I first seriously started skateboarding this year. I was too old for it before. Today I skateboarded past a campus tour and saw the parents, and that look. That over-eager expression parents have during the campus tours has always disgusted me.
These parents are desperate for their high school junior or senior to be admitted to “a good school.” The theory is, if the child goes to “a good school” then they will get a “good education” and get a “good job” and of course prove that they had “good parents.”
Of course whole who bit is a self-defeating. A parent can will and buy their children into a “good school” but that school will not breed a sense of discipline or ambition – cue the frathouse keg stand, the sparknotes, unrevised papers, and outright cheating, the semi-abuse relationship and minor std, and of course the pot then the candy.
And those desperate parents will calmly tell everyone that their child is “in a good school” and during the worst of it “just finding himself.”
I guess that’s a term for it.
And most students go through a period of self discovery, but it’s harder for those students who get into college more through the force of their parents will than their own. Those students have to grow up while in college – and rest of us have to ‘grown down’ in a way.
While the parent-forced students exhibit their immaturity through a lack of discipline the other students – who are in college through their own volition (self-forced) – exhibit their immaturity through the harshness of their discipline and expectations of themselves.
The beginning of freshman year if I had to be in bed by 10pm, at the gym at 6:30am, be at least two weeks ahead of the course reading, and work 50+ hours a week. And of course, write 10 pages of my novel a day. No exceptions. Ever. End of story.
The rules were utterly arbitrary and resulted in a thorough iron-clad mediocrity and an all-too-keen awareness of it. If I wasn’t at the gym by 6:30 I wouldn’t go that day. If I didn’t write 10 pages I wouldn’t write any. Etc.
John Elliot would call this ‘overmotivated underachievement’, whereas Brenda Ueland would call it “setting your jaw.” Ueland wrote: “When you will, make a resolution, set your jaw, you are expressing an imaginative fear that you won’t do the thing. If you knew you would do the thing, you would smile happily and set about it. And this fear (since the imagination is always creative) comes about presently and you slide down into the complete slump of several weeks or years – the very thing you dreaded and set your jaw against.”
Exactly. Why didn’t I read that shit before? Shit!
Shit’s right, and “if only” as well. But I eventually did buy Ueland’s little nugget of enlightenment and I’m in a much better place because of it. I did my share of “down growing”, and set to doing things that were fun. I thought “wouldn’t it be fun to skateboard?” Got a longboard and a shortboard – I had been “too old” and “too busy” for it before. And yes, it’s fun.
And no, I’m not too old for it. I don’t care what the middle schoolers say.
And really, that’s why the look on those parent’s faces bothered me. Pulling that string (purse string or influence) to get the kid into this, or any school isn’t really going to ensure them an education – it’s better to have “falling on their ass” (ie being homeless, in debt, etc.) be a very real option.
That nasty possibility is what’s makes people like them stop fumbling and “experimenting” and people like me stop setting their jaw – both problems results in mediocrity and ass falling.
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