Yesterday afternoon the student I interviewed on December 22nd, Zack Rosenberg, came to promote Paul Smith's College to our cooking class (because PSC has a culinary program). My reason for mentioning this is neither Zack nor Paul Smith's, however. I'm here to talk about how one of my senior students reacted.
After the presentation, during which he had asked several on-point questions, this student came to my office and said he wanted to keep talking about the school. Unfortunately I had meetings for the rest of the day so I had to make him wait until this morning. When he came in, he said something I wasn't expecting to hear. He said:
I didn't know there were small colleges. I really had no idea. I'm totally excited about looking at colleges now.
Mind you, I said SENIOR student. Which means that a) he's way behind on any applications he might choose to submit, and b) I'm baffled about what the hell was he doing for the past several years while I, his parents, his older sister, his teachers and all of the college admissions reps who have visited the school have been telling him about various types of schools. Perhaps you have had a similar experience.
Cut to the end: I spent most of today researching colleges with this young man and it seems that there are actually some viable options available to him, even at this late date. And I am definitely delighted that he finally made the choice to take his post-high school life seriously because he has great potential.
I have no answers or insight to provide in this post, just this story to share in commiseration with all of you parents out there who feel like they are talking to a wall good deal of the time. I suppose if there's anything positive I can say after this experience, it's that it reminded me that most of them do, eventually, hear what we're saying.
