The Prodigal Student

Nearing the End of the First Quarter

2010-11-22T11:02:00.001-08:00

So, things are wrapping up in my classes now. That makes everything sound so peaceful and calm, everything's coming to a close. It's kind of the opposite though. I have group projects in pretty much every single one of my classes, and my group members are all, without fail, slackers. I'm doing shit tons of work for all the projects.

The project for my Communications class is already done, although that's far from a good thing in this case. Our project was a group debate, and it went very poorly. Our topic was Harry Potter, specifically "Harry Potter could have won the Triwizard Tournament without Mad Eye Moody's help". Now, if you've read the Harry Potter books, you'll remember that throughout the entire fourth book Mad Eye Moody was lock in a magic chest. The FAKE Mad Eye Moody, a.k.a. Barty Crouch Jr. taking a Polyjuice Potion to LOOK like Mad Eye Moody, is the only one that helps Harry Potter throughout the whole book. Therefore, the real Mad Eye Moody didn't help Harry Potter at all. Obviously, me and my partner brought this up. However, that pretty much killed the whole debate. I mean, what else is there to say? Mad Eye Moody DIDN'T help Harry Potter at all. We didn't get to exhibit any of the things the professor told us to. Also, the debate is worth 30% of our grade. So I was pretty pissed off. I emailed the professor about it four days ago, but he still hasn't responded, so we'll see. I've worked really really hard in that class, and I think the professor is a pretty cool guy, so this pretty much sucks for me.

Anyway.

Letting go. (haha)

I am doing well at my new job at the on campus Starbucks! It's fun, the people there are really cool, and I'm starting to get to know how to make drinks and all that jazz. I'm excited for when I can do all of them.

Also, I saw Scott Pilgrim the other day, and I love that movie more than life itself. I really really want to dye my hair some awesome crazy color now. I hope work lets me. I feel like Starbucks is usually pretty cool about stuff like that.

Okay, well I'm going to go write an essay for my IGE class now. More later!

Molly

Stupid People

2010-11-04T11:02:00.000-07:00

My newest challenge is this: Stupid people. I am so happy I came to the college I did, and living here is great. The classes are interesting, my dorm room is fantastic, and the people in my building are (for the most part) really nice, and smart. However. I feel as though the majority of the students I am taking classes with are stupid sheep. I have a Psychology professor who is a dingus - she's not necessarily a bad TEACHER, she prepares powerpoints for class and tells interesting stories, although she is kind of a flake sometimes - she's just not very smart. She's always giving us examples for things that really just flat out don't make sense, or are incorrect. And she's narcissistic too. When we were learning about logical fallacies, she kept giving explaining why they didn't apply to her and she would never make a mistake like that, and when she was giving us puzzles to show the fallacies in action, she kept mentioning how she got the answer quickly, and she got it "on the first try". It's so frustrating!!

The way I'm dealing with this is using it as fuel - whenever someone in my classes says something stupid, that just makes me want to work that much harder to get good grades, so I can transfer to a different school in two years. I don't know where I want to transfer yet. I think I'd transfer after one year if I could, but I don't think I'll have enough evidence that I've changed since high school to really get into a good college, and focusing on college applications during the school year would honestly just be too difficult for me anyway. I am working hard enough on trying to have a job and do 16 units a quarter from now on and volunteer and participate in extracurricular activities. I can't do college apps too. But anyway! I'm also trying to use the stupid people as training in being understanding, less critical, and diplomacy. I should probably stop calling them stupid people for this to work, though. :P

My First Midterm

2010-10-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

I just took my very first midterm EVER! Wow, college is so different from high school it’s funny. I actually studied really hard for this midterm; I thought I was over preparing. I went into the class thinking it was going to be an absolute breeze, but it turns out I studied just enough. It was way harder than I thought it was going to be, but I was still prepared, so that was nice. Teachers in high school always tell you that they’re going to extrapolate on the information learned, and that the tests will be about critical thinking and understanding, but they never actually ARE, it’s always just rote memorization still. Tests in college ACTUALLY DO have extrapolation, and test your understanding, and yaddah yaddah yaddah. I have another midterm today, Communications, which I’m about to go study some more for, but then I’m done! I know it seems weird that I only have two midterms, but I am only taking three classes, and the “midterm” for my other class (IGE) was an art project. I also have a club meeting I have to go to today, though, for the Art Student Society. One of the things I’m kind of worrying about right now is the classes I’m going to sign up for to take next quarter. Registration starts November 3^rd, and I don’t know what to do for my General Education. I have been taking Interdisciplinary General Education, a special program of general ed offered by my school, but now I’m thinking that if I’m considering transferring after two years, it might be smarter to take regular general ed classes instead. I’m trying to find out who my academic advisor is so I can talk to him/her about it, but things like that are always really hard here. Although I might sound like a broken record about this, college bureaucracy is a real bitch.

