College readiness. Not.

My Daughter’s Been at College for Two Whole Days: 12 Text Strings That Challenge My Sanity

Can I Survive Four, or Five or Ten More Years of This?

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

Two whole days. My daughter’s been at college for two interminably long days and I’m already losing it. Not in a “I need to pick her up right now and lock her in her childhood bedroom until 2036” way, but more like a “I’ve failed as a mother because I didn’t prepare her adequately for the real world of predatory Uber drivers, excessive dorm food carbs, or Cornell method notetaking” way.

I thought I’d provided her with the necessary tools to succeed as an “emerging adult,” as the eighteen-year-old plus set is now called. Wrong. I’ve invested in math tutoring, Girl Scouts, that one season of soccer, vacations to become a “citizen of the world,” and bootcamp at grandma’s house. So she’s ready to spread her wings at college, right?

Here is a mere sampling of my responses to my daughter’s texts in the first two days of college. Text only because apparently phone calls are reserved for financial transactions only.

1. Remember, you take the green shuttle to downtown, not the blue shuttle. Why are you on the blue shuttle again?
2. You met this guy…