Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My freshman is greatly enjoying his first year of college. No, it isn't a ton of fun, but he is meeting other students and has leaned in hard to his studies.
I'm trying not to be preachy, but I think it is important to remember that having the opportunity for a college education is an incredible privilege. This past year has really sharpened and clarified for my kid that the purpose of college is to prepare to be a contributing member of society. This is a generation of kids who are confronting a pandemic, racial injustice, climate change, an go out into the world and do things to effect change. My son's maturity level in the past year has been incredible; I see a real seriousness of purpose and a lack of self pity that is really amazing.
The way I look at it, this generation is being forced to put childish things aside earlier than planned, and is not being afforded the luxury of four years of partying. Yes it sucks, but grow up, get your priorities straight, and if you don't want to go to college because it isn't big fun then feel free to consider the alternatives. I'm sure they are probably hiring at your nearest JBS meat packing plant, the Marines could always use a few good men, and scraping out a minimum wage existence delivering InstaCart is probably a heck of a lot more fun than studying.
New poster. Parent of a college sophomore. This post above is right on. Maybe it's because DC is a sophomore rather than a freshman, but there is a lot of maturity (and yes, some mere resignation) about the idea of "We can't predict everything, so we will do what we must to keep 'going' to college through this."
To OP: Is your son considering a mix of large and small schools? Has he sat down and researched, online, how the colleges he's considering handled the fall semester? He can look for articles as well as the colleges' own materials (which will tend to paint a rosier picture than, say, local news items, or posts on parent/student forums for the colleges). A college that was horrible at containing the virus, did little to no testing, and ended up sending kids home etc. -- I'm looking at YOU, James Madison University -- is one he should reconsider. I would not assume that such colleges are necessarily going to "learn their lesson" and be able to do much better in fall of 2021. If a college on his list had a cohesive, successful plan in place and kept students on campus and/or made distance learning more palatable--that is a school maybe worth moving to the top of his list.
Just FYI, OP: Our DC's small(ish) LAC, with about 2,600 students, of whom 99 percent live on campus, had a full fall semester in person, on campus. DC had about half of classes
in person and the rest virtually. DC is about to head back there for spring semester. There was very, very strict masking and distancing, classes held outdoors as long as possible into the fall/winter, testing, DC never once ate a meal inside the food halls (all food was grab-and-go), immediate isolation of anyone with positive tests, etc.
Smaller schools with almost everyone ON campus can do far better at controlling the spread of the virus than large schools/schools with many off-campus-dwellers can do. It's just a matter of being quite literally able to contain the students and contain the virus. I know one large school did OK because it only brought back freshmen and I think juniors for the fall semester, then has sophomores and seniors on campus for spring semester. So look for colleges that are small or that are thinking outside the box like that. Are any of his schools in those categories?
While things may be much better by this fall, I think that how colleges handled the fall 2020 semester and how they handle this spring semester will be a good indicator of whehter they'll be ready for any resurgence of the virus this fall, or whether they'll blithely assume "the vaccine will make everything fine by then!" and they blow it again.
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