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<p>I didn’t know anyone who spoke to their parents once a week when I was in college. It would have been a long distance call. I was working my way through college, with some minimal assistance (what they could afford) from my parents. Neither of us had the funds to be making once a week long distance phone calls. Perhaps it is a difference of location or culture, but where I lived, going to college was viewed as absolutely the time to grow up and separate from parents. Once a week calls would have been viewed by most people I knew as excessive with respect to achieving that goal of becoming an independent adult. </p>
<p>However, if my parents had needed to contact me and I didn’t answer the phone (no answering machines, voice mail, or cell phones) within a few days or respond to an emergency call to my dorm, there would certainly have been trouble. I wouldn’t have dreamed of taking off from school to take part in a protest, no matter that it was some kind of seminal event . I felt so fortunate to be the first in my entire family to go off to college rather than living at home and attending either CC or the local commuter university that I would have viewed such an act as extremely ungrateful, as well as disrespectful and thoughtless.</p>
<p>All that said, now is not then. With cell phones and computers, it is so easy to contact someone. When I was growing up, if your parents (or anyone for that matter) called you and you were not in your dorm or apartment, they would have to try again later. It actually could take a while to connect. Not the case anymore. Not returning a text or a voice mail asking if you are alive and well would be one of the more inconsiderate acts I could imagine from my DD. If my child doesn’t want to talk often because she is trying to gain independence, that’s one thing. Ignoring calls or texts which contain parental or familial worry about the student’s safety is another matter entirely.</p>