Mary Angel

(2/2020) To college or not to college, that is the question! When you have children, there will be stages and milestones in their lives. Early on it will be walking and talking, and then the first day of school, then the miles stones can vary. There can be first kisses, first periods, first dates, and so many more "firsts". When they hit high school, things get a bit more serious. Early in high school, your child will be introduced to the amazing concept of college. College isn’t necessarily the milestone at this point, but decided whether to go to college is.

When my first child hit ninth grade, he did not have an email of his own, so he used mine on the rare occasion he needed one. This worked out fine in middle school for an app on the kindle or for emailing an assignment to himself that needed to be completed over the weekend. As ninth grade progressed into the fall, something happened. Suddenly my email was being inundated with all of this information about college and more so from colleges. I am not exaggerating when I say I started getting twenty emails a day. That twenty quickly escalated to fifty and above as I was now getting emails from the military and career websites and college affiliated companies. My "baby" was only in the ninth grade and I felt like he was getting ready to move out. On a side note, I couldn’t find my important emails amongst all of the college craziness. Might I encourage all of you to get your child their own (monitored) email while they are still in middle school?

With this particular child, he had always wanted to be an actor, so if he went to college it would be to study theater or musical theater. We waited until the summer between tenth and eleventh grade to start touring colleges. At this point, our son knew he wanted to go to college and had a formed an opinion on location and size of school where he would want to go. Again, I was thrown off guard. There are way more colleges than I realized, no matter what your criteria. My next bit of advice would be to start touring schools earlier than we did, if you can. It took me until my second child to figure this out. Our second son didn’t have a clue what he wanted to be when he grew up until he was in the tenth grade. Late in the tenth, grade he announced he wanted to be a teacher. So, once again we were late on touring campuses. I would suggest, even if your child is not sure they want to go to college, that you squeeze in at least a few visits in their sophomore year. Think of it as a preemptive strike to protect your sanity.

One of the reasons you need to start earlier is that it will give your child more time to take and retake the SAT to maximize their scholarship opportunities, it will give you more time to schedule all of these visits, and it will allow as much time as possible for the many college applications and essays. These visits may also help them narrow down their search much earlier. For some of my friends’ kids, it helped them get off the fence about going to college (some did and some didn’t). After all, college isn’t for everyone.

The more and more you read, there is a shortage in our country of young people going into blue collar, non-college careers. My dad and my brother were both electricians and they made a much better living than I did with my college degree. Don’t misunderstand me, I loved the career I chose, but it never paid as well as a trade. My brother actually went to college, but hated English classes to much that he dropped out. All of my kids have gotten multiple version of the "you don’t have to go to college" speech. In some form or another we explain that they do have to get a job and they will not be living with us forever, then we go on to tell them that they need to make their own path and find a career that can support them (and a family one day) and that will make them happy. Our fifteen year old daughter actually just got accepted into the cosmetology program at the Tech Center. She says she would like to go there and then maybe spend two years in community college to get a business degree so she would be more prepared to open her own salon one day. Just goes to show that there are even combination choices of a trade and college.

There was a time when I told my kids that they needed to play rock, paper, and scissors to see who would be a plumber, carpenter, cosmetologist, and mechanic. After all, how set would I be to have all of that in one family! Whatever they choose it is a step in the right direction. At one point they wanted to be, in no particular order, a carnival worker (because she liked to ride rides), a McDonald’s worker (because he loved the Big Mac jingle), an actor (because he loved to make faces), and my sidekick (because she was never going to leave me). I am not sure any of these can support me in my old age. At one point, the Bic Mac lover did decide he wanted to be an architect/ carpenter combo and he was going to design and build me a house at Walt Disney World. That sounded pretty spectacular to me (albeit unrealistic)!

The reality is that some kids will go to college and some won’t. Now a days, going to college doesn’t guarantee you a job, and depending on your major, it might guarantee you the unemployment line. My major in the last few years was announced to be one of the top majors 'not' to major in. Go figure, I take 20 years off to raise my kids and now I am obsolete. We need to hope and pray that our kids choose a career path that can support them and that will bring them a sense of happiness.

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