I’ve been getting emails and calls and visits this week from various students who, having been accepted to at least two colleges to which they have applied for transfer admission, are now trying to decide where to go for school.
Let me make it simple: all things being equal (and Berkeley and UCLA are pretty equal in most programs, as are Cal State LA and Sacramento State), go to college as far away as possible from your friends, family, and everything you have known. I don’t know if anyone has copyrighted it yet, so call it the Gandalf theory of higher education. When in doubt, and if you can possibly afford it financially, move away.
So much of a good college education takes place outside of the classroom. Disconnecting from loved ones, if only for a time, is a vital part of becoming an adult. Not everyone has the luxury of making such a choice, but if my advice is asked, my answer is essentially the same as that uttered by Gandalf the Grey in his last words before the Balrog drags him down.
I do understand that some students must live at home for financial reasons. Though I think debt and independence are preferable to solvency and enmeshment, that’s a personal cultural bias on my part, a bias others may not share. I do think that there is much to be said for spending as much time as possible in another corner of the state or country, exposed to different weather, different media markets, different social values.
And for what it’s worth, as someone with an undergrad degree from Cal and a Ph.D. from UCLA, I can say that I loved Berkeley with every fiber of my being. My attachment to Westwood never rose above the tepid. But as they say, your mileage may vary.
UPDATE: I’m bumping this up from the comments section. Daisy at Our Descent offers the exact opposite advice in a lovely post. I’d like to note that my wife shares a view closer to Daisy’s; she graduated from high school in Glendale and headed off to USC, living at home the entire time. She wouldn’t have changed that for the world.
In the end, I acknowledge that giving advice about going to college is like giving advice about whether to have sex at a young age: the right answer is contingent upon a unique set of circumstances surrounding the needs of the particular person inquiring.
I’d point out, though — and this is clearly for a future post, maybe soon — that the desire for autonomy is not evidence of a lack of devotion to family. As I’ve argued before, WASPy families in which men never do more than shake hands to show affection to each other, and where children leave home at 18, never to return, are no less intensely loving for their commitment to formality and personal autonomy.
More on that to come.
I, for one, consider this to be remarkably bad advice. I happen to have blogged about why awhile back.
It’s a lovely post you’ve got there, Daisy, and I honor the sentiment. Would that all those who stayed close to home did so for your reasons. But one person’s community is another’s prison, after all.
I suppose where we part ways is over a concept of personhood; for me, life has taught me that autonomy and independence are profound social goods. Others have learned that community and interdependence bring greater satisfaction. For me, I had to leave my family to learn to love them — adulthood, in my experience and in that of many students I’ve taught, is inextricably linked to the experience of being “cast adrift” and then, coming home again.
But some of us are prodigals, and others stay close to the farm, and in the end, you’re right that there’s more than one way to grow. I wrote this post to explain the advice I give when I’m asked; it was the advice I was given a long time ago.
That’s exactly what I did–I grew up near Los Angeles and am going to college in upstate New York. I’ve never regretted it (even the first winter)! On the other hand, for grad school I’m going not half an hour away from my current college, where many of my friends will still be attending next year. So I will have tried both options!
Dear Hugo,
This would ring a lot truer if you didn’t go to college TWO HOURS AWAY(by car) FROM WHERE YOU GREW UP!
Unless of course you’re not talking about literal distance as Berkeley and Carmel are indeed different.
I think this clearly goes into the ‘it depends on the person and circumstances’ category.
On a similar but related note. My niece wants to go to Columbia University but her dad(my brother) is not in favor of her going to school in a big city. He’s of the view that going to school in a place with too many things that may steal focus from the school itself is ill advised. What do you think of that?
brilliant. you ring up the local federal patent office and ill contact a sweat(free) shop to order the tee’s. we’ll imprint this by friday and sell them like hotcakes come monday morning.
I suppose where we part ways is over a concept of personhood; for me, life has taught me that autonomy and independence are profound social goods. Others have learned that community and interdependence bring greater satisfaction.
I think this is a false dichotomy. We exercise our autonomy through our relationships within our community.
The real disagreement here isn’t over something as abstract as personhood and conceptions of the good life. It’s much, much more concrete: Is it better to stay at home with the people you know, or to leave that community and start the often long and difficult process of building a new one?
