Letting Go, Sixth Edition: A Parents' Guide to Understanding the College Years

DEDICATION

For Stephen and Tom, our loving partners;

Alison, Andrew, Anne, and Jennie,

who continue to teach us about letting go;

&

Ayanna, Carly, August, Olivia, Eliza, Gus, Charlie,

Delilah, and Clementine—the next generation

CONTENTS

Dedication

Preface to the Sixth Edition

PART I

THE COLLEGE EXPERIENCE

1. Letting Go

2. Some Things Never Change: The Search for Identity, Independence, and Intimacy

3. Some Things Do Change: College Life Today

PART II

A PARENTS’ GUIDE: FROM START TO FINISH

4. Great Expectations

5. Ready, Set, Go: The Departure

6. Orientation and Disorientation

7. The Freshman Year: Academic Life and the College Scene

8. In and Out of Your Life

9. Sophomore Slump and the Years Beyond

10. The End Is the Beginning

Resources for Parents and Students

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Authors

Praise

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION

Karen Levin Coburn photograph courtesy of Joe Angeles/WUSTLphotos

RETURNING TO LETTING GO TO WRITE THE SIXTH edition is like opening an old family photo album—full of nostalgia, with warm memories of all the students and parents who contributed to previous editions as they set off on the college journey. This new edition is filled with the voices of new students, parents, faculty, and administrators who have generously added their experiences and insights to those who have come before them.

My coauthor Madge Treeger and I have had the good fortune of a close and felicitous partnership throughout the five editions that preceded this one. Together we have enjoyed the stimulation of delving into new research about students and the rapid changes in higher education, the liveliness of new interviews and perspectives—the ever-fascinating transition to college and the years that follow.

Although Madge has moved on from university life to other ventures, her wisdom and insights remain throughout the book. I have taken the lead on this sixth edition, but Letting Go was a joint creation, and will always belong to the two of us.

There are many changes both visible and invisible that affect the climate of the campus and those engaged in life there: demographic changes, economic shifts, and a magnified sense of anxiety in our culture. All have caused profound challenges for students, their families, and the whole academic enterprise. These challenges are apparent in the increasingly frantic and competitive press to get in by students, and the parallel race of the institutions to position themselves on the top of prestigious lists; in the rapidly rising costs and the financial burden on families as their children leave for college at an economically shaky time; in the pressure on the institutions themselves to keep up with technological and global imperatives; in the enormous increases in numbers of students seen at counseling centers; in new security measures and emergency procedures and challenges to privacy.

These realities have influenced today’s parents, who are more involved in their children’s lives than generations of the past. Many are justly proud of the fact that their college-age children are closer to them than they had been to their own parents. But how close? How involved? The so-called helicopter parents—parents who hover—have become the target of the media and many college administrators. How do parents walk this balance beam—enjoying the closeness of their relationship with their adolescent children while encouraging them to become increasingly confident and competent during their college years? In our world of instant and ubiquitous communication, how can a parent enjoy sharing the joys and sorrows of a daughter or son, providing support while resisting the urge to solve problems and rescue from afar? This is the daunting task facing today’s college parent, and this is the focus of much of our book—finding the balance, letting go while staying connected.

Twenty-first-century colleges and universities are tackling these challenges as well. Recognizing that students may not need the in loco parentis of yesteryear, but acknowledging that they do need the wisdom of experienced adults available to them as guides, counselors, and mentors, more faculty and staff are involved in the daily lives of students, some even within the residence halls. Many schools are forming a partnership with parents, creating comprehensive parent websites and special parent programs that provide information about the college and its resources for students. The goal is to reduce the impulse to hover and to help parents find appropriate and effective ways to respond so that they can support their child’s growing independence.

My office is situated in a building that is a hub of activity for students, faculty, and staff. As I write about diversity, I experience it firsthand. In the studio across the way, the insistent drumming from an African dance class draws my attention; the room is filled with white, black, and Asian young men and women of varying size and ability, clad in colorful sarongs, stomping their feet and leaping through space. On St. Patrick’s Day, I glance out the window to see a young man striding across campus with collar-length green hair flowing from under his yarmulke. Sounds of the Visions Gospel Choir practicing in the chapel mingle with the polite applause coming from the nearby formal lounge during a lecture on Justice and the Feminization of Global Poverty. On one evening after I’ve spent several hours at the computer, the sweet aroma of the Korean Student Association’s barbecue is a reminder that it’s time for dinner.

