Hi there Informational Interviews,

I’m trying something different today with this open letter to the parents of a college-age student. Tbh, though, I kind thing there’s something for every body here: students, parents, and elder millennials alike. Indirectly this essay also explains how I came to be so passionate about informational interviewing… maybe I’ll make that connection more explicit in a later post. In the meantime, if you have college-age people or the parents of college-age people in your life, please do consider forwarding this letter on to them! Stay prudent!

Emma

A Letter to the Parents of a College-Age Student

Dear Parents of a College-Age Student,

It will be ten years this June since I graduated from Seattle University, a school I was very disappointed to be attending when I first enrolled. 

Like many millennials, I experienced a harsh reality check during the 2008 financial crisis, which coincided with the year I graduated high school. That year, my family’s financial foundation crumbled along with the rest of the economy, and my hopes of attending whatever college I could get into were dashed. 

I applied to Seattle University because it was within a short flight of home. I never even visited the campus. I was accepted at other schools that I was more excited about, but attending them would have meant graduating with upwards of $75,000 in student loans. Miraculously, I understood the financial peril. I knew—no matter what I had been told about “good” educational debt—that I had to make the prudent choice.

I was lucky. My family’s sudden financial hardship meant that I qualified for need-based financial aid, something I never would have been eligible for before the financial crisis. I was awarded Pell grants, federal student loans, work-study grants and merit-based scholarships. Somehow it all added up to a workable financial aid package.

I cried my first day in Seattle, though, because I thought the city was hideous. Still, I thrived at Seattle University. I joined the chapel choir, the newspaper, and the honors program. I navel-gazed. I took summer outdoor leadership jobs in New Hampshire and Montana. I met kindred spirits. I lectured my parents about critical race theory. I started a blog. I studied Latin and Hagiography. 

When I graduated I got a job as a receptionist at a local real estate office and started paying off $28,000 worth of student loans. I was making $36,000 a year and my rent was just $600/month. I spent all my spare money on therapy, cat food, and loan payments and enjoyed a newfound feeling of self-sufficiency and financial empowerment.

But I was restless and ambitious. So, I informationally interviewed my way into a low-level contract position at Microsoft. I got a Fulbright Fellowship to teach English in Mexico. I moved to New York City. I informationally interviewed my way into a job at The New York Times. I flamed out at a series of startups. I started my own freelance marketing business. I got into crypto. I briefly attended graduate school. And then I decided it was time to move home.

It was frustrating having to pay the government $300/month every month for all those years. I was grateful for my education but angry that I couldn’t save or invest that money. I worried that I was falling behind my peers. But I could always see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Even if it took me longer to create financial security for myself, I knew I would get there eventually. 

And more importantly, the debt didn’t stop me from taking risks. I shudder to think what would have happened if I’d gone to my first-choice school and graduated with $75,000 in debt. I probably never would have left that contract job at Microsoft. Instead I would have stayed, parlaying contingent work into a full-time position, working diligently for years just to get back to zero. I would not have been willing to crash and burn in job after job, searching for work that was both lucrative and rewarding. I would have dreamt only of a life without debt.

But, at eighteen, I was willing to accept the reality of my situation, willing to let go of the things I thought I was entitled to, willing to believe there is no shame in playing the hand you’re dealt.

Last week I had the chance to advise the parents of a senior in high school about where their daughter should go to school. They were considering sending her to a prestigious private school that would require significant debt or a local public school that would be more affordable.

The conversation has stuck with me. They shared that they had hoped to be able to send their daughter to any college she could get into. It’s a beautiful dream, one that I know many parents hope to realize. It’s also a dream that finds its roots in many of our most cherished stories. In the movie version of Norman Maclean’s autobiographical novella, “A River Runs Through It,” for example, Norman says, “My father had told me I could attend any college in the world I could get into. I knew he earned no more than $900 a year, so his offer meant more to me than anything in my life.” 

In the arc of Norman Maclean’s story this money that funds his education—he attends Dartmouth—is essential. But also somehow rather minor. It’s there, it may have meant more to Norman than anything in his life, it may have cost his father dearly, but it’s not the main point. Norman is on his way.  He’s got places to go, people to see! Whatever it was in real life, the money’s just a contrivance in the story, just a few simple sentences amidst the whole grand triumphant of his life. 

It’s not just in Great American Literature that you find parents conveniently willing and able to finance their children’s education. In Harry Potter, we have Harry’s parents posthumously funding his education at an elite magic boarding school. Again, in Harry’s case, the money is crucial. It’s what keeps the story moving forward. But despite this, the story doesn’t dwell on the way the money facilitates every aspect of Harry’s life. “You didn’t think your parents left you nothing, now did yeh?” Hagrid asks gruffly when an astonished Harry first discovers he’s inherited a fortune. Harry just shakes his head, shovels a heap of gold into a bag, and leaps into the rest of his life. He has magic to learn, Quidditch Cups to win, and a messianic destiny to slay the Darkest Wizard of All Time. And the miracle of his newfound wealth is honestly less shocking than the revelation that magic is real and he is destined to be a wizard.

