See me driving five and a half hours in the darkness and rain, while my son sleeps snugly in the backseat, to Middle-of-Nowhere College in upstate New York for a 10 a.m. campus tour. See me wake up my son half an hour before we reach campus to give him his "briefing" papers: the MNC catalog, the questions he should remember to ask the MNC baseball coach, the questions the MNC admissions interviewer is likely to ask him, what it is he said he wanted to do with his life on MNC's application essay, etc., etc.
See my wife "scripting" the phone call she's forcing our son to make to Elite Colleges in western Massachusetts for further information about its very innovative American-Studies-major-with-Early-Child-Development-minor in which he's allegedly so deeply interested.
As we wind painfully toward the finish line of this 8,760-hour marathon, I find myself on the phone with my old friend Lang, asking him to write a character/athletic reference for my son. "I'd like to include it in the sports scrapbook I'm putting together for Matt," I add.
"Wait a minute," Lang says. "The sports scrapbook you're putting together? I thought Matt was the one applying to college. Why isn't he putting together the sports scrapbook?"
"You know, Matt did great in the classroom and on the ball field for four years," I blurt. "He's done 98 percent of what he's needed to do to get into a very good college. We're just helping him with the other 2 percent. Heh, heh."
Lang isn't buying.
"And he's still in his critical senior year," I plunge on. "He has to keep his grades up. And you can't very well expect him to do that and handle all the application paperwork."
He's still unimpressed. The lame excuses and rationalizations continue.
"And the process is so much more complicated than when we were applying to college," I plead. "Don't forget, he's only 17. You'd need a 20-year business career in order to organize and do this thing the way it should be done."
Silence on the other end of the phone.
"I mean, there are consultants people hire to get their kids into college, for God's sake!" I screech. "At least we didn't resort to that!"
Still no answer.
I know what Lang's silence means. He thinks my feeble protestations are a bunch of bull.
And he's right.
The truth of the matter is the college application game left us with two choices. We could either shepherd our son through it -- doing a lot more ourselves than we rightfully should have, and then we'd ever care to admit in public. Or we could sit back and watch him try to do it himself and possibly have him wind up right here with us in Bestport next year.
Trouble is, we Baby Boomer parents -- from the certifiable loonies to the upwardly mobiles to the intellectual wanna-bes to the soccer moms to even the cool, level-headed folks like my wife and me -- are not very good at just sitting back and watching anything that has to do with our kids. We are the over-involved generation used to doing things our way. We're a generation of control freaks.
And there's nothing we can do about it.
So, all you moms and dads of budding English majors and yearbook editors and debate club presidents and Merit Scholars and cheerleaders and all-league quarterbacks and valedictorians from Suburban High class of 2006, 2007 and beyond: You, too, can feel smug and superior as my wife and I initially did. You, too, can bury your head in the sand and steadfastly insist that "this could never happen to me."
Or you can take a little peek ahead and see what you really have to look forward to as your child (make that you and your child -- with the emphasis on you) begins that wonderfully fulfilling process known as applying to college...
This article is adapted from Accept My Kid, Please! A Dad's Descent Into College Application Hell by Hank Herman. Copyright 2005 by Hank Herman. Reprinted by arrangement with Da Capo Press. To purchase a copy of the book from Amazon.com, click here.
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