Each day or night is different, all reverberating to the college scene and reflecting the time of year and the state of the weather. The unrelenting drilling noise from yet another construction site across the lawn competes with the distant cheering from an intramural soccer game. Students—men and women—celebrate the first hot day of the year with a full-fledged water fight; they toss water-filled balloons at one another until all collapse, soaking wet, laughing, and exhausted. The Quad is filled with a stage and massive sound equipment as students wrapped in ski jackets on an unseasonably cold evening rehearse the spring musical.

A parent calls seeking advice about a proposed visit to a homesick daughter. A sophomore stops by to get a signature for a summer program in Kenya. A proud senior comes by with a poster advertising his upcoming art exhibit. The chapel bells ring on the quarter hour—a sonorous reminder of fleeting time.

This is but a glimpse of the captivating world your child is about to enter. There is much in today’s college experience that has a distinctly new flavor, and part of the aim of this book is to give you an insider’s view. Though the rate of change in many dimensions of college life has accelerated dramatically, much of what we wrote in the original edition of Letting Go remains the same. It is the soul of our book—the ongoing but changing relationship between parents and their about-to-be-adult children during the college years.

Karen Levin Coburn

St. Louis, 2016

Part I

THE COLLEGE EXPERIENCE

1

LETTING GO

I’M NOT GETTING OUT.

I sat behind the wheel of the car; Jennie sat beside me with her tattered stuffed teddy bear at her side, and we looked out at the line of young men and women laughing and chatting as they waited for the doors of the freshman dormitory to open.

I’m not getting out, she repeated.

I panicked. My mind flashed back to the first day of nursery school. Don’t leave me were her words then.

But you wanted to get here early to get the best bed, I reminded her.

I’ve changed my mind, she replied. That was evident.

We had just traveled for seventeen hours, over two days. Jennie was beginning her freshman year at college—our first child to leave home. Was I going to have to turn around and go back to St. Louis with her still beside me?

Suppose we get out and just stand next to the car. She agreed reluctantly. I was relieved to see her leave the teddy bear in the car.

Jennie made it to the line of seemingly relaxed, happy freshmen—and was swept along by an overanxious young woman who handled her anxiety by hyperactivity instead of shyness. I looked over and saw Jennie blending in and looking just as relaxed as the others and let out a sigh of relief.

Within a half hour, I was excess baggage. Now it was my turn to separate. Why don’t you wander around campus and stop back in a few hours, Jennie suggested diplomatically.

(What about all my fantasies of helping you fix up your room, chat with your roommates a bit, and see what coed living looks like? Of course I kept these thoughts to myself.)

I smiled diplomatically in return, said good-bye, and began a somewhat aimless tour of the campus, passing other parents along the way who looked as lost as I felt. When I returned to the dorm, I found out Jennie had arranged for me to have dinner with another parent, since she already had plans. I graciously bowed out, returned to the motel, and had a good cry.

Two days earlier, as a part of freshman orientation at Washington University, I had stood on a stage before hundreds of parents who had come to hear my professional words of wisdom. The topic was Letting Go.

And now I had begun.

The process of letting go actually starts in the first years of life. As parents, we can remember the struggles of the early years, especially between the ages of 1½ and 3, when our children seesawed back and forth between acts of independence—a toddling strut accompanied by a world is my oyster smile—and clinging, whining periods of hanging on. Although this separation process continues throughout our children’s growing years, it is especially evident as they move through adolescence and begin to leave home, when we once again see their ambivalence acted out in puzzling ways. We were often more patient and understanding of the process when our children were small. We were also better informed. The terrible twos may not have been pleasant, but we all knew they were coming, and we knew they would end. Information and reassurance were readily available if we felt uncertain about our children’s development or our roles as parents. But when we send our sons and daughters off to college, there are no What to Expect books to reassure us, no guidelines for moving through this time of transition.

