For all you parents of high school seniors out there — I feel your pain.
We are all going through our own version of March Madness: the agony of waiting for college admission letters.
This is the month that most of our students will get the
coveted big envelope or the dreaded little envelope in the mail. I don’t
have to tell you which one is better.
Our seniors spent hours writing those essays, gathering
letters of recommendation, transcripts, writing “resumes,” adding up SAT
and ACT scores, and making lists of any achievements, big or small.
We parents spent God-knows-how-much on application fees.
We spent yet more money to send those SAT or ACT scores on to those
colleges. We Fed-Ex’d or sent their applications through registered
mail. And then we sat back. And waited. And then waited some more.
It’s pure torture. We parents have been planning their
lives for 18 years. We are attempting to plan their next four years. We
cannot do that if we don’t get the “Yea” or “Nay” that we’re waiting
for.
At our house, my husband haunts the mailbox. I’m sure the
mailman is starting to wonder exactly what kind of “special delivery”
he is anxiously looking for.
He also monitors email for the moment any college replies
with any kind of news. Note to “Large University”: We don’t care about
your graduation speaker, new symposium or your dining commons menu. Just
tell us if she’s in or not.
Meanwhile, we try to keep our 12th-graders from coming
down with Senioritis. Many of our seniors have mentally already moved on
to visions of graduation parties, senior trips or getting the heck out
of Dodge/Napa. They are so over anything to do with parents, sisters and
making their beds. Unfortunately, the vaccine for this illness is only
available after graduation day.
I thought once the applications were done, we’d have a
break from college. What I didn’t know was that once you’re done with
college applications, you pretty much move right on to scholarship
applications. Unless you have a rich uncle or a trust fund, scholarships
are a must.
They require more transcripts, more letters of
recommendation and more essays. Some scholarships seem like an obvious
fit. Others may not be. Our daughter reluctantly applied for one
scholarship from an Italian social group.
We’re not Italian, she said.
I was one step ahead of her. I’d already asked Grandpa Bob to dig into his genealogy files. I had the facts.
Yes, you are, I said. Your great-great-grandfather
Dominic Roulleri, who came to the U.S. in the mid-1800s, was born in
Genoa, Italy. That counts.
But I don’t know what to write about being Italian, she said. I don’t speak Italian. I took French.
Use your imagination, I said. Think of what it must have been like for him coming to the U.S. with no family and no job.
He was a printer, I said. Maybe he wanted to be an animator like you.
She looked skeptical.
They didn’t have animators back then, Mom, she said.
Just apply, I said.
Who knows, maybe Walt Disney was 1/16 Italian too.
