Before our vacation last week, I was walking my dog, and I ran into a neighbor. We chatted about our Spring Break plans. I told her we were going to the East Coast to look at colleges for Clair Adele.
"I have friends with college freshmen," she said. "Two are doing well, and one isn't. It is the reveal year."
I had never heard that expression, but it makes perfect sense. Freshman year of college can be a time where things that were previously hidden become apparent. I suppose the "reveal" could be positive or negative. My freshman year I learned that I actually could do laundry, much to my mother's surprise, even though one batch of clothes turned light purple. I was at Claire Adele's track meet, and I met a friend whose son started college last fall at a major state school, but not the major state school, which I just heard now had a 15% acceptance rate. (Egads.) This young man started working hard in college, and his revelation was "If I worked this hard in high school, I would have had a 4.0." The dad--a Princeton grad--grimaced as he told me this. While it was a pleasant surprise to both him and his son that the young man possessed serious motivation, the dad was clearly disappointed this didn't reveal itself when his kid was a high school freshman.
Most of the fail stories are kept well hidden to protect the privacy of the kid. A friend of mine's kid flunked out of very competitive school spring quarter his freshman year due to excessive video game playing and lack of attending classes. The university sent him home for a year where he attended a local college. The university took him back a year later, and he did fine.
When I was in college, I knew a genius who pissed his potential away on drugs, who in the end, did not do fine. I had a friend from high school who became so obsessed with doing well in school she stopped sleeping and showering. Knowing what I know now about mental illness, I wonder if she had mania.
I wonder the reveal year will show for my kids. I think about about how in college kids are more open to focus on what they love, not what they need to study. We visited colleges where kids are studying politics, economics, finance, the classics, world languages, international affairs, math and nanosciences. I went to a presentation where one of the tour guides was a math and drama major. When my kids find their interests, will they show more enthusiasm for their studies? The Boy is not a big fan of studying French, but he loves Rocket Club and could do that all day--and has. On rocket launch weekends, he is the last to leave except for the coach, even when his rocket has been out of commission. When will my kids find get their groove, or will they be the type of kids who get lost? I suspect they will find something they love, but we won't know until the time comes.
I can't decide if I am terrified about this or feeling free. This is like the final test for parenting: do the kids launch, or do they flail? Will they find growth and freedom from being unconstrained, or will they crash and burn? And if they do crash and burn, will they be able to pull themselves together again, and give it another shot?
This blog is about the little and big thoughts that pop into my head. I once read that when Flannery O'Connor walked into a bookstore, she would want to edit her published works with a red pen. In the digital world, we have the luxury of tweaking things up after we've hit the publish button. I can be a perfectionist/procrastinator, where waiting for the ideal means little gets done. Here I will share what is not--and likely will never be--perfect.
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