Some parents don’t see this as a time of transition at all. It is simply the end of childrearing for them and of childhood for their sons and daughters. You’re an adult now; start acting like one, they admonish. Others still see themselves as necessary protectors and their sons and daughters as immature children rather than evolving young adults. Don’t you worry about it, dear. I’ll call your dean and take care of it for you.

Most of us flounder somewhere in between. We send our children off with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety, a sense of loneliness and freedom, fantasy and reality. Our childrearing days are ending. Our children are launched. We anticipate dealing with our own reactions to their leaving—loss of companionship, financial belt-tightening, a quiet house—but we are caught off guard by the continuing demands and concerns that we discover as each week and month goes by after the launching. As they struggle to be independent and separate once again, as in their toddler years, they venture forth with bravado and periods of newfound confidence and wisdom, only to retreat into times of anxiety and hanging on. They want Mom or Dad to be there when they want them. They call and pour out fears and hurts, hoping to be understood, or they withdraw into silence; advice and parental concerns become intrusions.

We shift gears constantly as we meet our offspring in an elusive dance of change. We find ourselves relentlessly retracing old patterns one week and discovering new ways of getting along the next. The temptation to tell our children how to be independent is a compelling one. The contradictory, but all too familiar parental message is It’s about time you were grown up and on your own, so follow my advice. Translated, this painfully becomes It’s time for you to be independent, but I don’t trust your judgment.

As our sons and daughters enter these college years, we have to come to terms with their strengths and their limitations. At the same time we realize that we too are at a watershed, entering into a new phase of our lives—growing older. We may find ourselves taking a new look at our marriage or career—our own limitations. And so as they struggle with a turmoil of conflicting emotions about leaving, we often are flooded with conflicting feelings of our own about being left.

It is common for parents who were eager to see their children leave, to lament their departure later. Somehow there must be a biological process at work; my son is so impossible this year it makes it easy to see him go—in fact I can’t wait, becomes, three months later, It’s quieter in the house; I have to hold back from wanting to call him and find out how his day went—the same parents wanting to stay connected and wanting to let go.

A parent, whose daughter struggled through several rebellious years in high school and emerged at 17 as a delightful young woman and close companion to her mother, confessed, I dreaded her leaving; we had just begun to enjoy each other again. But now that she’s gone, I have to admit I love the simplicity and freedom of living as a couple again.

We all know intellectually that this is a time for our children to separate and assert their independence. But long after they have become taller or stronger than we are, our primal protective feelings are easily unleashed. We carry images in our heads of the curly-haired toddler, the gap-toothed 6-year-old, and of times when a caress or a hug could make their world all better. As they get older, the problems they face have increasingly greater consequences. The stakes get higher. The mature, rational part of us wants them to solve their own problems and believes they can, but another part of us wants to stay connected, be in control, feel needed, and protect them from any pain they will have to face.

We may see the years of college as the calm before the storm—a time within a bastion of learning that will provide a protected environment for our children as they prepare for the real world. Though college provides a unique opportunity for learning, the college years are no more a calm than all the years that follow are necessarily a storm. College students are confronted with a host of the pressures and societal constraints that are part of the ongoing process of human experience.

Our expectations of college life are often large-scale and grandiose. They are born of many factors: our own hopes and dreams, images from the media, a need to justify the large financial investment we are making. The fire is fanned by the big buildup—years of planning and positioning so that our children can compete in the furor of getting in. We are courted with a marketing blitz from the institutions themselves, all promising dreams fulfilled, horizons waiting to be discovered, unencumbered bliss. The effect of all this is to raise the college years to a larger-than-life, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that will make or break our children’s future. Both parents and students feel the pressure and push to make this myth their reality.

Most of us have the same hopes and goals for our children as they have for themselves. We want them to be happy and successful, self-confident and self-reliant. The trouble is that the specific notion of what constitutes success or self-reliance is often very different for a parent than it is for his or her offspring. Although independence is valued as a goal, actual steps toward independence are likely to make parents nervous. Intellectual exploration may threaten established family values and ideas about life’s meaning. Sudden shifts in behavior and ideas are confusing and sometimes exasperating to even the most patient, understanding parents. Too often, parents inhibit their children’s growth without realizing how their good intentions are backfiring. It doesn’t have to be that way, but as educators, we’ve seen it happen again and again, and as parents, we have felt this dilemma ourselves.

