Posted on 06/02/2005 6:33:25 PM PDT by Huntress
My patience with self-absorbed parents has been wearing thin lately. One Sunday night around 9 P.M., for instance, the phone began ringing every 20 minutes or so for about two-and-a-half hours. There were no voice-mail messages, except for a couple that recorded only an electronic sounding beep. A wrong number? A misdialed fax? Finally at 10:30 P.M., awakened, I hit *69, hoping that if it was a wrong number I could ask whoever it was to please stop bothering me.
But it turned out the caller was a fellow journalist whose son goes to my daughter’s school. I could hear electronic beeps in the background, apparently from her home-office equipment, so obviously it had been her calling repeatedly all night — the way people do when they're trying to flush you out rather than simply leave a message that might be ignored. She knew I'd recently had to start some nasty new fatigue-causing medication, so rightly suspected I was home.
“Well, because I was trying to get hold of you!” she exclaimed when I asked why she'd kept calling and calling without leaving a message. “You see, we've got an urgent problem...” Her ninth-grade son needed info for a team homework project due the next day from a classmate, whose phone number he'd neglected to get, and they didn't have a student directory. “I was hoping you might!” she explained brightly.
“I don't know if I have a student directory,” I said shortly, “but I do know that I'm not getting out of bed at 10:30 P.M. on Sunday night to look for it.” Nor did I have any intention of waking my daughter, who's the one around here keeping track of most school-related info anyway.
The woman sent an apologetic e-mail the next day, although actually it was rather short on the apology and long on the “urgent” explanation, which she apparently felt confident was a completely understandable excuse, if only I could be made to realize her terribly important situation. You see, the classmate was supposed to provide the homework info, but he hadn't, and, well... Etc.
I briefly considered responding with a definition of the word “urgent” concerning late-night phone calls: You have (life-or-death) info that is of vital importance to me. You've just discovered that a psychopathic killer is on his way to my house, for instance.
Not: I might have (non-life-or-death) info that you would like to learn. That is, anything involving your kid's homework problems, which I really don't give a damn about.
But I didn't, I suppose because I've come to realize that some people are just basically hopeless. But what is it with these aging baby boomers who still help their high-school kids out of schoolwork jams and generally continue to treat them like helpless baby birds? Does it have something to do with the parents’ belonging to the when-am-I-gonna-start-feeling-like-a-grownup generation? Do they therefore assume that their own kids should never be expected to behave like grownups?
This seems to be the tacit message of a Morgan Stanley ad I’ve noticed lately in upscale magazines. “Three car payments. Three private colleges. Three weddings,” it begins. A photograph spread over two pages shows three girls in expensive party dresses, evidently sisters, lounging on an equally expensive looking couch. It's an excellent photo, by the way; the girls are pretty but not superhumanly beautiful, like obvious models, and their expressions really do make them seem like sisters: one looks smug, another skeptical, and the third slightly annoyed.
The ad text continues: “I think I am having chest pains. How are we going to pay for all this? Invest? Invest in what? The market is more unpredictable than our daughters.” Then the tag says: “Emotional times require sound, unemotional financial advice.”
Now if these girls come from such a rich family that private colleges and new cars and expensive weddings are their birthright, then lucky them and three cheers for their generous daddy. But if the thought of how to pay for all this gives the unseen narrator chest pains, then here's some sound, unemotional financial advice: Maybe that family ought to rethink what those girls should expect. Maybe everyone would be better off if one or all of them drove used cars, went to public universities and didn't feel entitled to fairy princess weddings at the Pierre. And maybe that wouldn't be the end of the world.
Which brings me to an article I noticed recently in the Los Angeles Times about how college waiting lists favor well-off applicants. Students who need financial aid sometimes find it's used up by the time the college delves into its waiting list.
The photo for the Times piece showed a Los Angeles high-school senior named Alex Lee who has his heart set on Reed College in Oregon. The problem is that because he is only wait-listed at Reed, Alex doesn't know whether he'll be able to afford to go there; Reed has offered admission to 15 waiting-list applicants, but so far not Alex, because he needs financial aid and there might not be enough.
Gee, that sounds kind of rough, that a bright kid (Alex scored 1440 on his SATs) should be disappointed like that. Until you get almost to the end of the story, way down on the jump, where it's revealed that Alex Lee is not just any old high-school senior — he’s graduating from Harvard-Westlake, one of the most exclusive (and expensive) private high-schools in the country. So we're not exactly talking here about a plucky, struggling boy who earned those high SAT scores despite the bad break of having to attend a poor or mediocre school.
But then comes the real kicker: Alex Lee has been accepted, with a financial-aid package, to Pitzer, an excellent southern California school very similar to Reed in that it’s a small, prestigious liberal arts college. He's also been accepted at USC, a fine university that hasn't made him a financial-aid offer yet, but (as the Times piece mentioned in passing) is one of the most well-endowed schools in the country and probably will.
So what, exactly, is the tragedy here? If money is a problem for this family, shouldn't the added transportation costs of attending a distant school make Reed less attractive than one close to home? Apparently not.
“I wish there was some better way to help kids have a chance to go to the school of their choice,” Alex Lee's dad, sounding rather poignant, told the Times. Well, here’s a thought: Maybe the better way would be to help kids realize that when they’ve been accepted at two first-rate colleges, which will cost far less than a third that’s only offered a place on the waitlist with no financial aid, then perhaps it’s time to reconsider what should be the school of their choice.
