The College Talk Blues

I hate "College Talk". This is Kid 1's last year of high school and I am already dreading the many "momversations" I'm going to be lassoed into this year. This is a rich town with super competitive parents and kids. Everything is a contest. SAT scores, how much a parent spends on tutors, how many schools your kid is applying to, which schools your kid is applying to, blah, blah, blah. It bores me silly. Actually, I find it irksome. Extremely irksome because I don't care. For whatever reason--I guess I'm insecure--I resent the assumption that I'm going to take part in this insane senior year ritual. Because I'm not. We're not. We don't have a quarter of  a million dollars to spend on some private college which will pretty much guarantee that Kid 1 will be unemployed after graduation. And the truth is, if you think sending your kid to any small, expensive private college for four years is automatically worth the money, I think you're an idiot. A well-heeled idiot but an idiot nonetheless.

A week or so ago, a mom was telling me about how they'd hired an educational consultant to advise them on whether their child in his junior year should take the SAT or the ACT exams. I feigned interest. I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears and sing off-key like Mork. "I don't care. I don't care. I don't care," or maybe "neener, neener, neener".

Talk to me in February. Tell me where your child is going and I'll be genuinely interested and happy for you and your kid. Until then, spare me your angst.


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