Things I Learned at Parents Weekend

The Thunder Beneath Us Mixtape Nods to Nasty Women

Things I Learned at Parents Weekend

As a first-time parent of a college student, I have learned many new lessons this fall. Parent’s Weekend last month was particularly eye opening, so I thought I’d share my newly acquired knowledge so your learning curve can be flatter than ours.

Be True to Your School. Back in September on Move-in Day, I made the rookie error of wearing not a single pixel of our daughter’s school’s colors. In my sensible grey tshirt built for carrying things, sweating, and weeping, I stood out against the field of parents dressed head-to-toe in blue and orange. So for Parent’s Weekend, I brought along an old orange jacket and wore it over my newly purchased school t-shirt from the bookstore, thinking how rah rah I’d look now.

WRONG. Not when throngs of dads wore long pants or Bermuda shorts printed with the school’s mascot, and mothers wore school shirts in different cuts for each different event. The cake taker was the dad at Sunday brunch wearing a blue and orange striped oxford that bore the school insignia and the names of his children AND their graduation years, in a bit of custom embroidery that stretched clavicle to hip bone.

Next year? I’m going full body paint.

Parental Protectiveness Prevails. At the Study Abroad Information session, a woman (decked out in an orange dress, obviously) prefaced her question with a rambling discourse on the fact that her daughter wanted to go to Europe, and had a lot of friends studying there in various cities (all of which she listed for us) and the daughter wanted to visit them during her weekends. “Is there someone who can make her travel arrangements?” As the question rambled on into its fourth minute, I realized she was basically describing a Study Abroad Concierge.

Seriously? Take it from this Study Abroad veteran. Would a concierge have said, “You and your four American female roommates should take a train behind the still-closed Iron Curtain to Budapest, and when you are swarmed at the station by people whispering offers of room in their homes for cash, take the cheapest one because what could they possibly do to incapacitate all five of you of once?” Would a concierge have said, “You and your male friend should make a bet with another co-ed couple about which pair can hitchhike from Vienna to Salzburg faster.” Would a concierge have said, “Night trains from Venice may be scary, but you’ll survive. Probably.”

No.

Hmmm. Maybe that mom was on to something.

Although here I am winning in Salzburg in ’87

Small Time, Big Change. College is unparalleled in the way it opens up new horizons for our children, and how quickly it happens. For instance, in four years at her Oakland public high school, my daughter attended possibly one, maybe two sport events, and she wandered into one of them by mistake, looking for a friend. She has long referred to all team sporting events with the generic term “sports games.”

And yet in the spreadsheet of activities she sent us ahead of Parent’s Weekend, a scant six weeks after she’d arrived on campus, we noticed that she had scheduled us to see the men’s soccer game back-to-back with the football game.

“Do you attend sports games now?” I texted her, astonished.

“I don’t even recognize myself anymore, Mom,” she answered. Then we stopped texting because she was at a football game, and I was busy reattaching my head to my shoulders.

Regression Analysis. Maybe it was being on such a beautiful campus on a warm fall weekend that encouraged some parents to let loose. Or maybe it was that every school-sponsored Parent’s Weekend event came with tickets for three free drinks per adult. All I know is that when we heard that there were parents dancing on tables at the frat parties in the houses at the edge of campus on Saturday night, I thought: wow. If your goal is to demonstrate to your kids the dangers of over imbibing and making a fool of yourself in public, these moms and dads were teaching a master class.

Time Management. When our daughter decided last April to attend this school, I called up to reserve a hotel for Parent’s Weekend right away, only to find that the only hotel in the vicinity with rooms available was just off the interstate and a favorite with truckers. Little did I realize how lucky I was to even grab that room: turns out that on the exact day that marks one year before the next Parent’s Weekend, orange-and-blue-clad parents who are much better organized than I am called up all the nice hotels in unison and book them solid, within one hour. Even the truck stop hotel is full right now for Parent’s Weekend 2017.

But I have a plan. I’m going to call the Study Abroad Concierge and have her take care of it.