It is always a family milestone when your oldest graduates from college, but parallel to that, it also marks the end of our own collegiate learning process as parents. My oldest son, John, graduated from the University of Florida with honors last week, and we’re as proud as can be. Smart kid, and he worked his ass off to get there. For the wife and me, it was a “graduation” from our own journey on the misconceptions of how to “get a kid through college.” The trial and error, such as, do you put him in the dorm, live in a frat, or what about a small off-campus apartment for housing? Allow him to take online classes or not? Buy the meal plan, doesn’t he need a car, an allowance, books, and flights back to Bangkok? Pay his bills or make him get a part-time job? What should he study? After four years, what you gradually realize is that you shouldn’t be making the tactical educational decision and should trust your son to make his own calls. What I really was most proud of that graduation day in Gainsville was not that John had a UF sheep skin with his name on it, but that he had taken charge of his life and education over the last 4 years, learned the lessons, made the good choices, manned the fuck up, and truly earned the right all on his own to cross that stage at the Swamp. He was an adult, independent of his parents, had outgrown the nest, and had the tools to set off on his own. Full credit to John for “managing” first-time parents to support his education appropriately and for carrying the ball on his own across the goal line, all with family 12,000 miles away and in a new country he had never really lived in. Go Gators!
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