My DD is a rising HS senior – her last day of school is today. She is not excited at all about being a senior. In her words, “I really like being a junior. I don’t want to be a senior and have to get ready to go to college. It’s scary. I just want to be a junior forever.”
She likes her friends, but I’ve noticed her circle of friends over this last year has closed/narrowed somewhat. She has told me that she intentionally turns down invitations to get together with some people she used to be more friendly with because she knows they’ve started drinking and she doesn’t even want to be around that. She’s come to me occasionally and said, “Can I be busy Friday night?” While I 100% support and applaud that decision on her part, I know she’s nervous about the prospect of, “starting over”, and being able to find friends at college, and not getting caught up in the drinking culture. I’ve encouraged her to invest in new friendships, and she’s said, “It’s hard to find people I want to hang out with, and what’s the point, because I’m just leaving in a year anyway.” I’m sure the fact that she is dating a young man a year younger than her also contributes…
She has a very high ACT score (just took the SAT, waiting on that score…), may be NMSF (probably borderline … crossing our fingers…), and a 4.0 UW GPA in all GT/Honors/AP classes. Going into the college application process, the world is her oyster. We’ve visited several colleges and she’s liked most of them and has been excited/engaged in the process while we were there. She’s casting a wide net and hoping for significant merit $ somewhere, because she thinks she wants to go to vet school, so wants to make undergrad as cheap as possible. She’s planning on applying to UMCP (in state for us), VT, UDel, UA, Auburn, and Bucknell. Absolutely no interest in Ivy’s, which is fine with me.
I remember being both terrified and excited. She doesn’t seem to have the excitement to balance out the scary part. I’m hoping it will come, with time. Any suggestions on how to encourage her and whet her appetite?
My older D experienced the same narrowing of her friendship circle that you are seeing and for the exact same reason. Some of her friends also starting smoking pot. Not only did D not want any part of drug use, I advised she avoid those parties completely out of the fear that some tagged picture of her standing next to someone with a beer bottle or joint would surface on Facebook and damage her college athletic recruitment due to guilt by association.
That said, one thing that helped her a lot was that she attended a great Governor’s School summer program in a non-STEM subject after junior year. She met so many smart kids there who enjoyed good, clean fun that she became hopeful about college, and more determined than ever to go to a top school with kids like that. Regrettably, all the kids like that at her high school tended to be laser-focused on STEM, were not athletes like she was, and all belonged to a different ethnic group, so she didn’t really have access to their social circle. So in summary, maybe a good summer program would help?
It sounds like social opportunities in her current environment are drying up a little and college would open up the ability to find non-partying friends.
On the other hand, I would not take staying home next year at commuting to a local college off the table. When she talks about being scared, is that an option you offer her? Does she reject it out of hand? If so, she is probably ready but just using you as a sounding board (which means you just listen and reassure).
One of the problems with going after merit is that it means going one place freshman year and transferring year two is not as viable of a plan since transfers students don’t usually get much merit.
Right now, to her, college is a great unknown. Us parents look back and remember freshman year, but then meeting people and making friends.
My daughter was the same way with parties (and still is in college)…
See if any of the colleges of interest have a summer service type orientation session…or I have seen ones with camping sessions…it will be a way for her to meet people in a positive nondrinking atmosphere.
Also talk to her about freshman orientation in general and how it facilitates making friends.
Also, does she have anxiety? MY daughter does, and we had her see a doctor and now she is on meds that helps alot.
^^ Yes, she knows she has the option to go to UMCP, which is only 25 minutes from us. When we visited, she didn’t think she would like it, but came away saying, “I’m not in love with it, but I could see myself being happy here.” So, there you go – safety school, from a comfort perspective anyway. I have no doubt she’ll get in. And she’ll likely be offered some $ (I’m judging based on the fact that my DS got in and got some $, and her stats are better than his were). She’s talked about wanting the experience of going away to school … but as it becomes more real, it seems more scary, I think. She is doing a veterinary internship half-days next school year, so I’m hoping that overall experience of more independence will bolster her confidence and get her excited about the next stage. It has occurred to me too to nudge her into situations where she gets to experience the fun of more freedom/independence. She’s a funny kid … in some ways she’s very independent and yet in others she tends to hang back and not push boundaries. But at this point, doing simple things like meeting up at the river for a day of hanging out with friends and picknicking on their own, or sending her to the grocery to pick up some things to buy with her credit card (coming in July when she turns 17 …) and asking her to throw dinner together for me, etc., are completely appropriate, and in hindsight, are the sort of things I remember making me start to feel more grown up and confident about being able to do things… I’m not sure the former would occur to her as an option … she’s relatively newly-licensed, and with school and practices, etc., she hasn’t had alot of free time in which to do anything with it beside drive herself to/from practice. So that’s where subtle suggestions or nudges may be in order…
She does have some anxiety, and she was seeing a counselor for some specific anxiety and relationship issues on and off over the past couple of years. Never anything that required medication … the counseling sessions and tools the counselor discussed with her helped tremendously. So yes, I have also thought about suggesting it might be a good idea for her to “check in” with her counselor this summer, as she starts this process, and then occasionally through the year … to give her specific, focused time with someone “outside” to work through whatever she’s feeling, and to be sure that we have a good chance of spotting any growing issues early.
