I see an article where it seems that colleges are increasing counseling services because the students are threatening suicide due to the reelection of Donald Trump. What?
I was in college when the Watergate scandal embroiled the US. Did I care one white? No. I was focused on three things. 1) Girls, 2) Grades, and 3) My part-time job, which allowed me to chase girls. I married in early 1974 which changed my focus a bit, but the grades and partying on the weekend were just about all I had time to worry about.
But then, when I was in college, we were supposedly adults. We could enter into contracts, get drafted, be went to Vietnam and die early. We could also consume alcohol. Life was different then, and no one treated us like children. We were not children, that ended at high school.
Somehow along the way, we lost the idea that there is a bright line that a child steps across and becomes an adult. A time when the entire focus changes. We had college counselors, but there was very little sympathy in those rooms. The message was simple. Grow up, get a life, or go home and tell your momma how bad it is in the real world. I remember one bit of advise I got, that sympathy fell in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. No one cared how I felt.
2 comments:
Yep, we were NOT coddled like the 'kids' today!
Yea, I don't understand the current coddling of young adults.
When I was a kid, there was never any question about whether I'd make my own way in the world after I turned 18, that was just assumed. I could have gone to college and my parents would have supported me, but I wasn't interested so I joined the military. Actually signed the papers at age 17 (with parental permission) but was 18 by the time I went to boot camp...and I had a full time job for the 9 months or so between graduating High School and shipping out.
I had a good relationship with my parents but was never dependent upon them again.
My kids had similar expectations. After age 18 you have two choices, either you're a college student and dependent, or you are an adult. As an adult, if you still live in my house, you pay rent and you help pay for groceries.
They are both now adults with kids of their own (two of my grandkids are now technically adults but both are in college) and are self-reliant, contributing members of society who've never, as adults, been dependent upon me for support.
I'll never understand why anyone would think it should be any different. Our entire purpose as far as our kids go, is to teach them the skills and impart the wisdom they need to thrive after we're gone. If they are still dependent upon us after they attain adulthood, we failed in our purpose.
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