If you’re reading this, you may be a parent or guardian of a Tufts student. Maybe you’re even the parent of a first-year, in which case this letter could possibly help you all the more. Or possibly you’re just a Tufts student trying to spy. Whatever the case may be, your child’s transition to college is certainly hard, and we feel for you. Remember, it’s hard for us too! As the Editorial Board, we hope reading the Daily can help you feel more connected to what’s going on in your student’s world.
We can’t imagine going from seeing your child just about every day to hearing only their voice on the phone every so often or seeing them just when the semester ends.
And you just get thrown into the deep end.
One random day in the summer, it all just stops. When one editorialist’s mother dropped him off at Tufts, she cried so much in the Uber leaving school that the driver (who didn’t speak any English) pulled over to get her tissues out of his trunk. Rest assured though, it will start to feel normal. Maybe it already has — by the time this Parents and Family Weekend has commenced. When that very same mother was trying to comfort her friend about to drop off their own son, she said not to worry because “after a while [she] didn’t even miss him.”
We also sympathize with fellow students who do not have support from their families for whatever reason. Entering college is difficult enough; doing so without parental guidance is even harder.
For most parents, after the first month and a half of school, there will come an exciting two days in which you will experience what it is like to be a student on the Hill: Parents and Family Weekend.
We hope that during Parents and Family Weekend you’ll see that our rooms are (relatively) clean and that we haven’t starved to death or frozen solid. We always welcome your help, but there are plenty of things we have to just figure out for ourselves.
Many of us experienced multitudes of identity crises throughout our first years … and second years … and every year. We struggled with finding good friendships, choosing (and rechoosing) our majors, and figuring out who we were outside of our hometowns.
These problems were ones that our parents couldn’t solve for us. But when we called them, they picked up and they listened.
We have found that independence, making our own decisions and living with them, is the key to confidence. Our parents don’t need to solve our problems for us. Your guidance comes best in the form of helping us develop a toolkit that we can refer to when we face our challenges. The support of parents, in that regard, is never-ending.
Parents, your kids still need you, they just need you in a different way. Gone are the days of you managing our day-to-day — I mean, we got into Tufts; we should know how to complete our homework and do our laundry.
But for the big things, the more important things than homework and laundry, expect us to call. And if we don’t, please reach out. Our roles in each other’s lives are changing during this exciting period, not going away.
College is no doubt a time of growth. But growing doesn’t have to mean growing apart. After the 3 a.m. nights, the apple picking, the hour-long Green Line rides, the heartbreaks and the friendships, we’re still your kids. A couple months’ break from seeing you isn’t long enough for us to forget that.
