Classes at the State University of New York, Sacred Heart University, and hundreds of others are about to begin. Campus roads will be full of SUVs, waiting in line for their turn to get to the dorms and unload. Many of these vehicles are almost as big as the average dorm room and packed with stuff. You wonder how they get it all in without violating some fundamental law of space/time.
For thousands of teenagers, this will be the first of many weeks away from home and family, as they settle into their dorms and begin the hard struggle to transform themselves from naïve high school students into sophisticated graduates. It is a moment of high drama for them, and for their parents. Indeed, it seems that some parents have a hard time letting go. They hover around the campus, sometimes staying in local motels. Some colleges have created special “separation ceremonies” to mark the moment when sons and daughters are finally, irrevocably cut loose and on their own.
They’re not on their own, of course. They are surrounded by hundreds of other sons and daughters who are gearing up for the party of a lifetime. At last they have their own space, away from parental supervision. Entering your first dorm room must be truly a magical moment: free at last. That’s why the parents are paranoid.
Today's dorm room has come a long way from its origins as a monk's cell for private study and spiritual contemplation. Dorm room décor is a whole industry, and entering freshmen (or their parents) may spend anything from fifteen hundred to five thousand dollars on decoration, furniture and technical gadgets. Some enviable examples of luxury can be seen on the web. From a retail point of view, this means thirty-four billion dollars in the cash registers, most of which is accounted for by electronics – laptops, headphones, smartphones, video game paraphernalia, and all the other gadgets- which have become essential to the learning process. Silent contemplation is not on the menu.
I can't help envying these eager freshmen, or freshpersons, as they start a whole new phase of their lives. This is where it really begins - the first brush with adulthood, and responsibility, and choice. Their parents are out of the way at last, and the young people can and will make their own mistakes - including mistakes that their parents never even thought of. It is a life-changing moment.
In any cohort of freshmen there will be a few older people, not quite so fresh, who are usually (but not always accurately) referred to as mature students. I was one of these long ago. Mature students are ready and eager for education. They know what they don’t know, and what they want to know. So, I tell myself that by coming to college late, as a serious person with some experience of life and no electronic distractions, I got far more out of my education than the youthful, Internet-bemused freshmen of today. But as they plug in their laptops and prepare for the party, I can’t help admitting to just a little envy. If I had my youth to live over again, I know which teenage experience I'd choose!
