews, all several years older than my kids.
I promised myself that I’d at least try to make my kids’ experience a healthier one. And now that my oldest child’s admissions journey is over, he committed to the University of Washington last week, I think I succeeded. Here’s how.
