February 2004

Parent to parent: Asking about friends

By Mom Marion

No matter how earnestly my daughter tells me about her classes and her reading, I have only to look back to my own college experience to know that academics -- lectures, books and papers -- while important, are only one part of the life of a college student.

If I really want to know what my daughter is feeling and learning, I also need to pay attention to the people in her world.

When she was in high school, this was easy, because I knew many of her friends and acquaintances. After she started college on the East Coast, names and stories still reached me but often after long delay.

An early contact

During my daughter's freshman year, for example, she mentioned that one young man in her residence hall had terrible roommates, dope smokers, who harassed him and his girlfriend. Finally, he turned in his roommates by telling police about the drugs. After that, others in the hall were angry at him.

I didn't hear anything else until a year later, when the same young man turned out to live next to my daughter in the Quiet Dorm. Students had continued to reject him, even though some believed he had done the right thing. My daughter reported that he was a changed person. No longer the gregarious young man who gabbed with strangers on the street corner, he had chosen to live alone. She and her roommate celebrated his birthday with him because nobody else did.

The long term

A year later my daughter told me he made Phi Beta Kappa, a prestigious honor society, and she sent him a congratulatory e-mail. I know his situation still tugs at her heart.

I don't always remember the names of my daughter's friends and acquaintances. But I do ask, "What happened to the guy who turned his roommates in for smoking dope two years ago?" She knows then that I'm asking about rejection and popularity, timing and choices, friendship and morality -- all those complicated issues that young people struggle with during the first crucial years of independence.

She can tell me a lot, or she can tell me a little.

The important part is, she knows that I care.

This article, now slightly revised, was first published in the April 2003 issue of the Aggie Family Pack newsletter.

Newspaper columnist Marion Franck is the mother of two college students, a freshman and a senior. She has worked with UC Davis students as a lecturer.

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