WHEN YOUR
CHILD
CHOOSES A COLLEGE
You'll never figure out the "how"
By Herbert Hadad
Does it surprise you to learn that our children
lead double lives?
Any parent who doubts it need only remember peering out the kitchen window
at the kids in the garden, whispering, giggling, conspiring on matters
entirely too precious to reveal to Mom and Dad. Like most parents, I understood
the rules intuitively, even if I occasionally tried to break them, to learn
what was going on inside those beautiful little heads.
I adored being father to Edward Salim, Charles
Aram, and Sara Jameel. Every time they called me "Daddy," I actually
felt honored, sometimes moved almost to tears. When they were young, I
counted my wealth not in bank accounts (always modest) or stock portfolios
(nonexistent) but in the years my wife and I would have, God willing, with
our children before they left for college. They were our portfolio. "Thirty-six
years left with the kids," I would say. "Evelyn, I feel rich."
And then it was down to one year for Edward, two
years for Charles, and four for Sara. And the double lives they had led
until now were blossoming into an enormous enigma. The process by which
they were beginning to select a college was as baffling to me as why the
swallows return to Capistrano or why a rampaging twister destroys one trailer
park and leaves the one next door intact.
I had been warned of these perplexities. A friend,
Barbara Trecker, whose children were older than ours, had coauthored a
book called The Parents' Guide to Surviving the College Admissions Process,
and for all its practical wisdom, one anecdote stood out. She had driven
300 miles out of her way to take her daughter to see Indiana University
in Bloomington. They arrived the one day of the year when, in accordance
with tradition, students wear wooden clogs. Barbara's daughter refused
to leave the car. "Look at those shoes the kids are wearing,"
she said. "I'd never go to a school where kids wear shoes like that."
"What does your guidance counselor think?"
I began to prompt Edward and Charles. Only thirteen months apart in age,
they would benefit, I thought, from going through the college-selecting
experience together. Sara could join us, too, if she wished. We went to
visit the high school college counselor.
"I just returned from a weekend of visiting
Boston-area colleges," the counselor said, knowing nothing of my Boston
breeding and Northeastern education.
"Oh, good, then you've seen Northeastern
and BU and BC and Harvard and Brandeis and Tufts . . ."
"No," she said vaguely, "I didn't
see any of those."
We switched to the other guidance counselor. He
seemed competent, but I sensed he operated according to a caste system,
recommending schools where he believed the students belonged academically
and that fit their parents' budget. One of the lessons I had taught my
children was: Never know your place.
"What about your friends-where are they applying?"
I asked my sons. It was then I learned the elaborate game almost every
high schooler played. It involved, on the one hand, announcing the names
of prestigious colleges they had no intention or possibility of attending
and, on the other hand, keeping secret their actual plans in the event
they were not accepted. "University of Michigan, premedicine,"
I remember one of Edward's classmates saying. He went to the State University
of New York at Binghamton.
I felt a pilgrimage to Boston was overdue. It
would clarify the mystery for all of us.
One fragrant Friday evening shortly thereafter,
Edward, Charles, and I stepped out the front door of the home of Lise and
Myles Striar, old friends from Pinckney Street on Beacon Hill who were
hosting us, and strolled through the Public Garden to meet other old friends,
Gail and Roberto Grande, who treated us to a wonderful dinner in an Italian
restaurant on Park Square, which mixed memorable dry martinis.
Under these conditions, it wasn't long before
the affection and nostalgia I held for the city I'd left a quarter century
before rendered me almost giddy. Our children had come to Boston countless
times as youngsters to visit their grandparents, and I hoped they shared
many of my warm feelings. Saturday would be the big test, when we visited
colleges. Northeastern, which I had left one course shy of a degree, had
reached out for me decades later in ways that would touch me for the rest
of my life. I had earned my degree, joining the last class to graduate
in Boston Garden, Evelyn and the children in attendance. We had celebrated
across the street with pizza slices and Cokes and Evelyn's assessment of
the morning: "The children will know what an education means."
I'd reconnected with long-lost classmates and begun a fruitful relationship
as a writer for this magazine. Undoubtedly, my Northeastern would be wonderful
for our children, too.
Saturday, a cool, windy day, began at Brandeis,
where a friend from high school and Northeastern, Robert Szulkin, had risen
to dean of students. He walked us across the quiet campus, showed us many
monuments and the chapel shared by Muslims and Jews, and took us to lunch
in the faculty dining room. He has a wonderful sense of humor, and the
boys liked him immediately. Back in his office, he said, "Look, we're
easier than Harvard to get into, but at Harvard, once you're in they coddle
you until you graduate. Here, if you turn lazy or stumble, we'll kick your
butt out. You accept those guidelines, and I'll try to get you in."
We then went to the gym where the Celtics were working out, and the boys
were bug-eyed with excitement, but in the car on the way to Tufts, Edward
said, "I don't like Brandeis. Everyone looks like all they do is study."
At Tufts, a cheerful freshman woman walking backward
showed us the campus and a statue of an elephant. We then visited what
she said was a typical dormitory room, which contained a cardboard box
filled with rations for the semester-every brand of potato chip on the
market.
I had to admit that as we looked for a parking
space on Huntington Avenue, I began to hold my breath. We entered through
the traditional quadrangle, and I marveled aloud at how the university
had grown over the years. Edward and Charles watched the coming and going
of students and enjoyed lunch in the bright and airy Curry Student Center.
At the bookstore, I bought a Northeastern decal for our Honda Accord and
key chains. At least two of Edward's classmates at his small, suburban
high school had been accepted at Northeastern. I liked both for the pride
they expressed for their choice. I hoped the pride would rub off.
"What else do you want to see? Do you want
to talk with some of the students? Want to try to meet with a faculty member?"
They looked at each other and said they'd seen enough and wanted to move
on, and my heart hurt a little. I knew that more salesmanship would only
further muffle their interest.
But I couldn't keep quiet when they became enthusiastic
about the Boston University campus. "Hey, Northeastern's also got
a trolley right outside the door. It's even a nicer trolley line,"
I said. "It goes to better places."
We returned to Boston on subsequent weekends.
We met with a stuffy dean at Babson College in Wellesley, who seemed to
have trouble remembering why we were there. We took the (second-rate) trolley
up to Boston College. In the past, we'd spent time in and around Harvard
Square. A neighbor of the boys had been accepted at Harvard, partly because
of his size and football skills. I coped with one of those immutable facts
of life a parent may face, that his children will not be going to Harvard.
Still, in my thoughts I pictured several years
of exciting visits to the old hometown as our children studied, grew, and
flourished. I imagined the adjustments we would all make as they became
young adults who might on occasion invite us into the hidden and exciting
other side of their double lives.
We never found out just how the children made
their selections, what sort of process was involved, or who or what influenced
the decision. It certainly wasn't Dad. Edward went down to Pennsylvania,
to study at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem. Charles and Sara, who had
quarreled bitterly through high school, both went up to Syracuse University
in New York's snowbelt, where they became the best of friends.
And another remarkable thing happened. I began
to lead a double life. I experienced sorrow that my children had rejected
my school and my town and maybe a part of me, sorrow I kept secret. At
the same time, I showered them with praise, told them how it brought joy
and pleasure to their mother and me to realize they had become strong and
independent and able to make their own choices. And we embraced their choices,
as both the parents and the children began to grow up.
Herbert Hadad is a Northeastern graduate and
an award-winning writer based in upstate New York. His column on the milestones
and transitions faced by alumni will appear regularly.
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