September 2005

Parent to parent: Starting new lives

By Mom Marion

Recently I asked an experienced resident adviser how she would describe the mood of incoming students, and she said, "Eager for something new."

She went on to say that some will latch onto the party world, at least temporarily, but that there are many kinds of newness for students to embrace. Her pleasure in being a resident adviser comes from watching them discover new friendships, new extracurricular activities and new academic pursuits.

Parents also face a new world when their children head off to college. But they often feel that something has been subtracted from their lives -- not added.

When my first child left for college, I lost the teenager who liked to snuggle on the couch and talk to me, but I kept the one who preferred Mom at a distance. Three years later, he left, too.

Expectations

When my nest emptied, I felt the weight of expectations: My husband and I were supposed to kick up our heels and have fun alone together. But I missed the children acutely at first.

Our children feel that things are expected of them as well, especially regarding academics. Most will comply, but they'll also respond to the expectation that comes from within, the search for their identity -- perhaps even a new identity -- as they enter a new world.

I can relate. About ten years into our marriage, my husband and I discovered that we both had done the same weird thing when we started college. We changed our names.

Marion, meet May

Entering an East Coast college as a tall, gawky 18-year-old, I introduced myself to everyone as "May," a name I hoped would conjure up springtime, as well as the lovable, lighthearted and shorter person I wanted to be. Arriving at UC Davis, my husband Bob renamed himself "Rick." He thought that name suggested a happy-go-lucky, approachable, friendly person, and not the unsophisticated son of Chinese immigrants he really was.

Neither name lasted past the third week.

When new friends called out to us, we couldn't remember to turn around. But even though the names disappeared, the feeling of wanting to start a new life persisted, in us and in our friends.

Years later when my husband and I told our kids of our freshman renaming antics, they laughed uproariously.

But I think they understood us, too.

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."

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