Originally Posted by sheena12
debzkidz, I really appreciate your thoughtful insights into my situation! Your experience truly parallels mine!
Oklahoma, or at least your region of OK, really sounds so much like North Eastern Pennsylvania. The students in the area, even the stellar students, stay at the commuter schools - overwhelmingly. There is even resistance among some of the families to their children leaving even if the student wants to do so, and there are huge scholarship incentives! And the attitude is the same, "There are so many good colleges in the area, why go away?" The other thing I most often here is "Kings, Wilkes, Scranton, Marywood (fill in the blank) was good enough for my wife and me, so why does she need to go away?"
This is culture shock for me! Although we are not Catholic, we chose to send our kids to a Catholic High School because we felt it was better educationally. The school is very college oriented, offers many AP courses, more foreign languages, and in general has a better educational and social atmosphere than the local public High Schools do. However, while it is geared for the college bound student, and 99% of each graduating class goes directly to college relatively few choose to go away.
I asked my son's guidance counselor about this and she too was puzzled - even after working there for 20 years. She told me of a student who was given a very comprehensive financial aid package at a prestigious college in state, only two hours away from home, and she elected to stay home and actually pay more, when you factor in the price of an automobile and all that entails. Another student who was a football player, turned down Notre Dame for a local school because his parents thought it was "too far"
The guidance counselor shared with me that she is able to get some of the students to apply, but even after being accepted few choose to leave!
With my back ground in sociology, I have done a great deal of speculation as to why this might be.
My conclusions are as follows:
1. In this area, people seem to have large extended families who also live here. The families get together often - not just on Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving,- for Sunday dinner, a second cousin's birthday, varies religious milestones, Memorial Day, you name it. What they call "family" I would more term "extended family" or "relatives" Grandparents also figure big into the lives of married couples with children.
Older people, retired Grandparents, do not travel, golf, have hobbies or associate with contemporaries the way that seniors do in my former region. There whole life seems centered around their grandchildren and their needs are secondary or just non-existent.
These "Strong Family Systems" could be contributing to a reluctance to leave the area.
This is the case here as well. Many of the families here have been here since the the Land Run of 1889. They take great pride in being the from the original settling families. They are all very close, and I think it probably goes back to the time when they settled the land, and the family, as it grew, stayed close by to work on the land, and then became the founding families of the various cities and towns. I think a certain amount of it is just that this is where the family power bases are.
2. Greater ethnic identity. The people in my region are mostly white Europeans.Most of them identify strongly with their ethnic roots, although they have been her for a hundred years, some groups even longer.
This is not the case here, or in this entire region of the country, really. Most people do not identify with specific ethnic roots, other than race itself. I personally have never known anyone in my 50 years that identified that identified with a specific European ethnicity. Most white people here are going to be a real hodgepodge of ethnic roots. Additionally, there is much mixing of race, especially along the lines of say, Caucasian mixing with Native Americans.
3. The general homogeneity of the area along racial and ethnic lines. This might lead to fears that students going away to college will marry outside of their religion or ethnic back ground.
Churches here are still very ethnic. I have seen Welsh Presbyterian, Slovak Lutheran, Welsh Baptist, Polish Catholic etc.
3. Fear that the child may not return to the area.
This. Apparently there has been a problem in Oklahoma with our states best and brightest being lured away by companies in other parts of the country, and especially to Texas. I've even heard our elected officials discuss many times what could be done to help retain our top talent. I think the fear is that if the kids leave for college, they will never come back. Which is often the case. I know mine will probably never come back. Not that they don't like the city, or that there are not some great companies here, I just think they will find bigger opportunities elsewhere.
4. Conversely, family connections and ties in the area that would lead to employment during
and after college.
Have you found any of this to be the case in OK?
I am not saying that any of these things are "bad" or "wrong"
However, they don't bear any similarity to my family structure. We DO NOT have a strong network here. In fact, we just relocated here in 2010.
If my family did have a business, they would not look to the family tree while hiring. In fact, they might avoid it! There is so much nepotism in this area, another thing that I have never experienced.
I am thinking realistically about what the "pros" are in sticking close to home, and for our son from our family - there are none.
The other thing that some of the posters forget is that he does not want to stay home - he wants to live at the dorm of a very small private college, and on weekends, visit various friends - not us.
That is not his interest. He also wants a car at the school so that he can come and go at will. The college is very remote and it clears out on the weekends.
The thing is almost every weekend at least a few of his friends have some sort of family gathering, to which he will not be invited. Then what will he do? Go back to an almost empty college? Drive to NYC or back to Long Island to see friends? Well that won't be an option, because except for on major breaks from school ALL of his friends will be gone! All of them!
Both our kids are out of state. The oldest is about 7 hours away, so there was never the illusion of coming home for a weekend. He's about 1 1/2 hours outside of very major city. He thought it would be cool, because he could go there on weekends. The other, our youngest and "homebody" chose a school, that even thought it's out of state, it's only about 3 1/2 hours away. He knew he wanted to go away, but I think there was a bit of security in the fact that he could be home in just a few hours and really planned on coming home frequently. In the end, neither thing happened for our kids. School was way more demanding and time consuming than either imagined. Our oldest never makes it to the city, and the youngest never comes home or goes anywhere else. They just don't have time.
I am also uncomfortable with all of the driving involved in this half-baked plan of his. (no I do not say this to him, I am just venting) I am not comfortable with it at all.
I would rather that he was safely ensconced on a campus, than doing all of this driving and visiting.
I am going to do the following:
1 ROAD TRIP! ASAP! I am going to arrange to visit several colleges,
2. Explore summer programs, especially in his field, to give him a taste of college life. If one really clicks for him, the problem will be solved.
3. Take the car out of the equation. We promised him one of of our cars for his senior year. The thing is, I never said that he could take it to school with him. I will not renege on our promise, but we will say that the car stays home. Where I went to college Freshman were not permuted to have cars, it was a privilege for upper classmen. No car for the first year. Final.
This was really not an option for us. Our oldest attends one of the largest universities in the country. The campus alone covers several square miles, and the town around it is very spread out. The first year we might have been able to get away with him not have a car, because he was able to live on campus (not even enough housing on campus to house each incoming freshman class) and the university transit system is very good, but after that a car was a must. The younger kids university would be doable without a car as long as you could live on campus but no one does after the first year or two. However, the university transit system in not reliable and only runs through town on a very limited schedule. And in this part of the country, there are just not the other good public transportation options found in the east.
I am very grateful for several replies and suggestions.
I have to say that for some reason, my initial post touched a nerve with some other forum members. If you want your children to commute, or to "just be happy," I am not here to judge. Perhaps that's normative where you live or in your family. It is not for mine.
I have read posts from parents who want to dictate their child's major. I have sometimes replied to such people that in the long run, if your student does not like the field, he will not do well.
But I have never called these parents names or attempted to tell them that they were ruining there kid's lives. I feel sure that their hearts were in the right place.
I am a loving and involved parent. I know my son, and historically how he has responded to different situations. I don't know all of the answers, that's why I came to the forum. But that he will do better in a residential environment is not a question, it's a fact.
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