March Madness
Bigger things confront us, I know, in these troubled times in America and the world, with financial disaster of unfolding dimension, wars on terrorism and unemployment levels approaching those of the Great Depression, along with the stresses we encounter in the best of times. Another version of “March Madness” is in the winds, with its own brackets and rankings. Along with some three million high school seniors and their parents and extended families, we are focused on something else—college acceptances for the Class of 2013.
We have prepped for this determinative moment since becoming parents, and the end is palpably near. As Jimmy Cliff wrote it, we are “Sitting here in limbo, but I know it won’t be long… Sitting here in limbo, waiting for the dice to roll… ” I can relate his song and struggle to the admissions process, where we are all equal for one final moment as we dangle in limbo. Many seniors will probably find my notion to prolonging it an abomination, wanting only to end their misery. They do not yet know or realize how the bittersweet selection process will segregate them overnight, or how their secondary educational peer group Diaspora is about to begin in earnest. We are now in the eye of the storm, and I remind myself to savor it, to step back, breathe and ‘freeze frame’ the way things are, before the world changes.
As responsible, middle class parents, our lives have focused relentlessly on the University Grail, and not just matriculating at any university, but at the very best possible one. As a faculty brat, I grew up with college at the center of my family’s universe. As a parent, I have put constant not-so-subtle pressures on our daughter to achieve. As parents with one child and only one chance to do this right, the stakes have always been high. My wife and I have been child-centric, sometimes at the expense of our own relationship, weathering the strains of adult lives while rearing a child, enduring the vicissitudes of modern life and the inevitable disappointments and successes life brings to us all. We entered this state of child-fixation open-eyed, always doing things the very best we could or knew how, sometimes wishing we could have done more, but understanding we have done so much, and never counting the cost. The result, so goes the saying, is priceless!
As parents we have felt every vicarious thrill of victory and suffered each agony of defeat, remembering these are her experiences, not ours. We are not living vicariously through our daughter, but in her. And over the years, the victories have accumulated, even as the going became more challenging and the competition more acute. How could we know that we would bring our child into a world fuller than ever before with smart, competitive young women and men wanting to attend the same highly competitive institutions with the same number of acceptances? We could not have done it any other way.
Today, there is nothing more to do but wait. The case has been presented and the jury is out. The applications have all been submitted for evaluation by frazzled admissions officers burning midnight oil to determine the fates of so many. Parents can still dream and their children can still aspire to win the golden ticket, to harbor the illusion that the same opportunities that existed in 1991 when most seniors were born remain a moment longer. All too soon the bell will toll. Many hopes will be dashed overnight, with what was once an infinite universe reduced down to a handful of acceptances, then culled to a single choice.
For this reason, I relish the lingering suspense. Not everyone can “win,” especially where the odds are ten or more to one against acceptance. Students and parents will separate into newly determined social stratifications as defined by the U.S. News & World Report’s current rankings. Someone who knows advised me that it is not the day admissions letters arrive that is the hardest, but “the day you drop your daughter off” in the fall that will be. That day can wait a while longer, too.
Whatever the outcome, we can congratulate ourselves for having done a good—no—for having done a great job! Our daughter has already done more than we could have imagined. We admire her tenacity, sense of irony and her dry humor, her smile. To her credit, at times, she infuriates us. We love and like her and she even loves and likes us back, most of the time! In this moment of reflection, we deserve to marvel at the accomplishment. How could we have created this miraculous being, two artistically oriented people, married once and never having parented before? We have proven ourselves a team of real, seldom model parents, never “normal” ones like Ward and June Cleaver or the Waltons, more nuts, more flawed and more like our own parents. She will thank us for never quite blending in one day.
We do not confuse the admissions process for what is most important: our daughter’s growth as an independent person. Acceptance will not determine her validity. She is already self, parent, peer and teacher validated. Nor will it determine our success or hers. We have all succeeded. The choices will soon come down to mundane, nitty-gritty things like need and merit money, student loans, the best choice, itself determined through some serendipitous encounter with a tour guide, or the friend of a friend, or a rendezvous with a savvy professor. Will she receive a welcome from her first choice? And if she does not, how will she adjust to the disappointment?
A decision will be made. In only a few months our daughter will go to college somewhere between New Jersey and Maine, and we will learn to accept a transition as natural as when a baby bird flies from its nest. Long observing this anticipated “empty nest” phase with suspicion, now we will experience it ourselves. We will refocus our energies on our art and reconfigured relationship. We will be there always for our fledgling daughter’s flight into the collegiate world and beyond, and if we are very fortunate, maybe we will be around long enough to meet a boyfriend or experience a grandchild. As we have many rivers yet to cross, right now, it seems that the main thing is to appreciate our bird while she is still in the hand.