Students talk to us about their parents—about pressures and misunderstandings and their longing to be accepted by their parents as separate adults. We listen, probe and empathize, and then we recall conversations with our own college-age children who recited variations on the same themes. Except that with them, we were the ones who didn’t understand, who were putting on too much pressure, who were overprotective or not around when we were needed. Our experience as parents broadened our perspectives and brought new insights to our professional work.

We both have spent much of our adult lives working on college and university campuses. We have listened to countless students as they have struggled with the disparity between their parents’ expectations and their own; with broken romances and disappointing grades; with the excitement and the confusion of expanding intellectual horizons and new values. As we look out our windows at the ivy-covered Gothic buildings and the Frisbee game in the quad, all may look idyllic, but when we listen to what students have to say, it is clear that their lives are complex and often unsettling. No matter how fraught with complications and responsibilities our own adult lives may seem, we can’t simply retreat to the good old college days refrain sung by many of our peers. Our students give us daily reminders that youth is not synonymous with simplicity or freedom from responsibility.

The college years are a time of transition for young people and their parents. There is no way to move through such an important passage without some feelings of dislocation and loss. But information and insight can help parents negotiate this significant and often neglected phase of their children’s lives.

As professionals immersed in the daily routine of life on the college campus, we hope to offer a realistic view of the many facets of this experience—one that reflects the trials and tribulations as well as the excitement, opportunity, and promise of these years. We will focus on the experience of traditional-age college students who go to school away from home, but much of the material will be relevant to parents of commuter students as well.

Part I of this book, The College Experience, begins with information about late adolescent development, so that our children’s behavior can be viewed in the broader context of normal growth. We will explain how all college students struggle with developing a sense of their own identity, with becoming independent, and with establishing intimacy. Each young person finds his or her own way to express these struggles, often to the consternation and confusion of concerned parents. But knowing that a certain amount of experimenting and exploring is in fact healthy can be reassuring. Insight into normal development enables parents to discriminate between the universal problems of college students and those that require parental or professional intervention. With this understanding, parents can respond more appropriately and with more assurance to the signals their children send them.

We will look also at the changes in the larger contemporary society, and at its campus reflections in high-tech classrooms, multicultural activities and courses, complex security systems, and a proliferation of choices. Although we all went through our own versions of young adult confusion and self-discovery, the world in which we grew up was clearly different from the one our children are grappling with today. Perhaps no place is that more evident than on college campuses.

This chapter opened with the story of Jennie, clutching her childhood teddy bear. Her tenuous approach to the freshman dormitory and subsequent dismissal of her mother a few hours later was not an unusual sequence of events. What she needed most at that point was nothing more than her mother’s willingness to let go.

Other freshmen find different ways to begin. One departs from his hometown airport, guitar slung casually over his shoulder, barely stopping to wave good-bye as he walks out to the plane. Then he calls his mother every day for two weeks. What does he need? Probably just a reassuring adult voice from home, someone who understands and tolerates his temporary need to return to familiar territory while he adjusts to an alien one. A flashback to his toddler years as he rushed off with gusto only to check back and make contact will help us to understand—he is still in the ongoing process of separating.

Another young woman drives off to college only a few hours from home. She doesn’t communicate or come home for weeks. Her parents worry and feel hurt. She too is separating; perhaps she needs to go cold turkey—to sever the ties abruptly, at least for a while—so that she isn’t pulled back to the close, secure home that is so easily accessible.

The theme of separation is the same for all these young people. The variations are uniquely their own. An understanding of separation, the thematic cornerstone of every chapter of this book, enables parents to engage in that process more productively.

Part II, A Parents’ Guide: From Start to Finish, provides a chronological guide to the college experience from senior year in high school through college graduation. We’ll look at the way the separation process evolves, and the predictable rhythm it takes throughout the first academic year and the years that follow. Above all, we will listen to what college students and their parents have to say as they move through this exciting, sometimes turbulent phase of life. They will tell us what has worked for them and what hasn’t.

Understanding what we and our children are going through reduces our anxiety and validates our reality. It opens our eyes so that we can see what our children’s world is like; it allows us to listen and communicate more effectively. It frees us to help our children become themselves.