Socially everything is going great, I’ve kind of relaxed about things. I’m not really in to staying up until 5 in the morning when I have class at 8, but a lot of my friends would stay up super late, doing last minute homework and going on food runs. I was feeling really left out sometimes, and it was super frustrating, but now everyone’s sort of starting to calm down about things, and I’m coming to terms with the fact that I can’t always hang out with everyone. Besides, crazy drunken partying on the weekends is plenty for me ;)

Life is Good

2010-10-15T10:51:00.001-07:00

At the moment, I feel kind of like a pro at college. I know saying that less than halfway through the first quarter of my freshman year might seem a little presumptuous, but that’s why I add the “at the moment”. Everything is back to good with Cole (he’s not flirting like a little biznatch anymore), I just signed up with four other girls on my floor to play intramural volleyball, I’m applying for a ton of jobs, I’m an active member of my school’s art campus, I’m volunteering at the library, I’m checking out (and reading, haha) books from the library, I’m doing all of my homework early, I’ve finished a project that’s due in a week, I’m hanging out with my friends, AND I’m getting plenty of sleep! I don’t know how I improved so much between high school and college, but life is good. Also, I really like partying. Me and my friends go out to at least two parties every weekend, frat parties are awesome, but any party works. Also!!! I’m also eating a salad with every lunch and dinner, drinking a ton of water, and working out every day. And I have a job interview with Starbucks next Thursday. So wish me tons of luck! Midterms are coming up already, because we’re on the quarter system. I can’t believe how quickly that happened. I’m kind of nervous, so studying makes me feel better. Unfortunately, I can’t study for my Psych midterm, because my dingus of a professor screwed up the course outline, so we don’t know which chapters in our book we’re supposed to be studying. She said she’d make an adjusted one, but she keeps forgetting to put it up online, even though I’ve sent her two email reminders (at her request). It’s getting ridiculous, and I’m kind of pissed off. She’s not a very good teacher in general. I don’t have any really GREAT professors this quarter, although my Communications teacher is at least intelligent and on top of things. I’m looking forward to taking more than 12 units next quarter. Anyway, I’m STARVING so I’m going to go grab some food at the commons. That’s another thing, the food is only okay, but it’s better than I thought it would be seeing as we pretty much eat at the same place every day. So that’s nice J Okay, more later!

