I went on my sixth college visit with one of my daughters this week. Making it exactly six more college visits than I went on with my parents. I didn’t even visit the college I went to. I just showed up donning an Ogilvie home perm with my acid wash jeans and hot pot. No disrespect to my parents. I don’t recall that that was a thing back then. I also don’t recall how we possibly looked up and applied to colleges before the internet. Thanks, Al Gore.

It’s a funny thing, looking at colleges with your kids. It’s a little bit like “Say Yes to the Dress.” You figure out a price point you’re comfortable at, try a few on, get the opinions of your friends and parents, and figure out which bridge connecting high school to adulthood you are going to traverse.

But instead of fashion director Randy clutching his hands under his chin and looking at you lovingly under his well-groomed eyebrows asking if you are going to say yes, you have fellow student Julie, who is decked out in school colors down to a red and yellow statement necklace. Julie hopes you liked your visit. Julie hopes you will join her. Julie will let you borrow her school logo infinity scarf.

In each visit I have been on, it’s the parents who ask the questions in the group settings, while the kids look mostly like they want to die because their parent drew attention to them, or worse, asked a dumb question.

Confidential to kids: we can’t help it. As parents, we listen to admission advisers about acceptance standards, look at dorms, and ask about meal plans and try to make sense of the new world of higher education that has evolved since we showed up at college with our electronic typewriters, back in the day when our schools didn’t have six rec centers. With rock-climbing walls. And a lazy river. And a smoothie bar.

As much as I might want to make the decision about where my kids should next call home for four years, I can’t. I’m trying not to be a helicopter parent. I’m trying to be more like a paper airplane one. Gliding in, and not hovering overhead. And instead focused on asking them what’s important to them. And figuring out if they can see themselves on the various campuses we visit.

My oldest wanted to continue running track in college, and when she found her school, she knew it. She knew like you know a good melon. Conversely, she knew almost instantly schools she didn’t want. Like the one where the track coach tells us they don’t actually have a track, and they run on a nearby high school track. And, he offers the fact that the school doesn’t have a football team as a selling point because my daughter won’t have to share weight machines with football players. That was about the point when she says, “um I date football players.”

We haven’t hit that “aha!” moment with my middle daughter yet, but we will.

Roundtrip driving time for sixth college visit: 10 hours.
36 hours of one-on-on time with my second born=priceless.

While on the campus on this latest visit, I saw a woman taking a picture of her daughter in front of the college sign. I asked her if she wanted me to take a picture of the two of them. She said no, her daughter wouldn’t let her. Then she asked if I wanted her to take one. I did.

“Your daughter is going to take a picture with you?” she asks, incredulously.

“Yes,” I tell her.

“Well, YOU have a good daughter,” she said, more to shame her own than to praise mine.

“Yes, I do,” I said.

Actually, I have three. And pretty soon, I have to hand another one off to live somewhere else and make new friends and figure out what she wants to do with her life in a place she chooses. Fortunately for her, she will do so without the perm and bad jeans.

As for me, I am focused on enjoying the ride. I mean that quite literally. We had 10 hours of car time together on this visit. Through acres of cornfields. And stops at Taco John’s. And odors coming from some farms that made my eyes water, like hearing “The Christmas Shoes” song.

And like the five visits before this one, I would not trade that one-on-one time with some of my favorite humans for anything.