2

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE

The Search for Identity, Independence, and Intimacy

WHO AM I, APART FROM MY FAMILY, MY COMMUNITY, my school? This question is what young people ask themselves over and over again. It is a question replayed by every generation, each in its own context. We, their parents, struggled with the same question years ago as we tried to find our own way on the road to adulthood. The context may have changed, the choices may be different, but the theme is the same—the theme of self-definition. This is the curriculum not spelled out in college catalogues, and yet much of the college experience is devoted to it.

I’m going to let my hair grow; I’m going to cut out drinking and smoking and be quiet and subdued—the way I was when I came here. They say a girl can’t be like that and get by, but I always loathed the typical college girl anyway. The main trouble is that whenever I am or claim to be different, I’m accused of posing—people can’t conceive of how anyone can have any individualism. Damn it all, I’m going to change and be me.

JOURNAL ENTRY, SOPHOMORE, SMITH COLLEGE, 1924

I feel like I can’t be myself. I try to pretend everything’s fine, but who am I kidding? I feel lonely and isolated even from my family and best friends at home. Part of that’s my fault, because every time I try to write a letter or talk on the phone, I catch myself trying to impress people with how great things are. I don’t want to admit to anyone that I’m having problems adjusting, so I try to overcompensate and act as if everything’s wonderful and then I sound fake and I feel fake. I can’t be natural—I’m not even sure what that is.

JOURNAL ENTRY, SOPHOMORE, UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT, 1984

This was my first stressful week of college. Everyone had a lot of tests. I had an exam on Thursday, and felt confident I would get an A on it. Turns out I scored a 78—a big blow to my self-confidence—about my schoolwork and who I am in general. I feel like my academics might be suffering because I’m so worried about the social aspects of college life. I imagined this making friends would be easier, but it’s tough.

ANONYMOUS ENTRY, FRESHMAN ON COLLEGE DISCUSSION BOARD, 2014

These reflections from three generations of college students span ninety years. Yet all of these students are grappling with issues of identity, with who they are and how to integrate this sense of themselves with the world in which they live. Unlike students of the past, whose personal thoughts were guarded under lock and key in diaries and private journals, today’s students are just as likely to broadcast their struggles and musings in the public forum of an online blog or message board.

Becoming a unique and individual person doesn’t happen at any one particular time. Hallmark has yet to design a card for the universal celebration of being an adult. Graduation days, 18th birthdays, bar mitzvahs, quinceañeras, have all been adopted as dates to mark entry into so-called adulthood. The fact that one ritual takes place at 13 or 15, another at 18 or 21 tells us that our notion of what adulthood is varies by religion, culture, and individual family.

Many young men and women leave their homes to work, marry, or go away to college. But to become separate in a psychological sense is a lifelong process of becoming—continually building on, reaffirming, refining a sense of self. This process begins in the first months of life.

Although the seeds of their own identity exist from the start, infants are totally dependent on the person who cares for them, usually their mother. Before they can discover their separateness, they must establish the boundaries between their parents and themselves. Understanding the complexities of that earlier time helps put in perspective the often puzzling transitions of the college years.

SEPARATION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE

The separation that begins in the first year of life is a prototype for later separations, in particular for the turbulent years of adolescence and young adulthood. Separation is not isolation from others, but is instead a bridge that helps us cross from dependence to interdependence. Parents’ memories and photographs carry images of their children’s early attempts at separation: a baby tugging on his mother’s nose, yanking at her hair, peering out from behind chubby spread fingers to play peekaboo; a 9-month-old creeping across the floor, pausing to glance back at her father before scurrying on; a toddler walking like a drunken sailor, building up speed as he giggles exuberantly in the process of running away from his mother; the same toddler, as his mood shifts, waddling along, thumb in mouth, dragging a blanket behind him; a 2-year-old throwing herself on the floor in the supermarket, screaming No! furiously, her face red with rage and frustration, wanting to do it herself one minute and whiningly asking for help the next—all of these are the images of young children struggling with the confusion and ambivalence of separation.¹

