Transitioning

Senior year in high school is a long series of farewells, most of them highly emotional.  Seniors' most wrenching good-byes are usually their good-byes to friends.  If they're leaving home for college, they know that they can always come home to reconnect with family.  But those treasured friends who shared their lives and knew them best; they might never see them again.

Because of this unbearable notion of terminal separation, many seniors' last summer before leaving home is consumed by a need to spend as much time as possible with their friends.  Summer is a time for hanging out with friends and little time at home.  Teens are anxiously realizing what and whom they are leaving, while being totally unsure of what lies ahead.

Parents should not feel neglected, rejected, or shunned by their seniors' spending so much of their free time with friends.   Instead of making your kids feel guilty about not being with you, tell them that you know how tough it is to say goodbye.  Invite their friends for dinner.  Host a couple of parties for them and their friends.  Take them shopping, help them pack and review a checklist. Share how you felt during this emotional summer, when you were in their shoes.

Even though their outward focus is on savoring every last moment with friends, your teen knows all too well that he/she is also leaving home and leaving you.  The life you have shared is changing forever.  Your teen may even provoke arguments with you, give you more attitude in an unconscious attempt to make it easier to leave you.  It's easier for seniors to say to one another, "My family's driving me crazy. I can't wait to leave." than to tearfully admit, "I don't know how I'm going to leave them."

In the midst of your seniors' frenetic, friends-focused summer, make an effort to arrange family good-byes.  Your departing teen needs one-on-one farewells with you, siblings, and other close family members.  Don't expect acknowledgement that these intimate moments are needed.  Graduates are too busy avoiding and denying fear and heartache.  So help out by dropping your teen off at grandmother's for a couple of hours, and giving him/her money to take younger siblings out for ice cream.  When you arrange for your teen to spend time alone with loved family members, you allow proper good-byes.

What to Take to College

By Jo Ellen Parker (President of the Great Lakes Colleges Association.)

Before too long students who are headed for college in the fall will be receiving overstuffed packets of instructions and advice.  How to register for health insurance, how to choose courses, how to get from the airport to campus, how to sign up for pre-season training, how to get a meal card, how to set up an e-mail account.  There will be a list of things to bring - towels, athletic gear, a fan, a favorite pillow - and things not to bring - pets, large appliances, illicit substances, a car.

This is my own list of suggestions.  It may look a little different from the ones the colleges send out, but I suspect it may be more useful in the long run.

Bring good sense.  At college it will be all too easy, especially at first, to sleep too little, eat erratically, drink too much, and avoid things like homework.  Bring what you know about what works in your life, what keeps you healthy and happy.  You'll  need it daily.

Bring courage.  In college you will - you should - be asked to explore, intellectually and personally.  Only the courageous accept this invitation fully.  Be brave enough to enter new territory without a map, to cross boundaries, to think about new things in new ways.

Bring memories.  Remember where you've come from and bring reminders of what's good about home.  But be selective.  Know that bringing some things with you into a new life implies leaving other things behind.  Choose carefully.

Bring patience and hope.   More than you know, college is about the future, about preparation.  Some of it is short term - getting you ready to be gainfully employed in four years - and some of it is long term - getting you ready for an adult life of  citizenship, family, and friendship.  It isn't always clear what's going to work and what isn't, what will pay off and what will fall away.  Much of your time in college will be spent trying to be patient and hoping it will all turn out for the best.

Bring playfulness and a sense of humor.  If you are willing to play intellectually, to be imaginative and curious and witty and original, you will have a great time in college.   And if you have a sense of humor you will avoid the misery of taking yourself too seriously, a misery which has ruined a good many sophomore years.

Of course, there are a couple of things you should be sure not to bring.  Leave your prejudices at home.   Everybody has some, and they sneak into your baggage in the most  surprising ways, but do your best to dig them out and leave them behind.  Don't bother to bring your high school teachers.  Bring what they taught you, for sure, but leave them behind so that they don't crowd out the professors you're about to meet.  And try not to bring too many expectations.  College, for you, may not be just like it is on TV, or like an older sibling said it was, or even like the admissions video.  Leave those secondhand images behind.

Pack as light as you can:   If you do well you'll be leaving college with a lot more than you brought, and you'll want to have room for it all.