And it seems fairly obvious to me that the answer is going to vary dramatically from person to person.
I grew up in Northern California, went to college outside of Seattle, studied abroad in Hungary (I didn’t speak Hungarian at all when I went there, and knew just a handful of phrases when I got back), and then moved to Chicago for graduate school. And I’ve thrived. But I’ve paid a steep price. Most dramatically, I was halfway around the world when my uncle died, and I wasn’t able to fly back for the memorial service. And I’ve since decided that I need to return to the West Coast within the next 3-5 years — I can’t spend the bulk of my life out here in the Midwest, cut off from my family. I can definitely understand why moving away — even a couple hours away — would be too no good for a lot of people. (Though I do think 2-3 hours is a nice compromise.)
And as you know, Bill, my first choice was Vassar, my mother’s alma mater. Cal was my second choice; we received no financial aid and Berkeley seemed best. I came home twice a semester, less often than some kids who go much farther away do.
Noumena, I’m going to post more about this soon — thanks for your angle.
I only went to school an hour (maybe) from home, but the change of scenery was enormous and I didn’t talk to my parents much while I was at school, nor did they visit a whole lot. Besides, after that, I moved 15 hours away by myself. That should have been more jarring than starting college, but for some reason I only realized that in retrospect. At the time, it seemed like the most sensible thing in the world. I love my parents and miss them, but if I had to live in my hometown again, I would pretty much have to shoot myself. Suburbia just isn’t for me, nor is seeing everyone I ever knew at a local restaurant. In fact, I didn’t realize how much friends of circumstance people in high school are. Now that I’m on my own, I have a lot more in common with my friends an can actually, gasp, be who I am. So for me, leaving was important. But, the rest of my family still lives back there. I guess I’m the black sheep now or something. I’m the only one who left, in the end.
Actually, I didn’t know that. And I’m surprised.
everybody’s giving me the same advice too. but unfortunantly, one of the good schools i want to get into is about an hour or two away, not too far-but far enough for me to get an apartment as an excuse.
debt over immersion? *sigh* i choose to deal with debt. which is why i’ve spent the last four years at a two year college at home. yes, i’m sick and tired of it, and i regret it a little bit-but then i wouldn’t have met they wonderful people here. i’ve had really great, attentive teachers which i’m not too terribly sure i’ll find at a bigger school and i would’ve carried the impression that community colleges are inferior to UC’s and state schools.
in fact, i kind of wish the UC’s and states were a little more like the community colleges sometimes. when i visited these colleges-i got the impression not everybody knew each other. but here, i know almost everyone-the tutors, the administrators, the janitors-even my peers on the student councils and boards.
but am i ready to leave-YOU BET!
Thanks for the link. It’s certainly true that what works for one person won’t for another — I honor that diversity of experience. However:
But one person’s community is another’s prison, after all.
That’s a sign of an unhealthy community, I think. That’s not to say that some people won’t always need to get out on their own, the farther the better, ASAP — that’s one path to adulthood, and it will always work best for some people. What I take issue with is the idea that healthy, thriving communities do/should produce feelings of suffocation, desperation, and an irresistible need to escape in all their young people. If it feels like a prison, is it really a community?
The message I got was that I should would to get as far away from my family as possible. My parents were actually shocked to learn that I don’t despise them, and in fact would prefer to be close to them and my brother. It’s bizarre to me that people a trained to assume their own kids will hate them, and that kids are trained to assume that families and communities have little or nothing left to teach them by the time they turn 18. I think that idea — that the way to learn and grow is, instead of working with the older members of one’s community,to strike out entirely on one’s own — is a major part of the reason that so many older people in our society feel worthless. And actually, yeah, we’ve framed them that way, as useless to their own children.
As a caveat, though: maybe this system is one that works well in certain cultures (WASPs), but not amongst others (Sephardic Jews). The real problem isn’t that some families do things this way, but that this is billed as the way to do things.
Your title made me laff.
I’m currently living smack-dab across the globe from my family, and my graduation in a couple of weeks will be the first time they’ve ever come up to see me - all other times I’ve gone home to see them. Only one has an idea of what it’s like for me living here, in terms of freedom creatively and the learning I get. I think it’s worthwhile getting away from family, at least for a little while, to see if you can stand on your own two feet. If anything, living so far away has made me see that I appreciate my family a lot more than I actually let on.
