Recently an e-list I frequent with many midlifers who adopted from China has been abuzz with discussions about getting into a Good College. The list has a large number of damnyankees who seem to be much more fixated on the Ivies than the rest of the country (sweeping, mass generalization. My blog. Deal!)
I never thought about getting into the Ivies. Now I wish I had at least tried. It would have done me a lot of good both personally and professionally to get away from the South at that age.
Let me tell you the Southern viewpoint *I* was raised with. And remember I was raised by two parents with a total of 2 bachelors, 3 masters, and 1 Ph.D between them, so it's not like I was raised in a household unfamiliar with the caste system of academia.
What do them snooty Nawthern schools have that you can't get down here while slipping off to the beach for a quick tanning session and without being required to buy a winter coat?
First of all, they're too expensive. If you think we're paying your fare back and forth....we have to eat, you know.
Second of all, ywanna be either a journalist or a lawyer? Well, the University of South Carolina has one of the top J-schools in the country. (we "insiders" call 'em J-schools. You can borrow it). And if you wanna stay in SC, why not attend law school with your friends for the rest of your life?
Ya think ya gonna come back down heah from Haaavard Law and fit in with all the USC law grads?
"Well....yes."
No matter about that. My LSAT scores barely got me into Arnie's Night Plumbing, Deer Dressing, Barbering & Law School. Good old math, always ready to punch holes in my rosy dreams. Math idiocy or fibro? Which has been my worst enemy? Tie.
When I think about trying to shove the girls into a Good College, an article I read in Newsweek clatters around my dreams like the ghost of Jacob Marley. Two people received a Ph.D. in Religion. One from Harvard, one from a school right under Harvard. Still a very prestigious institution, as I recall.
The Harvard guy was immediately welcomed into a tenure track professorship and given a year to write a book before he had to teach a single class.
The woman, Deanna, was making $22,000 a year adjuncting at four schools. (I don't remember her real name).
The article contained the most unintentionally hilarious statement I have ever read. "Deanna," the sentence began, "knew that her concentration, Irish Catholic saints, was a hard field to break into, so with an eye to practicality, she chose to focus her dissertation on the later Irish saints instead of the early ones."
Ya want fries with that, don't ya.
Happily, I googled Deanna a few years later and she had a tenure track job, I think.
But these days young at heart parents have to think about our own retirement and several of us agreed that sending our child to a school where they would receive a bill for $100,000 in student loans tucked in their diploma holder was simply insane.
My parents had no problem telling me that they expected me to graduate with a degree that had a market built into it. Their parents told them the same thing.
We're middle class here, people. Our last name is not Gates, nor is it Rockefeller. We have to be practical.
This is all probably moot. Our girls seem to think that Daddy is the repository of all wisdom here and beyond and since he is a fervent University of South Carolina fan and (I did receive an excellent education there myself so I can't really argue) they are already in love with USC and if they go there I'll be perfectly happy.
We have lottery help for instate schools and that is exactly where they will be going barring a full ride offer elsewhere.
Meredith would probably do better at a smaller college, but she's in 4th grade so I'll think about that tomorrow just like Scarlett. And we do have some great small state colleges here, like Winthrop.
I personally have more questions than answers, and the girls will choose their own path so why am I sitting here thinking about it anyway?
I guess I just want them to go to a good college.
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