Story of teh Day 6/ 2/ 2009

Orientation.
Aaron’s Freshman Orientation program at Ball State was yesterday and today.
When he registered on-line, I was surprised that they requested a parent attend the parent section.
Not only did Esther’s school not do this, I don’t think they even had a parent orientation.
And the first time I saw her college was when her freshman year was over, and I was picking her up to drive her home.

Wait a minute. Esther did all of her registration stuff by herself. Maybe there was a parent orientation, and maybe we were even supposed to attend….but I doubt anything positive would come of asking her about it, now, since she is a senior.
Anyhow, Aaron was dumb enough to tell me to help him register on-line, so I signed up to attend the parent’s part.

I thought it went pretty well.
They had terrible coffee, and some of it was boring, but I did learn a few things, like the hours the Health Center is open, and that we can pre-load a swipe card so he doesn’t’ need quarters for the laundry machines. Oh yeah, and how to fill out financial aid forms. A lot of the time was that. Which we had already done. But this college is smart, they had staff to help us clueless middle-aged parents through the on-line stuff.
They also had staff ready to help parents get the students to give permission to have the bills sent to the parents.
Apparently, with the new confidentiality regulations, the University can no longer send bills to the parents. UNLESS the student signs a waiver.

Okay, this was probably the real reason they had apparent orientation- and part of it was a shared session for parents and incoming freshmen- they were getting all of the waivers in order to make sure the bills were really going to get to the parents and get paid.

It was worth it to them to fill us up with that lousy coffee.

Apparently, they are also no longer allowed to mail us the transcripts. You know, the thing with the grades our students earned for the previous semester. However, they did impart this bit of advice: refuse to pay any bills until they produce it.

Part of the time, the kids and parents were together- part being relatively small- except for that one long session to get those billing waivers…..Most of the time we had different sessions to attend.
In one of the parent sessions, they showed a video of 6 college students discussing transition issues. One kid complained that the first time he went home,. He found he no longer had a bedroom. His mom had turned it into a storage room. Another kids said his mom had decorated his bedroom as a guest bedroom, so when eh came home for fall break, he had to sleep with all of these fluffy ruffled pillows and this hideous ruffled comforter. He also didn’t’ like the leaf and flower motif of the new artwork on the walls.
None of the kids commented that their parents had gone in and done a massive cleaning to get rid of years of dust bunnies….which is my plan.

When it was time to leave, my son, who had been complaining that I had managed to locate all of the Jewish girls at the orientation ( this isn’t true, I simply managed to locate all of their parents), thanked me for not embarrassing him.

Since I am ALWAYS ( according to him) an embarrassment, this caused me to raise my eyebrows a bit.
So he offered this :
One mother wouldn’t’ separate from her son for the separate sessions. He’d had a very audible I know this because Aaron heard it) argument with her to please go to her session. She kept insisting she could sneak in and go to his session with him and no one would know.
Except her son, who was mortified.

Aaron thanked me again, after describing this.

Driving home, Aaron let me know that I do not need to buy him a box of condoms. Apparently, during one of the kids’ sessions, they explained that free condoms were available at the Health Center.
After a moment to compose myself, I said, “But Aaron, the Health Center is only open from 9-4 on Mon-Friday. And you might need one at another time and not have preplanned. So I will get you a box, just in case.”

See, I did learn something useful at the Parent’s Orientation. I even impressed my son with it.