Just for the Experience

I admit to great swells of parental pride as I watch Mads figure out her future and slowly build her own criteria.  

Some of it's practical and tangible: approaching her tenth year dancing she now knows she wants to keep it up.  That dancing makes her happy like nothing else.  She's not sure if it'll be her major or minor or the bulk of her electives, but access to a good dance degree is now a must-have.  (Frankly, it makes the college search way easier since only 190 schools nationwide have such things.)

Surprising to me, she also wants a small school out of the city.  Despite her interminable boredom that there's nothing new to do, no one new to meet (I'm thinkin' that's just an adolescent thing?) she wants a gentle and speedy journey to the familiar ... small classes, finite student body, bucolic setting. She wants a strong study-abroad program, but she wants to come back to a cozy place.

Beyond that she's all about the experience.  No idea what she wants to do or accomplish or how she'll earn a post-graduation living.  She talks about taking hard classes, but only to challenge herself and hone her new-found self-confidence, not for the external benefits they might reap.  She wants to study psychology or political science or anthropology or sociology.  For years she also did algebra for fun.  And she claims a weird idiot savant skill at remembering botanical facts. (I don't remind her she talked to trees in preschool.)  Maybe she'll be a teacher or a CEO or join my consulting company.  But not 'till she enters the Peace Corps.  Or drags her homebody best friend across the globe.

I'm feeling pretty good about all that.  Meandering a similar course, I've turned out okay, with a happy productive life of my own choosing.  I'm hoping some of her top-choice schools share my admiration, but even if they don't she'll do just fine.