<p>Exactly! That is about all you can do. You have done so much hard work raising them and now it is time to sit back and bite your nails and pray that everything you have done for the past 18 years (or so) will settle into their heads! What a proud day it will be for you when you see that it has!!! :)</p>
<p>I was kidding.</p>
<p>Some of those kids who were saying that kind of stupidity will have flunked out by second semester. Some of the kids who were saying that kind of stupidity or who weren’t chiming in were just trying to be cool, and are very much like your D. There are plenty of people who don’t drink a lot in college.</p>
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<li><p>That is how college is; when people enter college for the first month, almost everyone goes absolutely crazy and parties multiple times a week, hooks up, smokes pot, gets trashed, etc. I can’t count how many people smoked pot for the very first time during the first month of school. </p></li>
<li><p>“Substance free housing” is a joke at my school (big state university, not particularly known for partying). I could find alcohol within 10 steps from anywhere in the entire building. This is probably true for a lot of places</p></li>
<li><p>This is something you’ll encounter at almost every college, don’t let something like this dissuade you from attending a great school … people mellow out after first semester and realize that studying is important after all.</p></li>
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<p>Almost everyone!!??</p>
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<p>This is what I meant by the OP’s daughter making it clear that there are other social norms. It’s not true that “almost everyone” at most colleges does these things. It’s probably not even true that “almost everyone” does them at -Lurker-'s school.</p>
<p>All good comments here. But I’m wondering if what your daughter is really trying to convey is that she’s apprehensive about going off to school. Identifying the party scene as a concern might be a way to get you on “her side” when she’s feeling a little weak in the knees?</p>
<p>Show your confidence in her to make good decisions. Do some role-playing (casually) if you can, i.e., “Hey, what could you say if someone challenges you about not drinking?” </p>
<p>If you think she might be having a little separation anxiety, it’s good to talk about what strategies she can take at school when she’s feeling sad or homesick.</p>
<p>Good luck to all.</p>
<p>Excellent suggestions, ici.</p>
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<p>This is college, not high school. Do kids actually get challenged about that sort of thing?</p>
<p>You bet they do. They only look like adults now, Marian. Inside they still have a lot of growing up to do.</p>
<p>“when people enter college for the first month, almost everyone goes absolutely crazy and parties multiple times a week, hooks up, smokes pot, gets trashed, etc.”</p>
<p>There are plenty of students who don’t do such things. Like minded people attract the same.</p>
<p>^Indeed. D, who did not drink in high school and drinks only lightly now, says that it was no big deal when she didn’t want to drink early on in college. Her friends, some of whom drink and some who don’t, never cared one way or the other. If people are ‘challenging’ you to drink, it’s time to find some new friends. (This goes for HS as well - S doesn’t drink, has friends who do, and it hasn’t been a problem for him at all.)</p>
<p>I exaggerated. I go to a 35,000 person school and there are definitely people who do not smoke, drink, etc, but a large majority of people do. You cannot avoid the partying scene, its very prevalent, but you can definitely choose not to be a part of it.</p>
<p>My kid is an athlete and his team is a very heavy-drinking bunch. He wasn’t excessively pressured to drink, and still socialized with the team. He’d usually slip away early back to his sub-free dorm and his non-drinking friends. He’s at a small LAC, so maybe the sub-free dorm option is different at big public univ’s, but his was virtually sub-free. He said there was one student who, by the end of the year, was drinking in his dorm room, but that student never really was very involved with the social life of the dorm.</p>
<p>But, yeah, there are sub-free dorms with kids who want to be there, and who are happy there.</p>
<p>And there are students who find themselves in constant proximity to drinking who choose not to drink.</p>
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<li><p>A kid I know well had a 100% positive experience with her sub-free dorm at a small, elite LAC known for heavy drinking. She did not choose to continue there (or to continue as sub-free) after her freshman year, but it helped her find the social circle she wanted that did not revolve around drinking.</p></li>