Busy busy busy

2010-09-30T10:38:00.000-07:00

Wow, it’s only been two days since my last post but SO many things have happened, it’s almost ridiculous! I’ve been making tons of friends. My entire floor (I’m on the second floor of my building) is really friendly, and we do a bunch of group activities, so I’m really starting to get to know people. Me and Emily have been stealing so much food. I know that’s a classic college student thing, but I really think we’re taking it to a new level. Natalie brought Ziploc bags, and we took tons of things for oat meal, things that we looked normal taking, like bananas and raisins, and things that we did NOT look normal taking, like brown sugar, and cinnamon. Trust me, people give you weird looks when you walk off with a plate heaped with brown sugar. But our fridge is full! So that’s awesome. We have muffins and brownies and pizza and candy and lots of fruit. One of my favorite things is stealing doughnuts, because we can microwave them and they get really warm and the frosting gets all melty and crystallizes a little and it’s soooo good. So there’s a tip to all you other college students out there! Steal doughnuts. Also, I went to the gym yesterday, which was fantastic. There’s a free gym on campus but the big on is SO much better, and it’s only 15 dollars a month, so I decided it was worth it and bought a membership. Especially because we can’t start using the free gym until Thursday, and I really wanted to start working out a couple days ago. Anyway, it’s a great gym, and it’s relatively un-crowded so far, so I went for like an hour before dinner. Exercising is really essential for me, because it helps keep my moods stable. I’m taking birth control, and that makes me kind of moody or depressed sometimes, so exercising helps keep my positive and in control of how I feel. The gym is a REALLY long walk from my dorm, but that seems like a kind of silly thing to complain about since the whole point of a gym is to get exercise, hahaha. I’m still on the waitlist for the English class I want. I’m in position ONE, but still, I’ve been in position one since I signed up. I wanted to buy all my textbooks, to be prepared and everything, but my mom said it was a better idea to wait until after the first day. It’s just hard to relax about it, because a couple of the seminar instructors have mentioned that since this is the quarter system we have to be really on the ball right away, because it moves really fast, so we should be totally ready, textbooks and notebooks in hand, on the first day. But I’m not going to stress out about that because I have plenty of other things to worry about without adding more. One of which, unfortunately, is my boyfriend. The other night my whole floor went on a midnight walk, just to get to know each other and stuff. We decided to play Mafia, so we all sat down in a circle. I mentioned before how I noticed that Cole was paying lots of attention to Natalie, and it had been bugging me all day. He walked the whole way with her, so I just walked and talked with other people. When we sat down in a big circle, he and Natalie sat down on the opposite side of me and the people I was talking to. So that kind of pissed me off already. But then, the whole time we were playing, he was whispering with her, and she was giggling and he was laughing, and then he put his hand on her knee (that is so cliché flirting, right?) and I was just trying not to cry or anything right there, and it was really annoying timing because I wanted to be focusing on getting to know people and making friends! So I was pretty pissed off. So I told Emily I was ready to leave, and she said she was too, and she got Cole, and he, of course, got Natalie, and he walked with her all the way back and held the door open for her and stuff. So I was pretty much ignoring him by the time we got back to our room, and he could tell something was wrong. He texted me when he got back to his room, but he thought I was just grumpy because of the pill. I explained, albeit tersely, what was wrong, and he felt really bad. So we talked about it, and he said he’s just bad at having friends that are girls. He said he always ends up flirting. So I don’t know how I feel about that right now. I mean, if that’s how he acts when I AM there how is he acting when I’m not? And he basically said he can’t control it, so that’s kind of weird. Anyway, I’m giving him another chance and we’ll see how it goes. I just got back from my first class, Psychology 202, which was really cool! It starts at 8, which is kind of early (I have 8 o clock classes EVERY DAY with my current schedule! D: ), so I woke up at 6:30-ish and gave up on going back to sleep. I snuck around getting ready, trying not to wake up Emily (which apparently worked beautifully, she didn’t even hear me leave), and left by about 7:15 with a tootsie roll and a banana for breakfast. I got there way too early, and was pretty bored until the teacher arrived, about 2 minutes before class started. Most of today’s class was just her going through the attendance list and us sharing things about ourselves. We ended half an hour early, and now I’m back on my bed! Emily just left for her first class, so I’m aaaall alone :0 PRIVACY! Haven’t had that in a while. I don’t even know what to do with myself. I think I’m going to go eat, and maybe cat nap and go to the gym, before my next class at 3. Lots of fun! College is awesome!

First Dorm Night!

2010-09-23T12:42:00.001-07:00

It’s 8:30 in the morning, and I just spent my first night in a college dorm. There is a giant, loud, beeping, roaring garbage machine right outside my window, reinforcing the importance of my buildings strictly enforced 10-10 quiet time. The tiny crack at the very edge of the blinds is managing to pour a ferocious amount of early morning light directly onto my bed. So I am awake, forcefully awake, but very happy!

My first day was definitely a huge success. Moving in was wonderful. I woke up yesterday feeling incredibly excited, but kind of nervous. My mom and stepdad drove me to Cal Poly and we followed the big “FRESHMAN CHECK-IN” signs to my new dorm. It was kind of hard to find parking, but after we finally found a parking space miles away from my dorm, me and my mom went to check in. Check-in was smooth and easy, a very different experience, I’m guessing, from a lot of college students.

, I got my key (okay, so at first they gave me the wrong key, but after that it was perfect!), and I went up the second floor and got a look at the little room I would be living in for the next year. IT’S BEAUTIFUL. I am no longer even the slightest bit jealous of Chapman. Our rooms are not too small, with beautiful brick walls and old (possibly decaying?) wooden closets. We have our own little bookshelf above our beds, our own little (very little) dresser/bed stand, our own little (kind of big) desks, and our own little wooden closets with long term storage cabinets above them.

Unpacking my stuff was so much fun!!! My room looks gorgeous personalized, it really does.

