The Pre-College Summer of Anticipation
written by Liz Nissim, Ph.D., posted on Psychology Today
The Pre-College Summer, Defined
This is the summer after graduating from high school as a senior and before starting college as a freshman. It’s that time of transition when your child is now officially a young adult, and both of you are waiting for college to begin. With that comes a great deal of emotion, such as anxiety, fear of the unknown, wanting to go, and wanting to stay home, and all of these feelings and thoughts collide… hard.
Parents are counting down the days left with their college-bound children with a bittersweet feeling of excitement and sadness that the time is here. For parents, it’s a time of reflection, guilt, and regret—regret that we haven’t done enough, we haven’t taught enough, we haven’t spent enough time, and we took the first 18 years of life for granted. Never has the phrase “The days are long, but the years are fast” resonated so strongly.
For the rising college freshman, this is a time of wanting to start college but also wanting to stay in their familiar home and surroundings. This is a time of many questions, worrying and anticipating, fear and excitement, and not knowing what’s to come.
Here are a few questions and thoughts that your child may be processing:
- What will dorm life be like?
- Who will wake me up in the morning for my classes?
- When do I do my laundry or change my sheets?
- What if I don’t do well in my classes?
- Will I make friends?
- Will people like me?
If your impending freshman is playing a sport in college, there’s the worry about being able to balance training, practice, games, and academics. When you think about it, your child may not have had to meet new people and form friendships since middle school, and their friendships have been growing for years. Now, they need to start all over again, and if your young adult doesn’t necessarily like small talk, meeting new people may feel like an enormous task. For young adults who have a significant other, many are on the verge of a breakup or embracing the idea of a long-distance relationship.
