An Exciting Time of Year

Tomorrow is May 1, otherwise known as the common reply date in the college world.  Tomorrow is the day students have to make a decision about where they will attend college next fall.  It can be nerve-wracking, but it is also one of the most exciting times of the school year.

I love it when a student stops by to tell me she's made the decision!  Often beaming from ear to ear and proudly wearing her college sweatshirt, the college choice may, in fact, be the biggest decision she has made so far in her young life, and it feels awesome. After all the college tours, applications, essays, and sometimes interviews, she has run the gauntlet and successfully come out on the other side.

One of my seniors stopped by only an hour ago to tell me she's headed to Scotland! Yes, the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.  It's a huge leap of faith on both her and her parents part, but you should have seen her face. Pure joy. Later today another of my students will celebrate an offer to play tennis at Birmingham-Southern College (it's a Division III school, so there are no formal papers to sign). She too is wearing a huge grin, but so is the senior who will take her considerable artistic talents to Middle Tennessee State next year.

You see,  it is never about the name on the sweatshirt. It is about watching these wonderful young women grow up and navigate this often very complicated and frustrating process.  It is about watching them figure out who they are, where they want life to take them, who they might want to be in the future.  That is the joy they give back to us.

As the columnist Ellen Goodman once wrote, the college process is a rite of passage and one that pulls students in so many different directions. Next year my girls will be attending schools such as UCLA, Furman, Wheaton (IL), Colorado-Boulder, Georgia, Evansville, Lake Forest, Rhodes, Texas Christian University, Kentucky, U. of San Francisco, Duke, Virginia Tech, Sewanee, and Yale.  One will be in Scotland, and one has decided to take a gap year next year, and she will do good work in another part of the world.  And that is only a sample of where the class of 2014 will go.

Yes, this is a very exciting time of year.  Decisions are being made, and congratulations are deserved all around. With only hours to go before we close the book on this year's college list, I am so proud of each and every member of this year's graduating class.  I wish everyone could see the smiles on their faces.