College tours
what we care about, and what we really don't
People looked up as I passed to see if I was someone they might waste time with, as if that was the real work of college, friends and lovers and intrigues, all the rest merely an interruption.
I thought about this line from MY LAST INNOCENT YEAR this week while visiting colleges with my daughter. I have been down this path before with my son who is now a sophomore, but my daughter has vastly different interests so we are back at square one. Fun!
All of which to say I have been on many college tours and have often wondered about their value. They can vary so much depending on the tour guide, the weather, who else is on the tour etc. Many tours begin with a slide presentation that is usually very boring and full of information prospective students don’t care about and parents aren’t ready to focus on and you sit through them impatiently waiting to get to the actual tour part of the tour. Because you don’t need to know that much about a school you aren’t sure you want to apply to. (Okay, maybe some people do but I do not.)
My daughter did not want to know, for example, about distribution requirements or study abroad programs or where she might get a summer internship. She didn’t want to know about a school’s famous alumni or what percentage of students were gainfully employed six months after graduation. What she wanted to know was what it would be like to be a student at that school, where she would live and learn and eat and play. The rest—degrees, requirements, internships, study abroad programs—could come later.
In other words, friends and lovers and intrigues, all the rest merely an interruption.
I honestly can’t remember if I visited any colleges when I was a teenager besides the one I eventually attended. And even if I had, I doubt I would have used any of the information I got on a tour to make my decision. I picked the school I did because it felt right to me in some instinctual way. I can honestly say I had no idea what would be required of me as a student there, but I figured I’d figure it out when I got there, which of course I did.
One more thing: I was struck by the luminous confidence of our young tour guides, in particular the one who showed us around the school we liked best. She was a senior painting major getting ready to present her final thesis show. As she showed us around her studio, a beautiful light-filled space overlooking the city, her pride was palpable. She seemed so confident, so entirely in her own skin, worlds away from the nervous prospective students she was touring and their totally uncool parents. I hoped she would find a way hold on to that confidence and sense of self forever. I hoped she was ready.
I was thrilled to be invited to discuss MLIY with this NYC-based book club. The members have been together for thirteen years, which is no small feat! They were such thoughtful and engaged readers and it was a pleasure to discuss the book with them. If you’d like me to connect with your book club, drop me a line!
UPCOMING EVENTS: Tonight (3/24), I will be at House of Books in Kent, CT with Robert Lopez, author of the memoir DISPATCHES FROM PUERTO NOWHERE. And on Tuesday 3/28 at 6PM, I will be in conversation with Avery Carpenter Forrey at Elm Street Books in New Canaan, CT. Avery’s novel SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT comes out in May and should definitely be on your preorder list. Also, mark your calendars for April 5, when I will be on YouTube with Susan Scarf Merrell from 7 to 8 PM ET. Link is here. If you’d like to order a signed copy of my book or Susan Scarf Merrell’s book SHIRLEY, you can do so here.
If you follow me on Instagram, you know I absolutely adored Louise Kennedy’s debut novel TRESPASSES. And If you’re looking for a new podcast, I highly recommend Andrea Dunlop’s NOBODY SHOULD BELIEVE ME about Munchausen by Proxy abuse, a form of medical child abuse.
Thank you, this resonates with me because my husband and I just took our teenaged son on a college tour. The colleges that I (and my son) liked the most were not necessarily the most prestigious colleges. They were rather the schools where the students seemed the happiest to be there, which is a hard thing to quantify or put words to, but you know it when you see it. On all of the college tours that we went on, the guides talked about community and how important it was, but it was more convincing at some schools than at others. And yes, those information-dense presentations at the beginnings of the tours certainly are boring and seem weirdly irrelevant, at least for an incoming freshman. It’s so strange and mysterious how we make decisions, really.
Best of luck to you and your daughter. I have not read your book yet but it is on my list and I look forward to it.