My roommate Emily, one of my best friends from high school, got there later in the day, as did my boyfriend Cole. While they were unpacking my mom and stepdad took me out to a delicious goodbye lunch (as much goodbye as you can have while living half an hour away) at Applebees, where my sweet and loving mother put on sunglasses inside to hide her “goodbye tears” from the waitresses.

Anyway, twelve hours later I’m pretty sure I’m already the coolest kid on campus (joking!). I had a great time hanging out with Cole and Emily during our first activities, but then I made friends with Natalie and Zachary, two awesome kids, and they fit in perfectly with Cole and Emily as well. Cole’s roommate also turned out to be pretty fantastic, so the six of us stayed up until 1 AM in me and Emily’s room, talking, and eating our food, and playing Uno. I now officially have all the classes I NEED, although it would be nice to get into the IGE class that I want.

So life is going pretty fantastically! The only thing that is even the tiniest bit off it that Natalie is REALLY pretty, and really sweet and I think she’s fantastic, but Cole just pays so much attention to her, and I’m all paranoid that now that we’re at college he’ll find some hot junior girl or something, so it kind bugs me. But other than that everything is perfect! And that’s probably just me being silly.

I know it might be weird that the day I actually move INTO college is the day I write the shortest blog post, but there are so many super exciting things happening now that all the less-exciting little details seem small and trivial. Also, I really want to go take a shower before the shower rush starts. I’ll post more later, promise! Out!

Slow Goin'

2010-09-12T19:04:00.000-07:00

So, as the blog probably reflects, these last few weeks before school starts have been pretty static for me. Since we’re on the quarter system, we don’t start till the 19^th. Which sounded nice in the beginning, extra long summer, woohoo, but now it’s getting to be kind of a drag. All my friends are beginning their adventures, they’ve moved in to their dorm rooms and started classes, and I’m still at home, waiting for the 19^th to drag itself around.

It is, however, the prime situation for dorm visits. Just a week ago I visited Chapman, where four of my friends are going, which was really fun, but oh my gosh did I ever get campus envy. Chapman is SO. BEAUTIFUL. And their dorms are so nice, and each room has it’s OWN freaking bathroom with it’s OWN freaking shower, and there’s a little entertainment room and conference room on every floor, and the whole campus is sooo beautifuuuuul! *melts into a little puddle of jealous goo*

Not to mention the fact that one of the girls we were visiting was an old flame of my boyfriend, so I felt kind of territorial and protective the whole time. Grrrr. :P But it also just made me really pumped to move into my own dorm room, because they were all having so much fun!

I bought myself a cute yellow desk lamp, and extra-long twin sheets, and a binder, and some pencils. It was fun. And I’ve accepted my loans, and I have a budget. Using a debit card feels very mature, and I’m nervous and excited for how thrifty I’m going to have to be. I’m thinking of just keeping most of my money in a saving account, and transferring over how much I’ve allotted myself as allowance into my checking at the beginning of every month. Luckily I have a very sweet boyfriend with more money than me, so he’s been buying me food and stuff when we go out.

One thing that has been worrying me is the fact that I’m waitlisted for almost all of my classes. I’ve been trying almost every day to contact Cal Poly about whether I should buy my textbooks, email my professors, pay tuition fees. Basically I want to ask them what I should be doing to prepare when I don’t really know what classes I’m in yet, but they have this wonderfully efficient system set up where their phone line immediately disconnects every time you call. Fantastically well-organized, gets through the callers at a terrific speed.

So I guess I’ll wait until I move in, and I’ll just drop into the offices I need to, and talk to people directly. Luckily I move in five days before classes start.

I’ve also been working on applying for jobs. I know that beggars can’t be choosers, but working for a fast food company sounds like a nightmare. Working for Jamba Juice was awesome, but unfortunately there are none in the area. I’ve applied for secretarial positions, assistant positions, Starbucks, and a few cafes. But I’m holding off on applying to Taco Bell, Dennys, or Carls Jr. until it looks like I really have no other options. Maybe this a bad plan? Opinions are welcome.

Molly Texts from Orientation "Hell"

2010-08-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

My husband dropped Molly off at 8:00 for her two-day Orientation at Cal Poly Pomona. I didn't think too much about it; my semester has already begun and I'm running from classroom to meeting to lab and back again. I got a text from her at 8:03 that said she had arrived and had a friend already, named David. Three hours later I got a text saying simply "It's so hot!!!!" I controlled my impulse to reply "It wouldn't be hot if you'd gone to San Francisco State!" Sometimes being a good mom is in the little things.