At those schools on her list that have honors or special interest programs for freshman and sophomores (which obviously UMCP does), it would be a good idea for her to apply to those programs because she’s likely to meet a higher percentage of non-partying students there. And if she doesn’t like the program itself, she can get out of it after a semester or two. By then it will have served its social purpose.
Another plus for UMCP would be that she’s likely to know other kids who will be going there, and there’s a good chance that she could line up a suitably non-party-oriented roommate from among her current classmates or other friends. I know that some people say that it’s not a good idea to room with a friend, and perhaps it isn’t, but for someone who prefers to avoid the partying culture, that disadvantage might be offset by the comfort of knowing that the party won’t be taking place in your own room because neither you nor your roommate wants it there.
One more point: How important is it for her to spend as little as possible on undergrad? Is that her goal, or is it an important family goal if she has vet school in mind? I ask because if you/she were willing to spend more, she could add some less party-oriented schools to her list, such as Johns Hopkins, William and Mary, or the University of Chicago. Or maybe schools where freshman can easily get singles (another way of keeping the party out of your room), such as Cornell. None of these schools is easy to get in to, but they are not wildly unrealistic reaches for a student of your daughter’s caliber.
This only seems to be true for schools that hold their orientation programs immediately before classes start. At those that hold orientation during the summer, it doesn’t seem to happen because you may never see the people you met at orientation again.
My D17 (also a rising senior) sounds very similar to yours. We had a discussion this morning about how her friend circle has narrowed a lot this year to one or two good friends because the rest are “full of drama”, and she recently broke up with her senior-going-away-to-college boyfriend. She said she’s going to focus on getting through her senior year and finding some schools to be excited about.
I think 99% of the going away fear from your kid might be the prospect of leaving behind the 1 year younger BF, and the other 1% is general fear of the unknown (college). Finding a school to fall in love with this year may help her a lot with the transition.
I second what @TheGFG says about summer programs-both daughters have been doing them for years (with all sorts of different topics), and they’ve both grown enormously in confidence and independence from them. It may be a little late to find one, but they’re out there and you may find a last minute sign up for one. One year my 15 year old did film camp at a local university and had a total blast.
If she really wants to stay away from any drinking or drugs at college, she may miss out on some great people. One of mine cannot participate in drinking or drugs but went to gatherings and hung out with people who did, some of them the most interesting and brightest students in her environment.
@ailinsh1 Our D16 has been helped tremendously by having a neutral party (excellent therapist) to talk to during the college application process & last year of school.
@compmom - I understand what you’re saying. I think it is something she has to develop her own personal comfort/confidence level for. She’s not comfortable with even being around it right now at all, and I am actually quite thankful for that; certainly keeps her out of trouble and the “wrong place at the wrong time.” I felt about alcohol very similarly to her when I entered college; eventually I learned that college was in general much different from HS. Whereas in HS there was a lot of at least implied pressure to conform, in college I found none of that; the attitude was very much do your own thing, and that’s cool. Hopefully that is still the case. And hopefully she’ll learn how to be friends with people who drink without drinking herself; but just because you’re friends doesn’t necessarily mean you have to hang out with them when they’re drinking either. I never did … went to one frat party with a friend and found it just sad and not fun, so nope, not for me. But we hung out and did other things together.
@ailinsh1 Frankly, I was surprised on more than one occasion with what the therapist said our D was thinking, hoping, worried, not worried about, liked about her parents/friends/school, didn’t like about her parents/friends/school, etc.
And, things continue to shift, quite a bit, in good ways since one year ago.
One of the selling points for the therapy is it’s sometimes awfully hard to talk to your parents about sensitive subjects, and do you really want to take life advice from a bunch of other 16-18 year olds?
