Parents! Take a Vow of Abstinence!!... From Asking Teens Tedious College Application Questions!

High school students are hounded, ad nauseam, by adults’ compulsive barrage of college application questions: “What colleges have you looked at? Which are you applying to? What’s your first choice?!”

Why do we compulsively pry into high school students’ very personal college decisions?  Surely it can’t be that we believe teens delight in discussing the single most consuming  and anxiety-provoking mission of their young lives.  When “off duty,” teens need respite, not further overdosing on the topic of college applications.  It’s not hard to understand why teens would run for cover and retreat into their shells when adults embark on this line of inquiry. It’s tantamount to asking dental surgery patients to detail the specifics of their upcoming root canals. Or asking unemployed job-hunters to outline where they’ve been turned down, and what prospects remain.

       Might it be that adults feel so awkward making conversation with teens that the subject of college is the only obvious topic bridging the generational abyss? (“Oh; you’re a teen; hmm, – I can’t ask you about your profession or your spouse or your kids, but we do have education in common: I’ll ask about your college search…”) Surely we can call up our engaging socializing energies here to talk about movies, vacations, current events, sports, politics, TV shows, food, travel—ANYTHING but the “ground zero” of high schooler’s greatest angst.

      Might our motivation be to “size them up?” That’s how teens experience these probing personal questions about their college strivings: “I feel like they’re deciding what your net worth is as a human being, basing it on whether or not you’re applying to “name brand” universities.”  Are they looking at the Rolexes or Timexes of the college options? If the adult recognizes the name of the college, then somehow the teen gets a stamp of approval (…not that the teen was wanting our approbation in the first place!) And if the prying adult doesn’t recognize the name of the college, the teen feels s/he has failed to secure a position on the adult’s GPS of respect (e.g. “Huh. Never heard of that one…where is that? Ottawa or something?”)

      Or are we being insidiously competitive, scouting out our child’s rivals in the college sweepstakes? E.g. “I hope Arianna isn’t applying to the same college Zoe is, or Zoe won’t have a prayer of getting in.” Or “if Ryan thinks he can get into “Z University” then surely my kid could too.” Yuck! Shame on us.

       We should include in our “vow of abstinence” refraining from accosting the parents of the high school students, as well. They too seek relief from the “trial-athon” of relentless deadlines, checklists, road trips, meltdowns, late nights etc. Parents of teens, too, are sick to death of college application questions, especially when they sense parents are really looking for competitive satisfaction through probing comparative inquiries. Again, what business is it of anyone but the applicants and their parents themselves, which colleges, tests and essay responses they’re choosing? Nosy parents might claim: “Don’t be so defensive! I’m just curious- we’re all in the same boat, here, after all…” Hardly. Some parents want to gloat down on us from the decks of their supersonic yachts while we paddle madly in our swiftly sinking life rafts.  You know that’s at play when you get the following transparent question: “ My Elliott got his SAT results over the weekend: Charlie must have too. So how did he do? Was Charlie pleased with his scores?” It is tempting to bluntly “bust” these questioners: e.g. “I’m perplexed that you’d ask for such personal information about my son, Louise; could it be you’re engineering a way to tell me how well Elliott did on the test?” It’s tempting, alternatively, to respond uber-competitively in return: “Well, in fact Charlie was not only pleased, but frankly surprised; he thought the SAT was supposed to be a challenging test, but he got a perfect 2400 despite the fact that he’d never once sat down to take a practice exam! And to think he just turned 15!…” (Of course, there’s the small matter of that being a lie, but wouldn’t it be priceless to see Louise’s face?)

In an attempt to engage out of our highest and best selves, perhaps we should aim to preserve our teen’s privacy while also not participating in this game-playing. E.g. “I know, Louise, that our children’s test scores are of great concern to all of us these days, but I promised Charlie I would not talk to others about his college application process; it really is information that is personal, and therefore, only his to divulge or not divulge to others. I hope you understand.”

Teens are often given a bum rap as ill-mannered oafs, but frankly, in this context, we adults are the inconsiderate ones, while our teens are commendably gracious in response to our coarse and invasive probing.  Again and again, teens are confronted with their parents’ friends and relatives who, within seconds, pounce with a prying college question. (“3-2-1…there it comes!”) There is one advantage to this thoughtless propensity by adults worth highlighting, however; that is that if our teens don’t feel ready to leave home when they embark on the college application process, they sure as heck do by the time we tedious adults are done badgering them with our boring “Groundhog-Day” “where do you want to go to college” questions.

We’ve socialized our teens so well that they feel they are unjustified setting reasonable limits with us adults, as legitimate as that would be. (E.g. I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Putz, perhaps after ALL your years on this planet, you don’t realize that whenever folks like you ask questions about college hopes of teens like me, it makes us want to barf all over your shoes;…I’d hate to ruin those swell looking orthopedic shoes…oh they aren’t?”) As an alternative, I’ve suggested to teens that they swiftly short-circuit these discussions with a show-stopping answer such as  “I’m applying Early Decision to The Canadian Institute of Aluminum Siding and Screen Door Repair… excellent security in that line of work…”

But the best strategy for this plaguing problem is for the grown-ups to declare a moratorium on college-speak. Let teens incubate their own dreams and hopes undisturbed; let their plans evolve in a protective cocoon that spares them exposure to sullying judgment and meddlesome unsought critique.  Sport a lapel button, that proclaims: “I PROUDLY PRACTICE PARENTAL ABSTINENCE… from asking tedious college application questions!”