Chopper Attack
As seen in the Oregon Daily Emerald!
Let’s just get to the facts: I’m not paying for my education. Several years ago my grandparents started a trust fund to cover my college education and living expenses so that I would never have to worry about not being able to pay for school. At the start of every term I call my parents and tell them how much money I think I’ll need to pay for rent, tuition, and my uncontrollable hummus addiction, and within a few days that much money magically appears in my bank account. Sure, it may sound very nice, but my life is not without hardship – for example, there wasn’t enough room in my apartment for the tanning bed I got on Amazon, so I just have to walk to the salon like everyone else.
So yes, let’s face it – I am, in one sense or another, spoiled. I’m going to come out of college with no debt to speak of and I’ve never had to live off of Ramen for weeks at a time until my next paycheck came in (although to be honest, I really couldn’t buy very much Ramen with the paychecks I get here at the Emerald). I don’t take any of this for granted, of course, and I am living proof that an abundance of money doesn’t make a person wise, cultured, or even tolerable. If you still think I’m coasting through life on the good graces of my family, though, consider this:
If I were in danger of failing a class or in some trouble with the administration, I understand that calling my parents would be an option. However, if I were to call my parents and ask them to badger a professor on my behalf, I can guarantee you that they’d both take a few days off of work and drive down to Eugene just so that they could personally laugh in my face and tell me “No.” This is because while my parents are willing to fund my escapades in higher education, they’ve always made it clear to me that the escapades in question are mine and mine alone, and I’ve got to deal with the choices I make.
A mother of a college freshman in California, on the other hand, recently traveled to Cal Poly on her own to register him for classes, buy all his books, and meet with his academic adviser. In Texas, one girl’s mother lobbied university housing officials to change her daughter’s roommate, picked her classes, and maintained a constant email dialogue with her professors. And all across the country, colleges have begun to create entire administrative departments devoted simply to dealing with mothers and fathers who are unable to let go of their offspring. They call them “helicopter parents” for their tendency to hover around their children, and if current trends continue, college campuses everywhere will soon turn into a veritable “Apocalypse Now” of concerned guardians.
It’s really embarrassing being a member of the “Millennial” generation (people born between 1982 and 1995) because we seem to have gained a reputation for being whiny, immature, and self-serving – perhaps rightfully so. Parents who, 20 years ago, were hanging yellow “Baby On Board” signs in their Volvos to announce to the world that they had successfully reproduced are now taking a greater interest in college than their children are. While some parents claim that they’re merely protecting the money they invested in their children’s education, the National Survey of Student Engagement found last year that the higher the level of parental involvement, the lower the student’s grades turned out to be.
What these parents don’t understand is that their investment is only worthwhile if their child knows that he or she has to fend for his or herself. This is because the most important thing college offers is independence – for the first time, many students have the opportunity to decide for themselves between studying and beer, and while beer often wins, sooner or later the student in question will pick beer one too many times and learn a valuable lesson, all on his own. If parents are constantly involved – meddling, visiting, parenting – then the whole independence aspect of college is lost, and then it’s just a bunch of classes leading up to a cap and gown and a cheaply printed piece of paper.
This is the reason that your counselors always told you that it didn’t really matter what you majored in so long as you just went to college. What college primarily teaches you is how to manage time and take care of yourself; the educational aspect of it comes second. For example, our own Phil Knight majored in journalism – funny, I know, that a journalism major could find some measure of success or happiness in life – and went on to start a business rather than work for a newspaper. I’ll bet you anything that when he was in college, his mother wasn’t calling him every 15 minutes to see how his experiments with making shoes in a waffle iron were going – she was keeping her distance and letting him figure life out for himself.
So take it from me, the one with the trust fund: It’s fine to have your parents in your life. But what’s most important is that you’re living that life, and not them. Because at some point you’ll enter the real world, and it’s a lot easier to live on your own there if you’ve had a little practice in college.
Of course, recently Hewlett-Packard reported that an increasing number of parents have started calling the company to negotiate their childrens’ pay, so maybe you can just ride the gravy train until they die.
