It seems like it was just a year or so ago that one of my duties as mom was to be very involved in the college search. I started searching through Baron's with my mentor Jill. She was a wealth of knowledge as she had two in top colleges and her third deep in the college search as she was a year older than my daughter. Jill and I would sit out on the porch with our Baron's on those hot summer days at the CT shore. She passed along very wise advice.
The summer before her junior year, my daughter and I visited a couple of colleges. Thus began the touring process. We hit all the surrounding states and went as far south as Washington, west as Pennsylvania and north as VT, NH and Western NY. This touring of college campuses ended in October of her senior year.
The early decision applications were mailed by the end of November and it was over. Now the waiting began until the acceptances came by mail.
Why am I writing this? Well, it is the same season and instead of being the wide eyed high school student, my daughter is leading a small group of high school students from her school in Moscow to Edinburgh, Scotland, this week. It seems like such a short time ago that we walked the same path.
My older granddaughter just turned 9 and before we know it, my daughter will be doing the same thing with her daughter. I hope she has as much fun as I did. Those college visiting trips were great mother/daughter bonding times before she left home a short time later to live at college, study in Italy, travel through Europe and Moscow and also work in Spain and Moscow.
license plate blues
1 month ago
The years must just have flown by, like migrating birds. I still can not believe that my daughter has two children of her own and have not leave under the same roof with us since she left for college. The separation anxiety never left me.
ReplyDeleteOlga
Yes, there is something special about the Mom Tours of College Campus'. I too did the same thing with my mom and I remember it vividly. I can't wait to do the same with my two. Time does fly. My son just turned 9 in October and someone had to remind me that we are now 1/2 way to 18 ... moving off to college. WHAH!!! Your daughter's path is awesome ~ all her travels and important jobs. You did a great job as a mom to lead her to be a confident woman!
ReplyDeleteElle,
ReplyDeletePerhaps I did too good a job as she lives in Moscow and I'm here in CT, her father is in OR and her in-laws are in CO. I miss her so much!
I used to fear that she'd marry a Frenchman and live in Paris.... She married an American and moved to Moscow....
College trips were not in the cards for me. I wanted to major in Russian Language and one of the two top schools in the country was right there in our city - University of Colorado with in-state tuition. The other was Harvard, so the choice was clear. I never once even began to entertain the idea of going anywhere else. And when I gravitated to theatre - there was the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, too!
ReplyDeleteWith my own children, comparitive poverty more or less dictated that they'd start at the Community college and then take up their "MET Scholarship" to do the other two years at MSU or U of M, perhaps... But Aidan went into the army and is now studying at George Mason Univ. and Lydia wants to be a medical esthetician... Aidan has said he really wants to come back and finish his degree at MSU. It is so heartwarming to have a son who LOVES the place he grew up in.