College hopping

As we set out of the driveway the first sunny morning of Spring Break, I was reminded of a similar trip I made with my mother.

A high school junior, I sat behind the wheel of her car and headed west toward the edge of the state. The burgundy sedan was new and handled like it, offering a smooth ride that would make me unaware of how fast I was going.

Mom didn’t seem to notice either.

Eighty miles per hour on a highway that stretched out straight ahead and seemed to be hurdling us forward forever, not just the six hours a paper map and our basic calculations could reckon.

Traveling at the same speed, but decades later and with a computer voice guiding us onward in a silver SUV, my daughter steers confidently, keeping pace with the neighboring traffic. Maybe it’s nerves, but we seem to be faster now that I am the mother sitting in the passenger seat.

We won’t be meeting officials or getting the low down on college life from a gaggle of half-dressed frat boys who appear in the hallway, snapping each other with towels as if on cue, as our tour parades through the dormitory.

Those days might not be over, but I can’t say that I’m sad we won’t get to experience such an embarrassment of such riches on this trip.

Honestly, I don’t remember the processes being so fraught.

I picked a direction and followed it. One small decision after another, and here we are, college shopping. But then again, everything appeared to go according to my limited plan. Furthermore, tuition didn’t cost $400,000 and I didn’t have to mortgage a forever home and all the cars I might ever own to pay for it.

My stress grip on the armrest doesn’t go unnoticed. I had phoned a relative; an insider willing and able to provide perspective who would join us in a twocar parade connected by the magic of DNA and invisible waves of pocket technology. I am grateful for both. We learn more than we would have on our own.

Had we guessed which were lecture halls and which were residence halls, we would have been wrong.

Our plan is much less daunting than it seems — two days, four colleges, and a reservation for an overnight stay; is stressful in all of our fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants kind of educational tourism glory.

A hundred years ago, as my mother and I cruised toward my college visits, we had a destination, with an appointment and an application pending. I had put all my eggs in one basket.

My daughter has a zillion possibilities to whittle into a handful of hopeful opportunities. She’s reaching so march farther than I had. She’s worried the baskets will be full before she can put her eggs in.

We don’t know yet whether this uncertainty is a curse or a gift, but we operate as if it is the latter.

We’ll use these experiences to make more educated guesses as we continue to college hop.

Siobhan Connally is a writer and photographer living in the Hudson Valley. Her column about family life appears weekly in print and online.