“Almost Independent”: a good name for a college dorm!
College freshmen are heading off to school, including a young woman in my neighborhood. She told me she had whittled down her shoe collection to 12 pairs, which her boyfriend swears is three times too many! It’s true that, where she is going, space is at a premium — some things certainly have to give when the square footage is tight.
Like many freshmen, she will move into a dorm, which comes from the Latin for “a place to sleep.” A dorm room will have a bed and not much room for any other furniture. Many students will loft their bunks, so the desk fits underneath and they can fall asleep face-first in their textbooks.
Textbooks — I’m showing my age. According to my younger friend, freshmen don’t have actual books. Everything is downloaded onto tablets and laptops. Old fogeys like me may whine about not having paper, but even I have to admit that digitalization will save space. Maybe twelve pairs of shoes are not too many after all!
Dorms still have communal bathrooms. Mine was a laboratory for all kinds of mold and bacteria. Though we may have been breaking new microbial ground, none of my roommates were science majors — we were just slobs.
There were even better reasons for escaping the confines of our dorm than the dubious science experiments in the bathroom. I attended a small college, yet there was always something to do (besides study). Athletic events, intramurals, student-led clubs and other small gatherings. Most of all, there were interesting people who were your age with time on their hands. None of us had much money, so we had to get creative. I attempted skateboarding, which may have been more hazardous to my health than the cigarettes I also tried. I learned how to play poker and Tiger Woods Golf on the PlayStation. I also picked up a guitar for the first time in college, a habit that has stuck with me for twenty years.
Last week, I took the soon-to-be freshman out to lunch and asked what she was most excited about. She replied thoughtfully, “Being almost independent.” I knew what she meant. For the first time, she was out of her parents’ house. Yet, they (and their bank account) were certainly still involved.
I became teary when she mentioned that carting all of her stuff to school, including all her shoes, required taking two cars, which meant that her parents would have to drive home separately. It was not too hard to put myself in their shoes. Imagine hugging my daughter goodbye, then driving three hours without being able to hold my wife’s hand!
My hope for freshmen is that they will put on whatever shoes they brought from home and get out of their dorms, meet new folks, try new experiences, even if it’s something as seemingly unimportant as learning a C-chord on a guitar. College should be a worthwhile investment in education, but we learn so much about ourselves in this time of almost independence.
And my hope for parents in their empty nests is that they can hold each other as they fall asleep.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of “Little Big Moments,” a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and “Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems.” Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.
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