I’ve noticed a lot of this and similar things like “orientation will tell him” and the like. But everything has been virtual this year and super complicated. And by complicated, I mean, we can’t just go to one web site and find out everything. Every single thing has a different web site, or different portal, or different requirements. It’s amazingly frustrating.
Schedule? log in here
Engineering program? log in to this different place
Housing? different log in
Orientation? Log in here
I’d normally just say “Figure it out” but it’s a significant amount of money so I want to make sure everything is done.
One thing to remember: the access to information that you have as a parent and what the student has may be very different. Parental access is often more fragmented and compartmentalized than what your student will have access to. The school doesn’t really care if you can figure out dorm laundry or how to use the meal plan but they will do a good job of presenting comprehensive info to their students.
Buy yourself a Virginia Tech Dad t-shirt (or two) in the bookstore, hug your kid goodbye quietly and drive home. It will be ok. Get the mom a t-shirt. It’s scary for us too.
Things last year were no doubt a mess. But count your lucky stars. When I went to college you got your schedule by winding through 20 or so stations in the athletic center. It was great when my kids could do that online before the term started.
I was lucky in that I went to a relatively small college. I went to grad school in an enormous state U, but luckily grad students didn’t have to mix with undergrads to get a schedule. And we did this without parental assistance.
Your student will probably be able to figure it all out a lot better than you.
Did that. His mom is on her own I’m pretty sure my job this weekend will be trying to keep her from micromanaging the move in. We are divorced, but my own internal moral compass prevents me from telling her “just leave him the f*ck alone” LOL
Has he ever done laundry for himself? There are always some first-year students who have not. I recommend making sure he understands how to separate laundry (if necessary), how to load the washing machine without overloading it, how much detergent to use and so forth. My mother took me downstairs and explained this all to me.
I think I was the first to mention laundry. The biggest issue, to my mind, is whether he’ll need quarters for the machines. If so, it’s nice to start off with a bunch (perhaps a roll from the bank) so he doesn’t have to scramble when he’s trying to do a load.
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But it is true that these are the sorts of things that do work themselves out, so there’s no need to stress if you don’t have the time or inclination to figure it out. There’s no real secret to going off to college other than the fact that he’s going to have to figure out some adult life maintenance (e.g. basic food prep/cooking, cleaning clothes) that he might not have had to worry about when he was living at home.
There is some sort of VT passport that somehow has money on it or something. LOL, it got too complicated for me to figure out but I don’t think they use actual physical money anymore.
If he’s fine with her micromanaging the move in, let her.
I’m the parent who has micromanaged three move ins - I was the only parent to get invited to the apartment move in last year and the dorm suite the year before. This will be the first year I’m not heading off to help jumpstart the year.
Of course, mine has ADHD/anxiety and depression, so a once or twice a year “Mom helps with an executive functioning kickstart” is helpful. Also, there are times where I get very helicoptery with my kid - again, executive functioning can use some help.
Give your kid what they need. That may be far less than you want to. Or it may be far more than you would like. One of my girlfriends with an ADHD college kid says that every semester there is one course that she “takes” along with her daughter - so they can have a Mom/Daughter study group. To an outsider, that sounds helicoptery. To someone with a neurodiverse kid trying to get them through college, that seems like a good idea.
(Her older kid is dyslexic, and she coached him through school as well…he’s now working in IT and just bought a house. The trick is to be the boost, not the crutch)
I dropped my daughter off this morning. Definitely emotional, but I held it together. I’m guessing about three minutes after I left, the fridge was stocked with booze.
I am in the same boat ,I will be dropping my daughter off at NAU in flagstaff on friday, my son heads out next year so it will just be mrs mollusc , our autistic 14yo and me soon.
NAU had a pretty good orientation tour we went to a few weeks back and most things were covered for that and we were going to be traveling light, but the load out has snowballed and it’s going to fill the back of the suburban. Mrs mollusc is usually pretty good about only buying what we need but they have been on countless shopping trips initiated by my wife to get lots of things, some level of comfort shopping I think.
Overall I feel pretty comfortable, and I know our daughter wants to get out and be more out of the house, and this is a good way to start out in life. She has had a few mental health issues and for a while college was not an option, but getting some right meds a good therapist and 4 weeks of 8 hrs a day therapy really helped get her level set , so she is as good to go as she could be.
Essential things, good bedding and a mattress topper for extra comfort, got to be able to sleep well. A tea kettle for the room, and a bunch of toiletries in bulk sizes as those are annoyingly expensive in smaller sizes. Plenty of notepads, her laptop and charger and a few really long phone charger cables and a bedside lamp. Everything else seems like a bonus, and we are taking a lit of bonuses.
I am not too worried about the party side, she is reasonably sensible, and it’s a giant campus university so not too much external safety worries.
I never worried about parties with my older daughter. She went to the University of Chicago, where fun goes to die, which at the time was ranked on the bottom of the list of party schools.
The school I went to actually discourages buying and transporting a lot of domestic stuff since there are a Target and Wal*Mart in the vicinity, and they set aside “shopping time” during the parent/student orientation. In addition, people from out of state may well come out ahead since MT has no sales tax.
(Another factor is probably unload time, since the “new students” dorm doesn’t have a very big parking lot. Once a car checks in and parks, a crew of upperclass volunteers descends on it like a plague of locusts and takes everything to the student’s room; the goal is to handle everything in one swell foop so the car can be moved to another lot and make room for the next family.)
ummm—As a single guy, I think I made it through about a decade on one bath towel.
And, with perfect single-guy logic, I hardly ever washed it.-after all, every time I used it I was already clean from the shower.
I’m pretty sure my job this weekend will be trying to keep her from micromanaging the move in. We are divorced, but my own internal moral compass prevents me from telling her “just leave him the f*ck alone” LOL