I didn't hear anything else until after 9:30 at night. "R u awake?" Molly knows I am usually in bed by 9:30. I called her and she answered, which was miraculous in itself. Molly seldom answers since the cell phone is basically a texting device for her (her brother is the same, although he seldom does either).

She asked if I could log in to her student account right at 8:30 (a.m.) and sign up for her classes, since they were releasing advising holds at that time. She wouldn't be able to sign on then because advising meetings were scheduled at that time. She'd already put her preferred classes in the online "shopping cart"; all I had to do was hit "yes" a couple of times and she would be good to go. Then she had to tell me her password and she said "Don't laugh at me, okay?" She told me the password was "Cole4EVER" - Cole is her boyfriend. I laughed.

As she said goodnight, Molly told me everyone else was at a karaoke party, but she'd left to set up her classes. As I drifted off to sleep, I realized that this was the first time in months that I had been impressed with her initiative.

The next morning I tried to sign her up for classes, but they didn't release her advising hold until almost noon. I had been concerned that she wouldn't choose good courses - when I advise students, they typically are not thinking tactically about how to meet their requirements, both within their major and for general education. But I liked the courses she had chosen, and she had even identified back-ups that weren't her top choice but had more seats available.

Here is our text stream on her second day of Orientation:

7:35 am
Molly: Duuuuude, this sucks.
Liz: ??
Molly: Too early. Also, there are no awesome people here. My friends are all boring or hard-core drinking party-ers.
Liz: LOL

8:40 am
Molly: Everybody here SUUUUUUUCKS.
Liz: Chill silly girl. U r just tired. This will make a great blog post. Xoxo
Molly: Haha, true that. Bur srsly, I would not want to hang out with ANY of these people on a regular basis.
(Discussion of unsuccessful attempts to register for classes.)
Molly: :-) I'm so glad I'm texting you, it's the only thing keeping me from dying of boredom.
Liz: Hahaha, ur tired too, remember.
Molly: Yeah, also this is how it always works with a new school. You start out hanging with whoever you happen to meet first, and eventually you magnet (sic) towards the people you'll actually like.
Liz: Yupyupyup, my dorm group at Claremont were total losers.
Molly: We're meeting with advisors now.
Liz: Yeah, I think you have an advising hold. Can't register you. Sorry. I'll keep trying.
Molly: Thanks anyway mama.

9:30 am
Liz: Been seen yet?
Molly: No. -.- I'm gonna b the last of the last.
Liz: Sorry boopie.

2:00 pm
Molly: Bum buduh bum buduh bum BUM BUM, buduh bum buduh bum buduh bum bum bum, buduh bum buduh bum buduh bum bum BUUUM! bum, buduh bum bum bum.
Liz: LOL
Molly: PS I need to refill my birth control prescription.
Molly: Ever since orientation started/I've been slowly coming to see/All these people are retarded/None of them seem cool to me. (sent twice)

4:05
Molly: Almostdonealmostdonealmostdone
Liz: We r on our way!
Molly: You might be early??
Liz: Maybe, but traffic is fierce.
Molly: I will go fill out my job application forms while I'm waiting.

5:05
Liz: Molllllllyyyyyyyy
Molly: I c u!!!

Orientation (Or hell on earth)

2010-08-26T10:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to my school’s orientation. It was an overnight, from 8:00 in the morning till 5:00 the next night. I packed my backpack with pajamas, toiletries, and the only notebook I could find in my mostly packed room (A Star Wars notebook that said “Die Rebel Scum!” on the front). I had a vision of myself sitting in a modest, but clean and brightly lit dorm room, surrounded by friendly, laughing fellow freshmen, having a good time, before trooping off to sign up for interesting classes that would fulfill my GenEd requirements.

I arrived, bleary eyed and grumpy at 7:50, to find a line of people at least 100 strong outside the building where we were told to meet. I stood in this line, in the sun (it was already mid-80s, that early in the morning. I took this as a very bad sign), for a good twenty minutes. The boy standing in front of me was mildly interesting, but not twenty minutes worth of talking interesting, and I always find it kind of awkward to stop talking to someone in a line, because it’s not like you can walk away. You just have to kind of trail off whatever conversation you were having, and pretend to start texting someone, or start listening to your iPod, or become really fascinated with a patch of grass off to your left.

