<p>This is a wonderfully written story in today's NYTimes- makes me tear up in remembrance of when my son when off to college... Enjoy!</p>
<p>"For a long time now, Ive been looking forward to this year with apprehension: 2011 is when my daughter, Julia, now 18, will undertake that very American rite of passage and go away to college a phrase whose operative word is away."</p>
<p>Shoot–the NY Times is not free anymore, so I could only read the 1st page. Subsequent pages would not load.</p>
<p>I did note that the D is one who had to commute between parents’ houses twice a week from age 3, and was looking forward to the “luxury” of being in a dorm room for an entire quarter. That is so sad, I think. Would the parents want to live like that? I think not.</p>
<p>^That is sad – shuttling between 2 houses for years. I read the whole thing, in print, and thought it was well written. Very touching when he describes his D after her overnight at Stanford – he’d never seen her so excited since she was 7. Their journey really fit into what I always thought that leaving home trip would be like – bittersweet, full of memories, but also filled with excitement. But after I read it, I wondered if it wasn’t a little too scripted, too forced to fit into a romantic notion of what that experience was like. Daddy’s little girl, going off to school. Where was the teen tantrum? Where was the state-long rant about how everyone else got their own car when they went to school?</p>
<p>^Haha. Not ALL teens are like that!</p>
<p>My D was at her worst at about age 13-14. By the time she went off to school she was quite mature and reasonable. :)</p>
<p>Don’t think I would consider 1000 miles close enough to drive, however, even with my sweet daughter. I gathered the dad thought it was, compared to New England!</p>