Awesome post--to which i reply "Guilty".
I had to wake up and realize that people in this world have real problems yet they don't spend their time whining about it. They get off their backsides and get moving.
My son got his bachelors in Japanese Studies 3 years ago Joined the AF and got an AA in Korean. He's now a translator. 15 months to go and then he will go to a Japanese University for his Masters. Paying for it himself. he still laughs at his peers at the UofA taking Art History....."Majoring in starvation" as he puts it.
Claremont Colleges and USC. And the little bastard has the gonads to complain about being on the wait list at Reed.
[laughing my gonads off...]
With respect to cars, you might want to at least have them kick in a good percentage. I knew innumerable kids in high school and early college who were given new, expensive, autos and subsequently trashed them, some repeatedly. I worked like hell to save for a car, and was, at the time, majorly surprised when the Parents kicked in 1/3 of the $2600 on my birthday. I ended up having that car for 7 years, and along the way learned proper "care and feeding" to the point that I had 6 others by the time I graduated college.
Yup, we all are guilty. Life is too good for us NOT to take our blessings for granted.
Here's a wakeup call to those who lack some perspective ...
http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com/
It was the homework that did it, writing essay after essay, and having to read, and then read some more. I hated it at the time (my mommy helped me some through the 4th grade, when I decided relying on mommy was unmanly and degrading), and it was painful, but it made me the master of circumlocution as it were that I am today. It also teaches some decent work habits. Acquiring good habits is work, yes work, lots of work. Homework is good. No pain, no gain. Deal with it.
I think a person learns a lot of maturity from a stint in the service, or working for a while. Kudos to your son!
What's the real LMAO point is that Reed, last I checked, was a leftist indoctrination center ... why p*ss away $100,000 on something you can get for free by subscribing to DU and watching Farenheit 911???
Reed has been a Bohemian type of place since rocks cooled. It is the right place for a few, the wrong place for most.
Torie's theory of education expounded. :)
Blog fodder bump.
Cheers,
knews hound
http://knewshound.blogspot.com/
I owe my college education to environmentalists.
Yup, you heard that right.
You see, I went to college in 1991, just a few years after the wacky environmentalists got the stupid spotted owl on the endangered list.
This caused Weirhauser to close thousands of land they owned for logging. Wood prices went up. Private property owners called in the local tree cutters who then proceeded to strip cut their properties and sell the lumber. (Did I mention that private property owners don't replant trees that are cut like a lumber company would).
Anyway, my father called in the tree cutters to log 4 acres of our property at that time. Made enough money to help finance my brother and I at college.
We never replanted those trees, but turned the land into pasture.
Thank you crazy environmentalists for helping me get through college through the destruction of the trees on our private property!
:)
But what is it with these aging baby boomers who still help their high-school kids out of schoolwork jams and generally continue to treat them like helpless baby birds?
This is purely a coincidence, but today I was getting a haircut and the hairdresser told me the following story which opened my eyes as to why I have completely given up on hiring caucasian young people when job vacancies occur. She told me that her husband had, through business contacts, gotten a job for their 17 year old son at a coffee shop. She laughingly told me that he had lasted two days on the job because his superiors had asked this kid to sweep the floor, wipe down tables and wash some dishes. He informed his mother that he has never done those things at home so why on earth would he do them in public? It seemed perfectly logical to both him and his mother, and solved one puzzle I have struggled with for some time. Our kids are worthless because they are being raised that way.
#2 son didn't receive any scholarships, though his first year he received half the tuition in financial aid. After that, he did the full amount on loans. He finished in 3 1/2 yrs. to reduce the amount he'd be in debt when he was done, but he worked hard enough in that time to get two majors. He's now in Grad School at UT Austin, and thankfully, got a fellowship for that. He'll be paying the loans back when he's all done with school. Again, if he needs any extra cash, we'll gladly lend it, again 'on the tab'.
We told them both, and their younger brother and sister that we intended to have some cash on hand with which to retire, so we weren't paying for their college tuitions. We paid for them to attend Catholic Schools, except for the three years I homeschooled the younger two, and the final two years I'm homeschooling our daughter. But even then, she's taking classes at the local Community College, so there's tuition there.
I believe that if they think the onus is on them to repay the loans, they won't spend all their time goofing off, and will take their education seriously. It's worked so far. ;o)
If you want to teach your child a very important lesson, you buy a 10 year old Ford Taurus with about 100k miles for about $3000. Let them drive it, them paying for maintenance, gas and insurance, for 4 years, then sell it for about $2000.
Cost of ownership - aboout $250 per year. When they start shopping for their own car, $21/month may just register in their newly educated brains as they look at new cars going leasing for $400/month.
Thank you for the link.
So is the author onto something here? Is it that they're baby boomers or that they're aging/older parents? I am constantly amazed by the number of uptight older (agewise) parents (this is a generalization, not a rule)
"I was wondering why so often goodness is associated with good grades?"
Good question....I have no idea. You'd have to get to know my son to understand that he is a good kid. His kindness and concern for other's has always been who he is and even if he did make bad grades in school....it wouldn't change how I feel about him. He takes after his father (thank God)! He's a natural around people and generally brings out the best in everyone....even me. :-)
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