The second son prepares for college close to home
This fall, I will no longer have one son in college. I’ll have
two.
And the two will be going to the same place, the University of
California, Santa Cruz, which may be good or bad depending on how
you look at it.
When I was growing up in Santa Cruz in the 1970s, UCSC didn’t
get much respect. It was the hippie-dippy campus where no real
grades were earned and there was a whole lotta peace, love and
funny-smelling cigarettes. If you wanted to major in art, music or
philosophy, this was the place to be.
The second son prepares for college close to home
This fall, I will no longer have one son in college. I’ll have two.
And the two will be going to the same place, the University of California, Santa Cruz, which may be good or bad depending on how you look at it.
When I was growing up in Santa Cruz in the 1970s, UCSC didn’t get much respect. It was the hippie-dippy campus where no real grades were earned and there was a whole lotta peace, love and funny-smelling cigarettes. If you wanted to major in art, music or philosophy, this was the place to be.
But things are different now – really different. It’s still a free-spirited place, but much more nerdly, filled with budding engineers, astrophysicists and videogame designers (yes, really).
But the old image of long-haired flower children running amok through the redwoods is hard to dispel – I had one acquaintance ask me, after Ross was accepted several years ago, “Don’t you want him to go to a good school?”
Times have changed; UCSC has changed. And so my life is changing as well, with the mothering business to be reduced to a kind of part-time gig instead of the full-time one I’ve had since 1990.
Hunter has been waiting with bated breath since last fall to learn whether he would get into UCSC, his first choice of universities. Never mind that Cornell and the University of Washington expressed interest in him – he had his heart set on Santa Cruz.
I’ve never really learned why this is. He just shrugs when I ask. But perhaps it has something to do with the fact that his brother is going there and it seems somewhat familiar to him. That being said, it’s actually a place that I think will suit him just fine.
Hunter, being the stoic kind of guy that he is, was all set to go off to high school last Tuesday when I realized he hadn’t said a thing about whether he got in or not. UCSC, being a very modern kind of place, was informing its prospective students via e-mail.
“Well?” I said. “Did you check your email?”
“No,” he said with a blank look on his face. “Do you want me to?”
“Yes, I think it would be a good idea,” I said, mainly because I knew my parents would be hounding me that day for news.
He went upstairs, and came back down a few moments later. “I got in,” he said calmly. You’d think he was talking about going to the movies rather than getting accepted to the college of his choice.
But that’s the way he is. He is not an excitable boy by any means. But he is definitely pleased.
Also, his girlfriend was accepted to UCSC. This is probably a good thing, but I am reserving judgment at this point. After all, I remember going off to the same college as my high school boyfriend, only to break up with him some months later.
College can change things, and sometimes it’s hard to see the good in the change. Anyway, there isn’t anything I can do about whether young love stays or goes, so I’m keeping my mouth firmly shut. As difficult as that is for me.
Now the only real question is how to pay for all this. Luckily, my older son now has a part-time job and scholarships, so he’s taking care of himself pretty well. But I will have to contribute something to Hunter’s education for a while.
And of course, last week I also heard that all the UCs are thinking about raising their fees again. State budget crisis and all that, but they’ve raised the fees the past two years as well. Arghhhh.
Oh well … if you can’t invest in your kids, who can you invest in?