We finally got ushered into the building, and sorted into groups. Our orientation leader took us on a tour around the campus (it was mid-90s at this point), and led us in several icebreaker games that succeeded only in showing me how obnoxious and/or boring the rest of my group was. (I know I’m starting to sound like a bit of a Negative Nancy right now, but bear with me, I need the catharsis. I’m usually not this grumpy, I promise.) The rest of the day was filled with workshop after workshop seemingly named solely for the purpose of introducing alliteration to the freshmen (“Capture College!” “Get That Grade!”). The subject matter, unfortunately, was all basically the same. I was told to “be organized” four times, “budget your spending” fifteen, and I lost track of how many times someone told me to “get involved!”

The campus is pretty large, and I think they placed all consecutive activities on opposite sides of the campus on purpose, in order to weed out the weak. The only satisfaction I got all day was watching the girls that wore their best high heels try to power walk across grass when it was 101 degrees outside. Heh. That was fun. The activities that were planned for us at night were okay, so I listened to the amusingly horrible karaoke for a while, and then spent the rest of the time dancing or playing video games. We went back to our halls, the people who I thought might be okay friends went off to get wasted on the vodka someone had smuggled in, and I hurried to the shelter of my dorm. My roommate turned out to be okay, so we talked for a little while, and then I bought Cheetos and Skittles from one of the vending machines downstairs, and texted my boyfriend until I fell asleep.

The second day was filled with more boring lectures, and since I was very anxious about getting any of the classes I wanted (since freshmen register last, AND I was at the last orientation), I started to feel like I was going to rip my hair out. When the department head for my major, who was supposed to be taking us to sign up for classes, told us she was going to tell us “in detail, what we would be doing for the next four years”, I almost laughed. And man, when she said in detail she meant in detail. Luckily, I had put all the classes I wanted into my “shopping cart” the day before, and my mom (after a late night call from me) had logged into my account and was trying to get me those classes the second the counseling hold was taken off. As of now, I am only OFFICIALLY in two classes, one of which is just a b.s. class I added so that I’d be closer to the twelve units required to receive financial aid. I’m high on the waitlist for some of the classes I ACTUALLY want to take though (Like a beginning strings class! I’d learn to play violin!!), so cross your fingers for me!

Anyway, I’ve never, ever been happier to see my mom drive up. I got a giant Teriyaki burger from Carl’s Jr. afterwards (heaven), and life started to look semi-okay again. As of now I am feeling even more nervous for college than I was before, and even less excited. Isn’t that the opposite of what Orientation is supposed to do?

Professor and Mom

2010-08-25T08:01:00.000-07:00

My name is Liz (“Hello Liz!”), and I am a helicopter parent.

Not really. I’m the mother of two loved and fussed-over children, and I’m also a professor at a state university in California. Which is not an easy thing to be right now, what with the California budget crisis and furloughs. All of us—faculty, staff, and students—are feeling put–upon, over-worked, and stressed. And now my little girl has decided to join our community as a college freshman.

Molly described her college application process quite accurately in her first blog post. She didn’t even send me her application essays to proofread. Because she wrote them at the last minute. Because she had a super important party to attend.

I had always hoped that my children would attend the same private liberal arts college that changed my eighteen-year-old life. I remained sanguine as Molly showed no signs of enjoying the math and science in which both her father and I have made our careers. I was even able to be supportive as her grades plummeted in direct, negative correlation with her increasing interest in boys. But when she was rejected from my alma mater, even though I had known all along that it was unlikely that she would be accepted, I cried.

My husband said “Isn’t it wonderful that she will be walking her own path, instead of following yours?” It took me a while to stop hating him for saying that.

I am honestly a little disappointed that Molly decided not to attend SFSU. She is right that we love the idea of her being closer to home and Cal Poly is a “better” school than SFSU. But I’m not sure it’s better for her, personally or professionally. And I was looking forward to having a place to crash in San Francisco.

We have decided to chronicle her first year in college, with regular postings from her as things happen and then my response as both a professor and a mother. I think it will help me see how the university looks from a young person’s perspective, which has become increasingly difficult to do over time. I hope it will also help her see things from her professors’ point of view—and that will help her have a successful and enjoyable time in college. Which is all that most parents, helicopter or no, want for their child.

