Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
Why does college life teach students to lose the family to find the self?
Sep 20, 1999 | During my last long conversation with my mother, I asked her whether, after she died, I should leave Yale and come home to live with my father and sister. It was far past bedtime for both of us, but her body clock had given up under the influence of insulin injections, chemotherapy and the steroid pills she downed by the handful every morning. I was kept awake by the adrenaline rush of responsibility and fear, and the searing pain of love.
The American way decrees that chicks should flee the nest, and baby boomers can't deny their own babies the privilege of flying solo. "Dad isn't going to be happy unless you're happy," my mother told me. "And he can't be happy if you give up these incredible opportunities for him." The syllogism seemed simple.
So here I am, on another late night 18 months later, back at Yale for my senior year. But though I have no wish to neglect my mother's last instructions, I am unable to escape the gravity of my family. My sister just went off to college as well, but my old anxiety about leaving my father alone has only shifted focus to the complexities around his impending remarriage. I still call him almost every day and check in with my grandmother every week. And as my friends discuss overseas fellowships and fun post-graduation vacations, I find myself unable to imagine being anywhere but back home with what's left of my family.
This isn't the way college is supposed to be. Our deans act in loco parentis, but nobody mistakes administrators for the real thing. We're free of bedtimes, chores and curfews, free of expectations and history, living in a world consisting entirely of other 20-year-olds. College is for navel-gazing and self-actualization. Family? Who even remembers it exists? Few of my friends have seen the place I grew up or met my parents, and few mention anything about their folks back home. College is for now and for the future -- when we'll graduate and move to San Francisco, Seattle or New York, or take off to teach English in Guatemala or France and self-actualize some more.
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