College students’ parents should trust the process
Philadelphia basketball fans are getting excited lately, feeling vindicated about the ‘76ers motto, “Trust the Process.” They see that several years of losing have indeed led to winning, largely through better draft picks and more focused experience for young players.
After seven tough years, this year’s team has a real chance to make it to the NBA finals.
In college, there’s a process too, and it can seem long and painful as well. It involves struggling to make friends and deal with difficult classes. It also includes long, unhappy phone calls home, and half-spoken regrets such as, “Why did I choose this college and not that other one?”
I’ve been listening as my own son works through the ups and downs of his first year, and it’s harder than I expected. As a professor, I know that he’ll get the most of his education if he makes mistakes and learns from them, but I don’t like hearing the frustration when he shares it.
I try to remind myself of the advice I’ve been giving parents throughout my career: Listen to the doubt and frustration when it comes. Say all the right things, and let your child know you’re still there for her. Be the parent you know how to be.
Then hang up and trust the process. When you were in college, you didn’t contact home as often as your children do. That’s not necessarily a sign of your greater resilience. It’s mostly that your children can text or talk to you whenever they want, while you had to share a landline with roommates or even the entire floor. It’s only recently, thanks to cell phones and social media, that they’ve been able to share the highs and lows hourly. Now they can use parents as a lifeline, can call in moments of
disappointment, confusion, or cluelessness. That makes it harder for them to break away, and it makes it harder on you.
Just as the ‘76ers prepared their fans for some rough seasons in order to get to the potential of this year’s three-allstar team, we — professors and parents both — have to give our students space as they find new understanding, selfawareness and confidence. We have to give them room for setbacks. We have to let them fall and get back up themselves.
College students — and the older adults they become — rarely learn the most important lessons the first time they’re exposed to them. Instead, they have to confront a concept, misunderstand some of it, make mistakes in the problems it presents and then confront it again.
That’s an old truism, but it’s worth hearing again. Many of our most creative thinkers talk about their own education, saying, “First I had to fail. Only then could I really begin to learn.” I share a poem with my first-year students on the first day, and it begins with the line, “Make mistakes, but make them the right ones.”
College works when faculty push students beyond what they achieved in high school. Once we get them to a “new normal” for how much they can handle, we push them further still. At my Jesuit university, we call this process the Magis, which is Latin for more. If students are getting B’s, we push for A’s. If they’re graduating with honors, we push them to get Fulbrights. There’s always a next step, always another hurdle to clear, always more to attempt.
So whether you’re a parent of a student at a Lehigh Valley college or university, or an institution further afield, you’re no doubt getting texts or phone calls at home. Just don’t lose sight of the big picture. This process means stumbles, both academic and social. It means eventual high-fives and hugs, but it can also mean a lot of initial “hang in there” and “sorry it’s so tough for you.”
Even though the great Golden State Warriors lurk in the finals, this year’s ‘76ers have a chance to do something special at the end of their process. And my son is finding that, after a period of struggle, things are coming together for him too.
So, parents, it’s not easy, but you’re part of a process, too.
And, like ‘76er fans, you have to trust it.