"Are there printers in the dorm buildings?"
"Does the campus cafeteria serve food for special diets?"
"Should my daughter bring her own fridge or rent the campus fridge?"
"What is the cable/TV situation on campus?"
Such are the questions that parents of incoming freshman must answer (according to our parent's Facebook page, a closed site to which I belong).
Part of me thinks, oh lord, do these people have nothing better to do? Do these people live in upper middle class lives? Do these people not work nine to five? (Or eight to six with occasional nights and weekends.) Yes, I'm being judgmental. Pardon me.
Truthfully, I love these parents asking questions, because they are me.
But the funny thing is, I know the answers to all of these questions because Amanda has long ago researched them and informed me of the facts. I'm kind of feeling sorry for the moms and dads who must think through these conundrums on their own. Mostly, I'm impressed with my daughter for her interest in knowing the small stuff. (And I'm not holding my breath that this will happen with the second child, as an fyi -- and that's Ok, fist in mouth.)
Today her school books arrived in the mail. Chemistry. Economics. American Government. Writing. The Mental Health System. Your basic liberal arts selection. Because she somehow figured out that it's better to rent books from Amazon than to purchase from the school book store. Although, I told her to buy and keep the books for the subjects that bring her passion. (Still, whatever your interests, you can't take it with you, right?)
We are five days and counting for when the girl goes to Ohio. 10 hours away. A different state. Another time zone. She would have went farther if we could have figured logistics for how to do farther school visits. I understand. I appreciate the spirit of learning and adventure and thinking on your own. Still, as of today I have all the information I need to purchase her thanksgiving vacay airplane ticket (with my one last remaining frequent flyer mile accumulation).
Tonight, as I write this simple blog post, my girl is assembling her dorm room shelves in our family room. It's a trial run to see if she can do it on her own, with the mini tool kit she ordered for her college years. Bob is committed to not helping, to see if she can do it on her own first. She will then disassemble and re-box in preparation for move-in day. You see the university administrators design the move-in days so parents come for a few hours, unload boxes, and then leave asap. Parents are not encouraged to linger to do stuff like, miss their children or build cubical systems. In a way, I get it. I drove myself to college and I did just fine. On my move in day I was thrilled to find that my dorm window room looked on to a fraternity house, Phi Delta Theta. Par-tay.
Our daughter, of course, will not be fraternizing with . . . honestly, what will we know? We'll be 500 miles away. Anything could happen. I'll be focusing on the political science and all the lessons learned on church mission trips. That's all we have. Send up prayers.
It's a better deal to rent a fridge and microwave package from campus.
Quarters are not needed for laundry as the costs are included in board charges. TV/cable doesn't matter because kids watch Netflix. Other buildings on campus have printers, color printers. The cafeteria caters to special diets.
Thanks for coming over to my blog.
With love from yours truly,
Natural Born Bleeding Heart
P.S. The girl is discovering that IKEA shelves are not as easy to put together as it would seem. See, life lessons learned already.
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