Pre-College Complications

2010-08-25T07:57:00.001-07:00

Hi! I’m Molly, an intelligent, under-motivated, eighteen-year-old, almost–college student. I will be a freshman at Cal Poly Pomona in the fall. I will be living on campus, taking classes with friends from my high school, and will be less than an hour’s drive from my family and home. A week ago, I would have told you that I was going to be a freshman at San Francisco State University in the fall, living off-campus with two roommates I had never met, six hours away from anyone I knew, without a car or any experience with the San Francisco public transit system. A month ago, I would have told you that I was staying home for a year, working, and possibly taking some art classes at the local community college.

While it may sound like I’m really indecisive, the reason for all these changes of plan is actually because the colleges want to screw with me. Or at least, that’s what I’m telling everybody. Probably it has more to do with my inability to swiftly and effectively navigate college application bureaucracy—paying fees here, meeting deadlines there—all without any clear instruction. Or in my case, NOT paying fees and NOT meeting deadlines.

In junior high school, I was a powerhouse student, earning a 4.0 while submitting articles to online news sites, writing short stories, participating in several school clubs, and keeping a steady stream of paintings and sketches flowing into my online art portfolio. I tested into an International Baccalaureate program, and entered high school bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, vomiting enthusiasm onto anyone who would listen. Then . . . I got my first C+ (79.6%) in my freshman honors geometry class.

By sophomore year, I was a little disillusioned. By junior year I was really no longer trying. I failed pre-calculus my first semester, and my transcripts were not the spotless, shiny, straight-A things they had once been. Going to a difficult high school had pounded the motivation out of me, and I approached applying for colleges the same way I approached my senior year – lackadaisically.

I started off all right. I made a list of the colleges I was going to apply to, I signed up for an account on the College Board website, I sharpened my pencils and straightened the papers on my desk into neat little parallel piles. And then what? The magnitude of the task ahead hit me over the next few weeks like a slow-moving ton of bricks. Deadlines dawned, my confusion grew, and I could practically feel the noose of a community college and a career in the fast food business slipping around my neck. Every form I filled out seemed to lead to another.

I was walking, then running, then sprinting through a labyrinth of tax forms and volunteer hours, and essays on my paltry achievements (which I now realized were completely meaningless), while my friends seemed to be having no trouble at all. In fact, all of my friends turned in their college applications months, heck years, ago.

I think this process must be a lot of fun to watch from the outside. In fact, the main reason I want to have children is so that I can watch them struggle in their turn with the college application system. In the end though, it all got done. Not always well, and not always on time, but it got done. I applied to several Cal States and two of the Claremont colleges (more to indulge my parents than because I thought I had any chance of getting in). When the rejections and acceptances all came in, I decided I wanted to be a San Francisco State University Gator.

I went to Orientation, signed up for my classes, bought a raincoat. This was the point when my slacking during the application process caught up with me. Because I had submitted my application for housing late, the SFSU Housing Department told me it looked like I would be living on the streets this year. They hoped I had connections with local hobos, and was not too picky about what I would use as a blanket. I had a little panic attack, and after a lot of coaching and consoling from my mother, resigned myself to the idea of staying home and taking a couple of community college classes for a year, maybe focusing more on my painting and my job at Jamba Juice.

A couple of months later, I found an e-mail in my inbox from a girl with an apartment next door to SFSU. She’d seen my ad pleading for a place to stay on a roommate site, and she and her friend needed one more roommate for their apartment. So it looked like I was going to college after all! I started making lists of things I needed to buy, and packing up or giving away everything in my room.

I think a Cal Poly Pomona admissions officer had planted a camera in my room. They were watching me closely, and when I had taped up the last box filled with all my clothes, they gave the signal. I received an e-mail saying that I had been accepted to Cal Poly Pomona from the wait list. Also, they mentioned gleefully (which is a hard thing to get across in an e-mail, but they managed it) that Cal Poly Pomona’s start date was a full month after SFSU’s. Which meant, of course, that I would need to unpack all the clothes and books I had carefully packed away.

So now I had to choose between two very different options. San Francisco would be more of an adventure—it would be city life, new friends, far away from the safety net of my family. Cal Poly Pomona, however, was a better school, and the idea of living on campus appealed to the pack creature in me. After a weekend of my parents trying to disguise their blatant desire for me to stay close to home, and my boyfriend not trying to disguise it at all (he will be attending Cal Poly Pomona with me this year), I decided on the latter. And then I unpacked.