The images of separation in adolescence are as vivid and familiar to all parents as those of our children’s early days. They are new images, reminiscent of old struggles. the teenager chafing at his parent’s simplest words of advice; the 17-year-old, heady with a sense of her own high school success, flying off to college unaccompanied and secure, coming home six weeks later for refueling, her wings clipped with the discovery that she is no longer special; the 19-year-old, calling home depressed and frightened; an anxious high school senior asking her parents for advice one day and snapping, It’s my life! the next. All of these efforts to move away echo earlier times from our children’s first three years of life. And they reawaken our own ambivalence about separation and may make it more difficult for us to let go.²

IDENTITY

To separate psychologically is to know oneself. The core of identity, of one’s uniqueness, is what makes it possible to tolerate the inevitable feeling of aloneness that we all experience. Despite moving across the country or the world, despite dramatic changes in emotions or physical feelings or interactions with a variety of people, we develop a sense of continuity, a consistent sense of who we are. It is this self-knowledge that makes it possible to move into truly intimate relationships with others without the fear of losing oneself or one’s own integrity. Indeed, this search for a cohesive and integrated self is one of the major tasks of the college student.

Why now? Why does the concern for identity become so all-consuming during the college years? We know that our children have had distinct personalities for as long as we can remember. We speak of them in phrases that encapsulate characteristics that are so uniquely theirs. Ellen’s our organizer. She’s been organized since she was a toddler. Or, Peter’s very easygoing. He’s always marched to the beat of a different drummer. Our children have been building since birth an inner core that is exclusively theirs, identifying with significant people in their lives, developing talents, internalizing notions of right and wrong.

But puberty arrives and shakes their foundations; bodies shift so that their tall and rounded selves no longer reflect the inner image of themselves as a small and fragile child. Voices deepen and the change may diminish a special singing talent. The braininess that was scorned at 8 is valued at 16, but the feeling of being an outsider—the one who was picked last for the kickball game—lingers. Sexual yearnings are new and unpredictable. With the onslaught of puberty, our children lose the sense of continuity that they had; confusion sets in; change becomes the norm. The spontaneity and creativity of childhood become the self-conscious inhibition of early adolescence.

To assure stability, some illusion of identity, adolescent boys and girls often attach themselves to a group or an idol to show the world who they are—a jock, a geek, a techie, a hipster. And somewhere in the process of discovering who they are, they leave for college. Not all will have reached the same developmental point at the same time or with the same intensity. All the variables that influence development—genetic factors, ethnicity, gender, societal influences, personal experiences—are brought to bear.

For some, the transition to college is a smooth and gradual one; it may be the time for consolidation after a rocky adolescence. For others, the distance in miles that the freshman travels may represent the only separation that takes place as the student holds on tightly and brings his parents with him in spirit, if not in body. Their identity is his; he defines himself according to their guidelines. Still another freshman may plunge headfirst into the new environment, cutting loose the ties in an impulsive and sometimes desperate manner, attaching herself quickly in a mutually dependent romance, jumping into a new lifestyle, or running frantically from one new activity to another. She may join the rugby club one day, the literary society the next, and hang out in the alternative coffeehouses on the weekends, bouncing back and forth between groups, searching for a new identity in this new place.

Some students create ever-changing images of themselves on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or other social networking sites to tell others who they are or who they want to be. Students who feel insecure or have low self-esteem may create alternate identities on discussion boards or in online games in which they can present themselves as any persona they choose.³

Often students find themselves burdened with guilt, wanting to remain loyal to their families’ traditional values, but also wanting to chart their own courses. The young man who is still tied to home and places his parents in the center of his thoughts and decisions, who says, I can’t major in art history; my parents would be so disappointed in me, is struggling with the same dependency as the scientifically talented but belligerent young woman who proclaims, I wouldn’t consider medicine if it were the last profession on earth. I’ve had it shoved down my throat all my life. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Both are having trouble letting go, unable to make choices of their own.

As our children move through the college years, most of them will be wrestling with the question Who am I? They will be trying to integrate what they’ve learned about themselves in earlier stages with the demands of the adult world. Some will defer to those demands so completely that they will conform to expectations of family and society at the expense of a sense of self. For others, their identity is so precious that they will ignore social norms entirely and become alienated from the mainstream.

In late adolescence, the time is ripe to focus on self-definition; our children are ready physically, cognitively, and socially. Colleges and universities offer a breather after the dependency of childhood and before the commitments of adulthood. During this time, students may explore, take risks, test, and try on new ways of being, and may make mistakes without drastic consequences. Many of us look back to our own youth and recall such times of uncertainty, excitement, and turmoil.

