It’s been mostly quiet here. X emailed lawyer to try to ‘work out summer schedule’ since he heard I have big plans to take A to California. The real story is that I mentioned in passing to A that if he wanted to go look at colleges, we’d do our best to make that happen. Of course, being a child of a narcissistic parent, A’s plan is to get as far away from here as he can get.
Goodbye Maine. Hello California.
For the last year or so he’s gotten his mind set on the idea that he wants to go to school in California. I’ve tried to nicely interject other ideas, Texas, Florida, Virginia….but he’s just grunts or says, “I don’t know.”
Who knows what the reality of his master plan will actually shake out to be – but in the meantime, I feel like its my parental duty to entertain these dreams while peppering them with a dose of reality. “You don’t want to live on campus? I hope you plan to save enough money for first, last and security on an apartment. Plus you’ll need a steady job to be able to pay rent…all while going to school full time. Some college require freshmen to live on campus at first.” To which he replies his standard teenager answer to everything, “I know.”
The other fun part of college conversations is talking about tuition. I somehow have managed to get my son to age 16 and he has no real concept of money. At least it doesn’t feel like it. I’ve already made it clear to him that his step father and I do not have the means to help him pay for school. At one point his father talked about moving to where ever A wanted to attend college to set up residency so A could get in-state tuition. We’ve all seen how that’s worked out. College, out of his home state, is expensive. We’re talking the difference between 10k per year and 40k per year. So, I tell my delightful teenager, “After four years, if you can even finish in four years with needing a job to pay for rent and all, you can either be 40 thousand dollars in debt or 160 thousand dollars. Just so you understand what that equates to, your first house probably will cost less than 160 thousand dollars.”
To which he replies, “I know.”
This week we’ve arrived at “I picked a college.”
Yes. A college.
Not three.
Not a few.
Not 10.
One.
So we had the conversation this week about needing a few ‘back up plan’ schools. I asked if he’d consider schools in states other than California. Would you consider Florida or the Carolinas? Were there states I could cross off the list to not even look at schools in?
His exact words over chat were “iddddkkkkk”. Yes, you’ll be a stellar addition to any college campus.
I told him to look at other schools near the one he’s chosen, and we’ll talk more. This is where I learned that my son is geographically challenged. He said he found more schools, and he sent me the link to check out his college site. His list grew from one to 12. However, all 11 new schools were in either Utah, New Mexico, Arizona or Colorado. I know, on a map they look “CLOSE” to California, but they aren’t.
This morning he said he had to weed out that list of 12. Some of the schools wanted him to have taken more science classes than he’s planning on taking.
Sigh. This is quite a process.
So if anyone knows of any 4 year, co-ed college or university that will cost less than 40k a year, offers a business degree, doesn’t require more than 3 years of science and is within 4 hours of Sonoma, please let me know!
Looking Forward 