It’s a gift if one can find an excellent therapist/mentor/sounding board. For a lot of kids, this transition is fraught with uncertainty, and yet there’s a lot of pressure to know what you’re going to do, and do it well. Do you suspect she’s a candidate for a gap year? Do you suspect depression?
We’ve talked about a gap year, because one thing she really wants to do is go spend a semester as a volunteer wrangler at a vacation ranch in AZ we visited a couple of years ago. She is experienced with horses and the owner spotted her expertise and invited her to send him an email after she turns 18 if she ever wanted to do the volunteer wrangler gig – she’d work 10 hours a day 6 days a week in exchange for room and board and pretty much riding and being around horses all the time. It’s a wonderful, beautiful, family-run resort, and I have no reservations about her going and doing that for a semester … what a great opportunity! She’s very, VERY excited about that. So in theory she could do that as part of a gap year in the fall after she graduates HS. But as we’ve discussed the options, she thinks she’d rather go to school for a year first, to get some experience living on her own with others her age/experience in an environment that is designed to be “semi-independent” (e.g., college is built with resources to help 18 year olds navigate that transition, with easy access to health care, banks, shopping for necessities, etc., all right there), before she jumps into living on her own in the midst of professional and volunteer wranglers that are mostly older and much more experienced at even just managing Life independently, in an environment that isn’t set up as “transitional.”
She’s not depressed. She’s a high achieving perfectionist kid who has anxiety about change and things she can’t control – all normal stressors, but they affect her more than normal. She comes by it honestly – I developed anxiety driven panic attacks in college. But back then nobody talked about that so much, and I just muddled through and figured out how to deal with them as best I could through college and my young adult years. Knowing what I know now, and seeing the same traits developing in her, we got her talking to a really good counselor as she went into high school to deal with some specific anxieties that had popped up and that were beyond my ability to sort of talk her through. It helped tremendously. I just asked her if she thought it might be a good idea to “check in” with the counselor this summer and occasionally through this next school year, and she said, “Yeah, I was thinking that’d be a good idea.” She happened to say something this afternoon that sums it up pretty well – “I’m excited when I think about being at college and getting to do all the things we saw on the visits. I’m just not excited about everything changing in the process.” I think that’s pretty normal.
She could do it that summer, but she’d prefer to do it in the fall (not so hot!), and the owner told her they need more help during the Sept-May timeframe than in the summer. So she’s thinking she’ll plan to take classes during that summer and then take the fall semester of her sophomore year off to go do the wrangler gig. She should be going in with significant AP credit, so she should have some flexibility from that perspective.
Some colleges have wellness dorms for freshmen. When looking at colleges that may be something to ask about. For example my S was a non-drinker when college started and being in a wellness dorm was a huge help for him in terms of finding like-minded kids (he did begin to drink socially over time but it has never and is still not an important part of his social life).
Some of those schools have big party scenes… it seems like an odd list given your description of her. Has she visited any LACs? One school that comes to mind is Mount Holyoke – don’t be put off by it being a women’s college. Lovely campus, solid academics, good merit aid, relatively low on the partying scale while still being able to have fun, some benefits of the 5 college consortium socially & academically. We see a ton of students who aren’t sure about women’s colleges who take a reluctant visit and come away loving it. Maybe her enthusiasm gap is partly that the schools on her list don’t fit her personality?
I think that sometimes it ends up being unhealthy to be so black and white about drinking. The problem is abuse, not use. I think avoiding parties like frat parties is a good idea, but hanging out with a small group of friends is very different. Alcohol has been around a long time and has some positives. Kids today have been raised with this absolutist point of view about it and the net result is that they get really drunk rather than learn how to use it.
What an amazing opportunity! Either as a gap year or during college. I echo looking at the Honors colleges as well as substance free dorms and floors. She has lots of lovely options and should be able to find her peeps at any of these. Are any especially strong in pre-vet? My SD was considering vet for a while and we had some schools on our radar just for that.
A strong, small LAC might also be a good fit. I think the narrowing is normal, we’ve seen it with all 3 kids so far. What we have seen is it narrows but then grows in new ways. A good thing. Our boys have both had a hard time sophomore year on as their older friends leave them which is a different kind of narrowing.
My S17 is very excited about college itself. Can’t stand the process to get there but will do it. He too was very big of OOS, then not so sure about being that far away and now is back on the OOS train. Very very normal I think!