Feeling a shiver of terror creep up your spine? Glimpsing tiny, shadowy figures? You’re not alone. Every few solstices a throng of menacing creatures appears, seemingly overnight, on campus, and we are powerless to stop them. We turn our heads and drop our FoCo to go boxes in fear as we watch these beings take flight, zero in on their targets and descend. Cicadas, you ask. Wasps? Alums? No, friends, I’m talking about your parents.
A few weeks ago, mine flew in, along with my two sisters, my brother-in-law, and my sister’s boyfriend. They came with gaggles of goggles and hoards of hiking boots, having misheard the words “family weekend” as “family week.”
My mother has planned this extended shindig since the day I got into Dartmouth.
“Do you think it’s too late to rent a house for sophomore summer family week?” she asked as I read my acceptance letter. “I bet people reserve houses way in advance!”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her most people wouldn’t start thinking about it for another two years, so instead I advised that she “move it or lose it.”
When the whole crew first arrived I was thrilled, if a little flustered. I wanted to spend every moment with them, but I also wanted to do homework, see my friends and binge watch “The Mindy Project,” as per my normal routine. My sister insisted we work out at 6 a.m. every morning to ensure maximum bonding time, and my parents treated us to off-campus meals that lasted late into the evening. By Wednesday I was exhausted.
The balance between excitement and exhaustion during family visits is one to which many sophomores can relate. Andrea Price ’16 hosted her Seattle-based clan over family weekend, including her sister who had never visited the College because she lives abroad. Price said that she and her family, who enjoy the Northeast, spent most of the weekend hiking and having dinner at the Lodge.
“I’m going home for interim, so I’ll see them all again in a few weeks,” Price said. “The worst part is when they leave you have to go back to eating DDS.”
Olivia Morrison ’16 share’s Price’s “see you soon” mentality when it comes to missing family.
“Our breaks are long enough that we’re only away from home for two-and-a-half months, so we’re not apart that long,” Morrison said.
Morrison, who lives just three-and-a-half-hours from campus in Connecticut, enjoyed getting to spend time with her family over the weekend, especially her pet yellow lab.
Morrison noted that she saw many more dogs on campus during the weekend, which she thought could be because of the number hotels near campus that have begun to allow pets. But, when it came time for her four and two-legged kin to leave, Morrison got right back to work — with a quiz the next day, she began studying once they left.
Kyle Kittelberger ’16, a North Carolina native, believes having space from one’s parents is essential to the college experience.
“I think it’s nice to not be that close by to my parents,” said Kittelberger, who has many friends who go to college much closer to their childhood homes. “Here you can mature on your own and not have your parents guide your way. [They’ve] been with you your whole life, and it’s nice to see them every once in a while, maybe once a term, but you need that term to do your own thing.”
Kittelberger’s sister will be joining him this fall as a member of the Class of 2018.
“I think it will be a great place for her, a place where she can find more independence and also figure out who she wants to be,” Kittelberger said. “I think she likes the fact that she’s going to be here while I’m here more than I do.”
The night before my family left they asked if I wanted to spend the night with them at the lake house 25 minutes away. I told them I would rather go out with my friends, so they dropped me back off at my dorm. I looked around at my room, taking in the stark white walls festooned with posters, the shower shoes by the bathroom and the meager stash of snacks, and then I did what any mature adult would do: I called my mom and told her to turn the car around.
In some ways we are grown up here. We feed, clean and clothe ourselves, get to places on time, have jobs and commitments, do our own laundry and choose whom to associate with. However, we have the luxury of not being out of the nest just yet. Our parents will still buy us a few dinners, listen when we phone them crying about the mean T.A. who called us, and I quote, “way below the median.” They’ll be waiting for us at home. And who knows, they may just swarm into Hanover again sometime soon.
