c. 2008 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) In the spring of my junior year, two high school buddies and I headed east to visit 11 colleges.
We went with our parents’ blessing, but otherwise, it was our adventure. We chose the schools, arranged the interviews, made travel plans. Our parents didn’t hover over the college-admissions process, as if our choices were about them, a grade on their parenting, a bragging-right for some grownup competition.
We had each taken the SAT one time _ not five times _ and with no preparation other than a good night’s sleep.
Yes, we had padded our high school transcripts with activities that meant little to us. Mostly, though, we were enjoying high school, young love, studying enthusiastically when classes were stimulating. I don’t recall monitoring my grade-point average. I just went to school and did my best.
On our trip, we each had interviews, walked around ivy-covered campuses large and small, imagined life there, bought college sweatshirts to signify dreams, and weren’t the least scientific about recording information.
We applied here and there, and made our best decisions. I don’t recall it being a high-pressure process. I don’t recall any sense that a life-shaping decision was being made. It was just college.
It amuses me that, to this day, people ask, “Where did you go to college?” and treat the answer as some clue to my entire person and not some accident of adolescent enthusiasm.
When our older sons made college decisions, our financial situation was clear: state schools were the only option. I have never regretted not being able to afford more.
As our third son nears his junior year, I recoil at the nonsense that college admission has become: SAT-prep regimens lasting several years, SAT tutors teaching aspirants how to game a test, 14-year-olds fine-tuning their school activities with college-interview appeal in mind, helicopter parents dramatizing every detail as if their worthiness were on the line.
It is still just a college decision, not some lifetime prize being won or lost. When it comes to work, marriage, parenting and life, where you spent four years as a late-adolescent has little impact on whether you can do the job, sustain a marriage, raise decent children or proceed through life-stages with confidence and good citizenship.
It is difficult to not get swept up in the nonsense. Many times I have wished my son were practicing his violin more, because making a good orchestra would enhance his college prospects. I have emphasized the importance of straight A’s. But as I watch the pressure mount, I want to take my foot off the accelerator and just encourage him to explore music, sports, acting, philosophy, outside seminars, writing _ not because they will impress an admissions committee, but because he can grow as a person.
I feel foolish about applying pressure. I want to spend his final two years of high school not making too much of SATs, grades, transcript-tuning and admissions. It is his character that will shape his life, as well as his intelligence, his willingness to take risks, to embrace change and to learn, his physical and emotional health, and his faith in God. More than anything, I want him to know that his mother and I believe in him.
College-admissions has nothing to do with any of those desires.
(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)
A photo of Tom Ehrich is available via https://religionnews.com.
KRE/CM END EHRICH