Let’s just get to the facts: I’m not paying for my education. Several years ago my grandparents started a trust fund to cover my college education and living expenses so that I would never have to worry about not being able to pay for school. At the start of every term I call my parents and tell them how much money I think I’ll need to pay for rent, tuition, and my uncontrollable hummus addiction, and within a few days that much money magically appears in my bank account. Sure, it may sound very nice, but my life is not without hardship – for example, there wasn’t enough room in my apartment for the tanning bed I got on Amazon, so I just have to walk to the salon like everyone else.
So yes, let’s face it – I am, in one sense or another, spoiled. I’m going to come out of college with no debt to speak of and I’ve never had to live off of Ramen for weeks at a time until my next paycheck came in (although to be honest, I really couldn’t buy very much Ramen with the paychecks I get here at the Emerald). I don’t take any of this for granted, of course, and I am living proof that an abundance of money doesn’t make a person wise, cultured, or even tolerable. If you still think I’m coasting through life on the good graces of my family, though, consider this:
If I were in danger of failing a class or in some trouble with the administration, I understand that calling my parents would be an option. However, if I were to call my parents and ask them to badger a professor on my behalf, I can guarantee you that they’d both take a few days off of work and drive down to Eugene just so that they could personally laugh in my face and tell me “No.” This is because while my parents are willing to fund my escapades in higher education, they’ve always made it clear to me that the escapades in question are mine and mine alone, and I’ve got to deal with the choices I make.
A mother of a college freshman in California, on the other hand, recently traveled to Cal Poly on her own to register him for classes, buy all his books, and meet with his academic adviser. In Texas, one girl’s mother lobbied university housing officials to change her daughter’s roommate, picked her classes, and maintained a constant email dialogue with her professors. And all across the country, colleges have begun to create entire administrative departments devoted simply to dealing with mothers and fathers who are unable to let go of their offspring. They call them “helicopter parents” for their tendency to hover around their children, and if current trends continue, college campuses everywhere will soon turn into a veritable “Apocalypse Now” of concerned guardians.
It’s really embarrassing being a member of the “Millennial” generation (people born between 1982 and 1995) because we seem to have gained a reputation for being whiny, immature, and self-serving – perhaps rightfully so. Parents who, 20 years ago, were hanging yellow “Baby On Board” signs in their Volvos to announce to the world that they had successfully reproduced are now taking a greater interest in college than their children are. While some parents claim that they’re merely protecting the money they invested in their children’s education, the National Survey of Student Engagement found last year that the higher the level of parental involvement, the lower the student’s grades turned out to be.
What these parents don’t understand is that their investment is only worthwhile if their child knows that he or she has to fend for his or herself. This is because the most important thing college offers is independence – for the first time, many students have the opportunity to decide for themselves between studying and beer, and while beer often wins, sooner or later the student in question will pick beer one too many times and learn a valuable lesson, all on his own. If parents are constantly involved – meddling, visiting, parenting – then the whole independence aspect of college is lost, and then it’s just a bunch of classes leading up to a cap and gown and a cheaply printed piece of paper.
This is the reason that your counselors always told you that it didn’t really matter what you majored in so long as you just went to college. What college primarily teaches you is how to manage time and take care of yourself; the educational aspect of it comes second. For example, our own Phil Knight majored in journalism – funny, I know, that a journalism major could find some measure of success or happiness in life – and went on to start a business rather than work for a newspaper. I’ll bet you anything that when he was in college, his mother wasn’t calling him every 15 minutes to see how his experiments with making shoes in a waffle iron were going – she was keeping her distance and letting him figure life out for himself.
So take it from me, the one with the trust fund: It’s fine to have your parents in your life. But what’s most important is that you’re living that life, and not them. Because at some point you’ll enter the real world, and it’s a lot easier to live on your own there if you’ve had a little practice in college.
Of course, recently Hewlett-Packard reported that an increasing number of parents have started calling the company to negotiate their childrens’ pay, so maybe you can just ride the gravy train until they die.