This community loyalty vs. individuality thing reminds me of the difference between Southern literature and American literature. Literature from the South has been built upon community bonds whereas American literature tends more toward the individual. All I can say is: look at the South.
Staying in our close knit communities generation after generation hasn’t really helped the situations with racism, sexism, heterosexism and other isms. At least in my experience, default community bonds can sometimes re-enforce unhealthy beliefs when people follow them unquestioningly in the name of tradition. Questioning often gets your ostracized from the community. As a result, no one ever questions or leaves the community so they’re not exposed to outside ideas and the core stays the same. It’s really a vicious cycle.
Not that I’ve really gotten out yet. I’m living and going to school in the biggest city in the Appalachian mountain chain, an hour away from the rural town I grew up in. I’m still here mostly because of poverty and a sizable scholarship that requires you to stay in state for undergrad. I’m still very enmeshed with my extended family back home. I love them, but it’s not healthy. Communities (particularly ones a person grows up in) are not necessarily healthy but that doesn’t make them any less communities when they have a place in your heart. I’m leaving the state for graduate school for the official reason that there are no good schools with terminal Master’s programs in English in my state, but the real reason is that I need to get out. There are certain unhealthy patters and defaults I will NEVER let go of until I’m wrenched from the people who instilled them in me.
I’ve gotten a lot closer to my mother and grandmother in the last couple years. I feel like it’s going to be harder to move away now. I don’t think that I’ll ever regret getting to know them better, but it’s going to be painful in the short run. I don’t know that I’ll ever come back here to live. I want to make a new community somewhere that will be healthy and will encourage me to be more the person I want to be, instead of who my ancestors were.
PS - These beliefs are pretty heavily influenced but the limitations of poverty. I just get a continuous sense of crushing and overwhelming hopeless in my community. Majority of the people I graduated with won’t ever go to collge. My state has one of the the lowest high school graduation rates in the country.
“This community loyalty vs. individuality thing reminds me of the difference between Southern literature and American literature.”
Do you mean “Southern” as in “southern United States”? That would be American literature, too, you know. No one has actually seceded for a long time.
And I’ll agree with you about the rural South and its clinging to certain prejudices, but, let’s face it, blue-state America has plenty of its own, too.
One more thing.
If you are a high-school senior and you are lucky enough to have someone to be in love with, do NOT break up with this person simply because the two of you will be three hours away. Too many people throw away something beautiful under the assumption that they will find love just as easily on campus (assuming they’re not eschewing love for random hook-ups), but many of us understand that it’s not really that easy.
Starting over at a college (UVA) far from where I went to high school (Texas, roundabout DFW) was a terribly painful experience, but I think it was a good choice. I think I’d say, go far if you are *scared* of going far.
There’s nothing quite like being different to help you be more understanding when you run into others who are different, to help you articulate differences you can finally see. Also, being from Texas, you learn how to deal with people making fairly ridiculous assumptions and saying fairly ridiculous things to your face, e.g. “I lower my expectations for the conversation when I find out someone’s from Texas.”
But now I’m pretty sure I’m ready to leave mountains and get back to sky and stop starting over and stay with some of the support systems I’ve bothered to build up over the years, the people who know my story from the years it was most drastically shaped.
bmmg39:
As far as I know, American literature scholars generally see a distinction between literature from the American South vs literature from the rest of the United States, particularly from the Civil War onward. American literature is known for its portrayal of the importance of individual identity, whereas that theme isn’t so common in literature out of the South, as it often goes the opposite direction. This isn’t to say EVERYTHING from these regions follow this patten, but it is a recognized distinction.
spending a semester in washington, dc working with greenpeace, traveling, campaigning, all that (while enrolled in my second year at pcc)= one of the best things that could have happened to me. and now at cal. i can’t thank you enough for the advice, hugo.
Thank you for writing, Connie. I need to go back to reading your blog more regularly… congrats on finishing up a year at Cal, and I do appreciate the validation that in your case, the advice was spot on.
I have been reading this thread and some of the arguments for awhile, and if this is privilege talking, I’m willing to admit that 100%, but I can’t wrap my mind around how it could be bad to get out on your own, even just for a short time. I think being on my own, leaning on myself, has made me a much stronger person, but of course this is just my experience.