We were on the west coast visiting colleges this week. Every information session and tour makes that school sound like the best place on the planet. Compared to being a grownup, I suppose, any college is fantastic. This is the second (and last) time we’ve been through this process and both times it’s provoked existential angst about my own college choice.
Back in those days, we made our college selections based on the flimsiest of reasons, with next to no research. Looking at five schools this week (and this is only the very beginning), I can’t help thinking I’d have had a better experience at pretty much any of them than at the school I attended. Sure, there are people I wouldn’t have met, but I probably could have been happier overall without the excessive Greek influence and the southern preppy culture. I was a girl from the soybean fields of the midwest. What did I know from debutantes? I spent four years muddling through, without ever considering any other options. I probably should have transferred, or gotten involved in more campus activities or sought out a mentor or somehow gotten more out of the experience. Would that I could do it all over again.
It’s true: “Youth is wasted on the young.” (George Bernard Shaw)