BCoE & MSU Quick LinkBagley College of Engineering

Mississippi State University

Alumni Foundation

Giving

Making the transition

The last items of their personal belongings are finally moved into their dorm room, the family shares a good meal, while the inevitable moments, the hugs of good-bye draw ever closer. Driving off the college’s campus there is the planned last glance at your now college freshman walking away and promises that these will really be the last waves of goodbye. Although this is the first step in the separation process for a child to become a healthy young adult, it doesn’t seem as easy as the experts touted. Well, congratulations, it isn’t easy and rest assured many parents who are sending their kids off to college for the first time are experiencing the same feelings, and they are all normal emotions.

The key now to making sure your child has a successful transition into college depends on parents’ future interactions with them. According to Donna Reese, associate dean of academics for the Bagley College of Engineering and a college parent herself, those acts of communication can feel a bit like a balancing act of being too involved and too distant.

“It’s kind of interesting because there are two types of parents. Those who are college graduates themselves, who may be doing this for the first time, and parents whose child is a first-generation college student,” observed Reese. “More than likely, both are sharing similar feelings of separation, however, the parents of the first-generation college student are probably feeling a little more anxiety, because they don’t know what their child can expect. Whatever their situation, the key point to remember is to advise the child to get to really know their academic adviser. It’s in these situations that they become invaluable.”

Typically, as a college student moves in, they experience feelings of excitement and look forward to the “welcome events” the Campus Activities Board and others have to offer. However, after the initial thrill of exhilaration passes and college freshmen realize this is their new home and not a temporary vacation destination, they will, more than likely, experience being homesick. This is when parents are challenged the most to overcome the feelings of running to their college student’s side to make it all better.

Robert Green, undergraduate coordinator for the BCoE, gives parents this advice. “Send care packages, listen, have compassion, reassure them that things will get better, and remind them that fall break isn’t too far off. One of the worst things is to support them returning home every weekend or parents visiting more than a few times a semester. It is just really delaying the inevitable and that is letting them learn how to live on their own.”

Reassuring for parents is that college is one of the safest places for their child to learn more responsibility and to make decisions. The upside is that a college campus offers academic advisers, college counselors and other experts who are available to help them learn from their mistakes. The advantages of experiencing life skills in a learning environment usually means the penalties are not as severe compared to a situation where they are suddenly thrust into the real world without any support resources.

“One of the hardest things for a parent to do is to let the child fail at something, but that is the only way they will learn that they have to be on the ball, plan and have time management skills. If the parents keep doing everything for their child, they will never develop those skills and become a responsible and successful young adult,” explained Reese.

Young adults communicate through text messaging on their cell phones, writing e-mails and accessing social online networks, such as “Facebook” and “MySpace.” If parents have cell phones, college experts advise adding the text messaging option to their plan.

“Become aware of how your children communicate. I communicate with mine through text messages, because it is their method of communication. It’s what they use with their friends and it’s a more natural way for them to communicate,” advised Reese. “Also text messaging helps me to know when it is alright to call, because I don’t know their schedule. Through text messaging I discovered the best times they would really welcome a call from mom and dad.”

Knowing the methods of the how, when and where of your now young adult’s communication habits and schedules is generally a good rule to follow, however, there are some lines a parent should never cross.

“Ideally, the parent should let their child handle whatever college situation he or she comes across. A parent contacting a professor for attendance and grade information is inappropriate, and it creates an embarrassing scenario for their college freshman,” commented Green. “High school is over, this is college and it’s time they become responsible young adults.”

Of course there are extreme situations where parents need to intervene by calling the Dean of Students’ Office. Those circumstances involve noticing that a child is withdrawn and not being able to cope with daily activities.

“We have a wonderful group in the Dean of Students’ Office and they have discrete ways of calling a child and checking in on them. For instance, I’ve overheard them make one of those calls,‘We’re selecting students at random and asking them to come in and tell us how things are going, how we could improve our services, we would like to invite you to come in and help us with our survey.’ One phone call can make the difference because it is someone other than a parent reaching out to help them open up and get them out of their shell.”

Green added, “It has been my experience that the students who have the biggest problems transitioning into college are those who have had the strictest backgrounds, the students whose parents dictated and monitored every step while they were in high school. When the student gets to college, they discover they are free and they can go wild. They lack self-discipline and self control because they were never taught to develop it. Now, they can stay up all night and play video games, not because they really want to, but it is because they can.”

By: Diane Godwin