Categories: uncategorized
Date: 02 October 2012 12:22:59
Third Party has started college this week and I am experiencing the sort of angst that most parents in this situation feel I guess and some that many don't whilst missing some that others do.
Circumstances were such that I didn't get to take her to uni, but the person who did (and to whom I am hugely grateful) took some pics of her room and posted them on FB. So I know what her room looks like. Apparently the visualisation thing is important. There are good arguments as to why it may have been best for her that I wasn't there....I would probably have been one of those awful parents who fussed and got emotional and they tried to shove out the door as soon as possible. As a mentor at one of the Durham colleges I sat through meetings when the nature of these parents and how they were to be dealt with in a kind but definite way was discussed.
As it is Third Party is dealing with me and my far too frequent texts and daily "check up" phone calls from afar.
The first big panic for me involved the angst about student finance and when it was coming through. After a brief panic the email with the final form to be signed so the money can then be handed over has come through and I am reassured on that count.
In contrast I think the most worrying thing for her on that first day was she'd forgotten to buy teabags and sugar to take with her.
As the last couple of days have gone on and she has told me about "freshers week" I've begun to get nervous again about the type of institution she's gone to. Now she had read me the student handbook which points out that it's helpful to look at it more as if she's going into a religious community than going to uni and we had been joking about her entering a convent but......the reality has hit me this week. Whilst I wouldn't want my daughter indulging in too much hedonism the difference between Freshers Week and her induction week is striking and I am concerned about whether she is missing out on something.
I think this actually relates to my wider angst about it all, my concern that she is somehow choosing a way of life which she is too young for. Having read memoirs like Karen Armstrong's Through the Narrow Gate I know that for all the jokes we made about convents my concerns are similar to those Catholic parents who worry about their children when they take that path. Yet, I am a Protestant and this is not the same, Third Party is not making a life long commitment to living that life she is doing a 3 year uni course in Theology.
I know in the USA it is much more common for young people to do their degrees in colleges which have a religious base and rhythms of life/ disciplinary codes which are based on that and have a number of friends and acquaintances who've been through that system without it being a problem and without them coming out as fundamentalists. Yet, I have also heard the awful stories about when people haven't been able to conform and how these places in the States have reinforced a type of evangelicalism which is problematic for me. I think this another part of my problem......I am worried what Third Party might come out as after three years and my fears are not based upon the reality but rather the biographical accounts from those who attended some of the most conservatively evangelical colleges in the States (and were often gay and so had a really bad time).
These fears didn't subside when she phoned me about her elective choices. She is going to make the right decisions for her I know but....the discussion reinforced that this is not your bog standard course.
Most of all I want her to be happy and fulfilled. I realise this is now pretty much out of my hands I have nurtured her and whilst I'm still there to support her I can't guide her decision making in the way I did when she was a child and that scares me, lots.
Thank you for listening to the ramblings of a mother during Freshers Week. Any advice on how to do the letting go or how to deal with a child deciding to enter a religious rather than secular environment at 18 would be greatly appreciated.