<li><p>In my experience, in real life – and specifying that I am talking about a population of relatively affluent, native-born kids – the number of kids who don’t drink in high school is approximately 1/3 of the number of families who think (or at least pretend to think) that their kids don’t drink in high school. This was brought home a number of years ago when an acquaintance of my kids wound up in the emergency room with alcohol poisoning during her freshman orientation. The adult world was clucking about how difficult it was for her to be plunged into the new environment, didn’t know her limits, hope she learned her lesson, parents found this completely unexpected, etc. My daughter’s reaction: “The only thing surprising is that it didn’t happen every weekend last spring, given how much she was drinking then.”</p></li>
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<p>Please talk to your D about tolerance and withholding judgment about fellow college students based on posturing and bravado of newly released adolescents from the grips of parental supervision. If she is “shocked” about their bragging she will be stunned at of their actions when she starts hanging out in the fall. It is hard to believe she hasn’t seen activities or heard such talk during high school. No one want her to be a Pollyanna, so break things to her gently.</p>
<p>Anyone know how honors housing at a large state school would be with regards to drinking and drugs? I assume it would be less, but would it be practically non-existent, or just more hidden?</p>
<p>a few comments–</p>
<p>My D had a similar experience. In a “kids only” session, the students running it said–“now that the parents are gone, we can talk about what you’re really interested in–sex and drinking.”</p>
<p>People like her, or the OP’s D, aren’t objecting to activities happening, they are dismayed by a dominant social theme they don’t feel they fit in with.</p>
<p>It’s true, as some say here, you don’t have to go to the parties. D generally didn’t. Instead, she met students who shared her interest (politics), but they were mostly upperclass or grad kids who already had their own friends. It was that or the born-agains who stayed in the dorm watching chick flicks. They were nice, but she didn’t have much in common with them.</p>
<p>Sometimes you find your people, sometimes you don’t. D transfered to find them. I’m not trying to be discouraging, because everyone is different, and she should certainly be encouraged to think she’ll find a good fit, but as a parent, I think you should be prepared to accept it if she says she doesn’t fit–sometimes it’s true.</p>
<p>My son is not substance-free but is a pretty light partier relative to peers (at least I think so, with some evidence to back it up). Similar to how I was. Although I was extremely hard-working in college, I experimented in my first couple of years of college and I expect lots of hard-working, ambitious, motivated kids do as well. I learned quickly that drinking in excess did not feel good and led to strange behavior (e.g., I woke up in my narrow dorm bed with a girl and no recognition of how she got there, which made for awkward conversation). I quickly learned to keep things under control.</p>
<p>However, my son visited substance-free dorms in two or three schools. While his experience is not universal, it is cautionary. He found a) a higher concentration of kids who were generally socially a little awkward (e.g., kids who like to stay in their rooms gaming); b) dogmatic kids (per Mousegray’s D’s experience); and c) in at least one, several drug dealers. Not clear why the latter (nowhere to go but up in terms of market share?). </p>
<p>pastasauce, I wouldn’t be spooked as other posters are correct. There is a lots of bluster, but there is also lots of action. Your daughter should be able to find groups of kids who are not heavy partiers. One of my friends’ daughters complained bitterly about the heavy drinking her first year and about how she couldn’t find anyone who wasn’t a heavy drinker. However, she really was burned out from HS, needed a gap year but didn’t’ take one, and was attending her parents’ alma mater, so everything was bad. By sophomore year, when her mental set was more positive, she joined clubs and met kids who were compatible and she’s now a senior and as happy as can be about her school. Based upon my son’s limited sample of substance-free dorms, however, I would not be so sure that substance-free dorms are the way to go.</p>
<p>Poster #57 the substance use is not hidden, the kids in honors housing can use and get their work done so no questions are asked by parents because no red flag behaviors emerge. Only extreme cases of substance use gets attention, students tolerate recreational use by friends.</p>