April 2006

Parent to parent: A peek ahead to senior year

By Mom Marion

"I'm going crazy," says my daughter, sounding close to tears on the phone. "There are too many ways to hear from them. Every time I go for the mail, every time the phone rings, every time I receive an e-mail, my heart races. I can't get anything done. I just want it to be over."

Who or what is sending her into this tailspin? She is waiting to hear from graduate school.

As a senior, my daughter is living through one of the hardest years of college. But why should the year of accomplishment, the year of cap and gown and proud relatives, be so difficult?

I have only to think back to senior year of high school to understand the problem. College-bound seniors spend months applying to college and months waiting anxiously to hear the results. It doesn't help that while they are doing this every adult asks what their plans are.

Questions intensify

Senior year of college is worse because the plans in question are plans for a lifetime, not just for the next four years. The old question, "What are you going to be when you grow up?" can no longer be answered with a shrug and a joke. Some graduates give themselves a year to travel or to work an easy job, but the question only gets louder.

What's next?

For students who know what they want, there's the pain of waiting while someone from the UCLA School of Medicine, Ford Motor Co. or the Peace Corps decides their fate. For students who don't know what they want, it's a year of struggle as they try to find worthy employment. They rejoice when friends find jobs, but their own tension rises.
What can parents do?

I think parents can help their students prepare for the crunch of senior year simply by knowing it exists. I can't make my daughter's anxiety go away, but I can be there on the other end of the telephone when the call she was waiting for doesn't come through.

I'll be there another time, on graduation day, clapping and beaming and telling her that no matter what the future holds, now is a time to be proud.

Newspaper columnist Marion Franck is the mother of a second-year graduate student and a college junior. A former lecturer at UC Davis, she is co-author, with UC Davis Associate Chancellor Sally Springer, of Admission Matters: What Students and Parents Need to Know About Getting Into College.

Top of page

Return to previous page