Our daughter is now a college graduate. Just thinking about it releases a flood of emotions that dribble down to the inescapable fact that my wife and I are growing old.
It’s something I’ve been struggling with ever since I turned 21 and realized after the hangover wore off that there were no more birthdays to look forward to. And that I was already three years past my sexual prime, which didn’t bode well for a male engineering student like me. But I eventually married Ellie and had two kids, so that part turned out well.
Emily graduated this June with a degree in environmental science and management, which may or may not eventually result in gainful employment. The important thing is, she had an amazing college experience and for that, we couldn’t be prouder.
Not that we didn’t have our doubts going into it.
In high school, Emily was a bit of a marm. She was studious and shunned the party crowd. Once, on her JV soccer team, she stopped practice in the middle of a scrimmage to carry an injured bee off the field. Her teammates started calling her Joe (for Jesus On Earth) after that. As a senior, she was voted the girl you’d most like to take home to your parents. You get the idea.
Clearly, we had failed her. College life was going to eat her alive.
So on the two-hour drive to freshman orientation, I had a serious talk with her. You need to start drinking in college, I said. Otherwise, you’ll be miserable and have zero friends because nobody will want to hang out with you except the other three people on campus who don’t drink and who, even if you can find them, definitely won’t be any fun.
Then, because I’m her father and I vaguely remember some of my college exploits, I spent the rest of the drive lecturing her on how to drink responsibly.
If nothing else, Emily is a quick learner. The morning after we moved her into the dorm a few weeks later, she told us about going to a fraternity party the night before where she played her first ever game of beer pong. And won. She was very excited about that and observed, “beer actually tastes pretty good!”
I had expected her to ease into it a bit more than that. But, well…OK.
Also on the ride to freshman orientation, I told Emily that college is the time to find out who you are without your parents and childhood getting in the way. That won’t happen if you spend all your time studying, I said, although I added the disclaimer that grades are an important leading indicator, and we expect a decent return on our investment.
You find out who you are by making friends with smart and interesting people. By trying things that challenge you and take you out of your comfort zone. By opening up your mind and filling it with as many new ideas and experiences as you can in those four (not five, please) years.
She nailed that too.
The first week in the dorm, Emily met four awesome girls–Aliyah, Alyssa, Anna, and Nina. They immediately became BFFs and shared apartments, classes and good times throughout college. She was a counselor for Camp Kesem, a student-run summer camp for children of cancer victims and survivors. She took up rock climbing. She studied a semester abroad in Spain and lived with an old couple who no hablan a word of inglés. She became a campus tour guide.
And her senior year, she joined a commune. OK, technically not a real commune, but there were 16 of them living in a place next to campus called the Turtle house. They ate meals together, raised chickens and rabbits, and their yard was a vegetable garden. Someone was almost always playing guitar on the front porch. So, close enough.
My point here is that sometimes maybe my kids actually listen to me. Probably she would have done all that stuff anyway, but I like to think I deserve some credit.
We were feeling pretty good about Emily’s college career until the graduation ceremony itself. The chancellor presented a medal to the top graduating senior. He was a Goldwater Scholar, earned a 4.0 in animal biology, led the draft horse driving club and the debate club, and published a paper on his research in statistical phylogenetics.
“I guess we could have been prouder,” Ellie joked.
Yeah, but how good is he at beer pong?
The chancellor then delivered the commencement address where she talked about embracing failure. Ironic, coming from someone who nearly lost her job over the handling of a campus police pepper-spraying incident when Emily was a sophomore.
After four great years of college, Emily wasn’t interested in a final lecture on failure. Sitting next to Anna and Nina among the caps and gowns, she shared her last undergraduate moments with them, having fun and taking selfies. Thatagirl! Phylogenetics indeed.
So, congratulations Emily. We truly couldn’t be prouder
Dave Kehmeier can be contacted at djkehmeier@sbcglobal.net.
