(Thought I'd go with May Day? Well, the fact is that I don't have any problem with the month of May. I like the month of May. But hell, I won't disappoint you completely. A tribute to the new month can be found at the bottom of this diary. The thing is, though, that my daughter is a high school senior, so this is a pretty huge day in her life and it has spent the last two years being my ongoing FP!)
WYFP (which stands for "What's Your Fucking Problem?") is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
Anyway, follow me across the great divide and I'll tell you all about the whole college selection thing. It's loads of fun! (Oy.)
It was so much easier when I was a teenager.
One of the top students in my class, I could have gone to any number of good schools in New England, but my closeted transsexuality had long made me seem rather "weird" to my peers and I just wanted a fresh start. I went to my counselor, Bob Lemer, a guy who never left the sixties and to this day (though he's well into his seventies and his body is breaking down) welcomes students and former students over to relax at his crazy, eclectically furnished, partially decaying home, "Glutton Farm."
"Find me an Ivy League type school at least 1000 miles from here," I told him.
He came back with Northwestern, and I applied. The first day I stepped onto that beautiful campus was September 20, 1975: move-in day.
Oh, how things have changed!
This week marked the fifth (sixth? seventh? I've lost track) major college trip I've taken with my daughter. She visited twenty colleges, applied to fourteen of them, was accepted at five and wait-listed at six more. I've seen so many dorm rooms, classrooms, auditoriums, quads, music halls, computer labs, dining halls, libraries, weight rooms, swimming pools, student art exhibits, etc. and learned about more college traditions (where the heck was Flunk Day when I was in school???) than I would have believed possible. I get back from these trips absolutely exhausted. And after several thousand miles of driving, a couple thousand dollars in travel expenses, and a whole lot of angst, it comes down to today.
And there is this choice:
Does Julianne attend the very fine school in Iowa that wants her so desperately that it offered what, for her at least, would be a free ride? The remainder is so little that her other mom and I could cover it and she could graduate debt-free. Or does she attend her dream school in Ohio, more highly regarded and certainly an absolutely wonderful college, and one that offers more precisely the academic programs that she wants--though the Iowa school comes close--but whose package would leave her owing tens of thousands after four years? (And don't even get me started about the absolutely absurd cost of a college education these days and the unrealistic threshold that colleges set for the cutoff at which they believe that students are not "in need of assistance." Now that's a real FP. For everyone.)
Like hundreds of thousands of others across the country, Julianne was faced with this decision today. And this was her decision:
Yes, she's Cedar Rapids-bound. And finally, after all of this anguish, at least this particular FP can be put to bed. Now on to loan applications and graduation gifts and...
Oh, yes, I didn't forget the May Day folks. :-)
OK, folks. Your turn.
What's your fucking problem?????