When our children cast about in search of this sometimes elusive identity, their behavior is often misunderstood. At times, in their exuberant discovery of new worlds, they test extremes and hang on tight to them for a while as their fragile sense of self regains enough equilibrium to settle on a more balanced view. The tighter the psychological knot that ties them to their parents, the more abrasive and rebellious the testing may be. A perplexed mother from New Jersey describes her daughter on her first visit home from college.

Cindy—she’s asked us to call her by her full name, Cynthia—has the most beautiful hair; she’s always worn it long to show off its natural thickness and shininess. It was her badge, her emblem. Her motions, the way she would peek out from that wavy, raven mop, the way she would toss it around—a sort of exclamation point to emphasize whatever she was saying—it would be both irritating and ingratiating. And now it’s gone, at least on one side of her head. She’s practically shaved one side and the other is cut in a severe line that falls over one eye—only she doesn’t toss it anymore. It just sort of hangs there. I’m not sure how she sees, and I’m not sure what it means.

Another exasperated parent from a conservative southern community lamented, I’m still trying to explain to myself and to other people why Tucker came home from his first year of college sporting tattoos on both arms and wearing short-sleeve black T-shirts every day.

One thing their parents can be sure of, Tucker and Cindy are trying on a new identity, one that may or may not fit. They cling to their new looks, which may be quite different from the conservative wardrobe they left for school with. Does this mean Tucker won’t ever go to law school? Is this the beginning of a permanent fashion statement for Cindy? What are they rebelling against? Perhaps they’re both on drugs. The mind of a worried parent knows no bounds. Parental imagination may run rampant to explain a new hairstyle or a few tattoos. But it is best if parents refrain from jumping in and creating a chasm between themselves and their experimenting offspring. They might do well to recall themselves or their peers at 18 or 19 as well as the reactions of their parents. One mother commented with amusement:

Every time Maggie came home to visit she had a new persona. We sent her off freshman year in the proverbial polo shirt and conservative matching shorts. She prided herself on her neatness, never a hair out of place. We used to laugh about how long she spent taking showers and joked about finally being able to use the bathroom again when she went to college. Her first trip home, we barely recognized her at the airport. She was wearing a thrift-shop version of a Garbo hat, and a lot of somebody else’s much-too-large and very dirty clothes. She explained that she hadn’t done laundry during finals. Our trips to pick her up at the airport became filled with what next jokes between John and me. She never failed to surprise us.

And from another mother:

Tanya got home from school this week, sporting a pierced eyebrow. I haven’t mentioned it, on the basis of the old school playground advice, If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Actually, I think the fact that I haven’t mentioned it might bug her.

But these are just some of the signs of exploration. Young men and women during their college years are defining everything from their sexual orientation and gender identity to their sense of connection to a particular academic discipline or profession. They wrestle with the same questions: Who am I as a sexual being? How do I want to define myself? How does my racial, ethnic, or religious heritage fit into who I am? What do I believe in? What will I fight for? What do I want to do with my life?

INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT: NEW WAYS OF THINKING

How do students go about making these important decisions? Along with the dramatic onslaught of hormonal and physical changes, adolescents undergo a more subtle but equally important intellectual growth. During their college years, students develop the capacity to engage in more complex and abstract thinking.⁴

At the time they enter college, many students see the world in black-and-white, clear-cut, and often rigid terms—a dichotomous view in which answers are simply right or wrong. They view their professors as authorities, the source of all right answers, and assume that their own role is to learn and retain these right answers. For the student who sees the world in this way, absolute truths prevail outside of the classroom as well—right or wrong answers to moral dilemmas, to career choices—and as a result they are often seeking the right answer and are impatient and judgmental of compromises: All jocks are idiots; My dad sold out when he became a banker; All politicians are corrupt; If I don’t make it into the sophomore honors program, there’s no point in staying here.

As students become exposed to the diversity of ideas and people at college, their world no longer looks quite so simple. They gradually move from their clearly defined black-and-white view of the world to one of stimulating but often blinding color—a kaleidoscope of possibilities. Absolute truths no