We have prepped for this determinative moment since becoming parents, and the end is palpably near. As Jimmy Cliff wrote it, we are “Sitting here in limbo, but I know it won’t be long… Sitting here in limbo, waiting for the dice to roll… ” I can relate his song and struggle to the admissions process, where we are all equal for one final moment as we dangle in limbo. Many seniors will probably find my notion to prolonging it an abomination, wanting only to end their misery. They do not yet know or realize how the bittersweet selection process will segregate them overnight, or how their secondary educational peer group Diaspora is about to begin in earnest. We are now in the eye of the storm, and I remind myself to savor it, to step back, breathe and ‘freeze frame’ the way things are, before the world changes.
As responsible, middle class parents, our lives have focused relentlessly on the University Grail, and not just matriculating at any university, but at the very best possible one. As a faculty brat, I grew up with college at the center of my family’s universe. As a parent, I have put constant not-so-subtle pressures on our daughter to achieve. As parents with one child and only one chance to do this right, the stakes have always been high. My wife and I have been child-centric, sometimes at the expense of our own relationship, weathering the strains of adult lives while rearing a child, enduring the vicissitudes of modern life and the inevitable disappointments and successes life brings to us all. We entered this state of child-fixation open-eyed, always doing things the very best we could or knew how, sometimes wishing we could have done more, but understanding we have done so much, and never counting the cost. The result, so goes the saying, is priceless!
As parents we have felt every vicarious thrill of victory and suffered each agony of defeat, remembering these are her experiences, not ours. We are not living vicariously through our daughter, but in her. And over the years, the victories have accumulated, even as the going became more challenging and the competition more acute. How could we know that we would bring our child into a world fuller than ever before with smart, competitive young women and men wanting to attend the same highly competitive institutions with the same number of acceptances? We could not have done it any other way.
Today, there is nothing more to do but wait. The case has been presented and the jury is out. The applications have all been submitted for evaluation by frazzled admissions officers burning midnight oil to determine the fates of so many. Parents can still dream and their children can still aspire to win the golden ticket, to harbor the illusion that the same opportunities that existed in 1991 when most seniors were born remain a moment longer. All too soon the bell will toll. Many hopes will be dashed overnight, with what was once an infinite universe reduced down to a handful of acceptances, then culled to a single choice.
For this reason, I relish the lingering suspense. Not everyone can “win,” especially where the odds are ten or more to one against acceptance. Students and parents will separate into newly determined social stratifications as defined by the U.S. News & World Report’s current rankings. Someone who knows advised me that it is not the day admissions letters arrive that is the hardest, but “the day you drop your daughter off” in the fall that will be. That day can wait a while longer, too.
Whatever the outcome, we can congratulate ourselves for having done a good—no—for having done a great job! Our daughter has already done more than we could have imagined. We admire her tenacity, sense of irony and her dry humor, her smile. To her credit, at times, she infuriates us. We love and like her and she even loves and likes us back, most of the time! In this moment of reflection, we deserve to marvel at the accomplishment. How could we have created this miraculous being, two artistically oriented people, married once and never having parented before? We have proven ourselves a team of real, seldom model parents, never “normal” ones like Ward and June Cleaver or the Waltons, more nuts, more flawed and more like our own parents. She will thank us for never quite blending in one day.
We do not confuse the admissions process for what is most important: our daughter’s growth as an independent person. Acceptance will not determine her validity. She is already self, parent, peer and teacher validated. Nor will it determine our success or hers. We have all succeeded. The choices will soon come down to mundane, nitty-gritty things like need and merit money, student loans, the best choice, itself determined through some serendipitous encounter with a tour guide, or the friend of a friend, or a rendezvous with a savvy professor. Will she receive a welcome from her first choice? And if she does not, how will she adjust to the disappointment?
A decision will be made. In only a few months our daughter will go to college somewhere between New Jersey and Maine, and we will learn to accept a transition as natural as when a baby bird flies from its nest. Long observing this anticipated “empty nest” phase with suspicion, now we will experience it ourselves. We will refocus our energies on our art and reconfigured relationship. We will be there always for our fledgling daughter’s flight into the collegiate world and beyond, and if we are very fortunate, maybe we will be around long enough to meet a boyfriend or experience a grandchild. As we have many rivers yet to cross, right now, it seems that the main thing is to appreciate our bird while she is still in the hand.
Labels: admissions, Class of 2013, colleges
posted by Stonechuck at 1:52 PM
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