Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | fall 2005

FALL 2005
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Cover Story:
Athletes & Academics

Feature:
Dancing in Rhythm

Departments:
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THERE'S A NEW KID ON CAMPUS: MINE

It seems lIke I’ve been on a college campus my whole
life. There were my actual college years in the late
1970s, and since then I’ve worked 23 of the last 25
years in higher education. Every year is a comfortable, familiar cycle: The students move back to campus in August, and everyone gets revved up for a new school year; every May, some graduate, some move back home for the summer, and the campus is quieter for a few months. Then in August, the cycle begins again. It’s the same every year.

Except this year. This year is different. This year, my own kid is starting college, and I’m looking at the college life cycle in a whole new way. This year, I am the mom who is buying the refrigerator for the dorm room and trying to figure out how to build the loft. This year, I am the mom who is stressed out: Will my daughter and her roommate get along? When will she decide on a major? Will she adapt to living in the residence halls? (Her room seems so small!) Will she be independent at Iowa State, even though she grew up in Ames and my office is right across the street from her dorm?

The getting-ready-for-college process seems a lot more sophisticated now than it did when I went off to college in 1977. My sister drove me to Maryville, Mo., for a half-day orientation the summer before I enrolled at Northwest Missouri State University. That day, I registered for classes (we still “pulled cards” back then, in the dark ages before online registration) and then went back home. My parents drove me to campus the weekend before classes began, dumped me off at Hudson Hall, and said, in a nutshell, see ya at Thanksgiving.

Back then, it was sink or swim.

I’m sure my parents cared about me when I was away at college, but they seemed so distant. Not only did we not have e-mail or cell phones back then, we didn’t even have telephones in our rooms. So a call home on the pay phone down the hall was a big deal, and a big expense. We rarely talked. We wrote letters back and forth (those quaint paper/envelope combos that require a stamp – remember those?) and I went home a couple of times a semester. If the choice was sink or swim, I swam my little heart out. I thoughteverything about college was a blast, and I becameindependent very quickly.

Today’s student is more prepared for the college
transition, and so are the parents. No more sink-or-swim mentality for these kids. Our family spent two
full days in student/parent orientation this summer,
getting Katie (and us) ready for the college experience. I now know how to read the university
bill, what a midterm is, where to buy the lumber for the loft and extra-long sheets for the bed, what to expect during move-in day, and what to do if Katie gets homesick and wants to drop out of school. I learned about the computer network and the health center and the Parents Association and the Dean of Students office and Destination Iowa State. I learned what all those crazy Iowa State acronyms mean (well, OK, to be honest I still don’t remember what most of them mean). I have a 52-page parent handbook filled with every bit of pertinent information I would ever want. I am obsessively prepared.

It’s still summer as I write this, and Katie’s college
career is a blank page. It’s exciting and scary and
wonderful. By September when you read this, she
will have learned to find her way to all of her classes,
figured out how to fit all of her shoes and purses in
her teeny closet, learned where to go to get a hepatitis shot, navigated CyRide, and gotten used to sleeping in a loft with her face two feet from the ceiling.

She will have started a brand new life at Iowa State.

About the Writer | Carole Gieseke is the editor of VISIONS magazine.