Without this money, though, J.K. Rowling would have to have devised some other workaround to explain how Harry was going to afford literally everything: tuition, food, clothes, train tickets, magical accouterments, books, everything! And it’s not just that the inherited money is an important expedient for the plot, it also serves as proof positive that Harry was valued. Here is a child who may appear downcast, orphaned, unwanted and abused, but, look, his parents loved, valued and provided for him even in death. They made sure he had the resources to focus 100% on being the best Harry he could be.

But, and this is important, Harry Potter is not real. And while Norman’s dad certainly wasn’t loaded—adjusted for inflation he was earning around $13,500 in today’s dollars— Dartmouth tuition was around just $200 when Norman attended from 1920—1924.  Even on a minister's salary that was doable. With the cost of an Ivy League education pushing $90,000, it’s safe to say pastors aren’t paying full fee for their kids to attend Dartmouth these days. 

Parental enthusiasm for funding education meets some resistance in Greta Gerwig’s Oscar-winning film, “Lady Bird.” In fact, Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson’s mother and father appear in no position to bankroll their daughter’s dream of an elite education. When Lady Bird wails, “I want to go somewhere where culture is, like New York, or at least Connecticut or New Hampshire,” her mother punctures her vision bluntly. “You couldn’t get into any of those colleges anyways. You should just go to City College. You know, with your work ethic, just go to City College and then to jail and then back to City College. And then maybe you’d learn to pull yourself up, and not expect everybody to do everything…” She doesn’t finish her thought, because the incensed Lady Bird opens the passenger door of the car her mother is driving and leaps out of the moving vehicle.

Despite the attention the film gives to the strain of paying for an elite education Lady Bird’s tough-talking mother ultimately relents, bowing to the irrepressible spirit of her daughter. Her family's finances are clearly precarious, her husband is unemployed, but in the end she agrees to mortgage on the family home so that Lady Bird can attend New York University. You are meant, I think, to be moved by the mother’s decision to yield to her daughter's dreams.

Nearly eighty years earlier we find another mother and daughter negotiating the price of a dream in another Oscar-winning movie. In the 1945 film “National Velvet,” Elizabeth Taylor plays a horse-crazy village girl in England who happens to win a racehorse in a raffle. She becomes obsessed with racing the horse, Pie, in the Grand National. The entire venture is almost derailed, however, by a lack of money. There are jockey fees, entry fees, transportation fees, lodging fees, all for “a folly” as Velvet’s horse trainer calls it. But Velvet’s formidable mother, Mrs. Brown, had an improbable dream in her youth, too. She swam the English Channel as a young woman, winning a prize purse that she’s kept hidden away. 

“We’re alike,” Mrs. Brown tells Velvet before giving her the money, “I too think that everyone should have a chance at a breathtaking piece of folly, once in his life. I was twenty when they said a woman couldn’t swim the channel. You’re twelve. You think a horse of yours can win the Grand National. Your dream has come early. But remember, Velvet, it’ll have to last you all the rest of your life.”

The scene, set in the attic as mother and daughter pour over a photo album of her swimming days is touching. Elizabeth Taylor, who was twelve when she was cast in the role, quivers with emotion and gratitude. She gazes adoringly up at her mother through big beautiful soon-to-be-world-famous eyes, and as her mother pours gold coins into her laps she cries, “Oh mother, it’s your prize money from swimming the channel!” But Mrs. Brown won’t let her daughter fein total shock. “You knew I still had it, be truthful,” she says.

Velvet hangs her head sheepishly for a moment, ashamed to admit that she knew her mom had money and had thought about how it could be used to fulfill her dreams.  

The moment doesn’t last long, though. Mrs. Brown confirms that yes, they will in fact use the money for the race and Velvet throws her arms around her mother exclaiming, “Oh mother, mother, mother!”

It is an expression of real filial gratitude and love, much like what we hear from Norman Maclean when he says his father’s promise “meant more to me than anything in my life.”

Velvet’s mom, Mrs. Brown, and and Norman’s dad, Rev. John Maclean, have a lot in common. They both squirreled away enough money to be able to afford their child’s one big audacious dream. They differ, however, when it comes to belief in the value of folly. 

Rev. John Maclean was a stern, inflexible and serious person whose parenting style worked well for his eldest son, Norman, but not for his youngest son, Paul. Rev. John Maclean shared a love of fly fishing with Paul, but that was pretty much it, and it wasn’t enough. There was no other nourishment for a wild young man like Paul in his family and he careens off a cliff of debauchery, ending in an untimely but inevitable death. What Rev. John Maclean could give his oldest son Norman, what meant more to Norman than anything in his life, was not available to Paul, could not be received by Paul, was not what Paul needed. And Norman, though he went on to be a major figure in American Literature is “haunted by waters” and the un-ending heartbreak of his younger brother’s death. Without meaning to, the story speaks to the limits of the gift of education. 

Lady Bird doesn’t concern itself much with the limits of education. We leave our heroine on the precipice, hung over in New York City, having convinced her parents to mortgage their futures so she can be where the culture is. The story is somewhat inspired by Greta Gerwig’s life. Like Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig fled the uninspired lowlands of the Central Valley for the juicy center of everything in New York. And now she’s a movie star and Oscar-winning director. Maybe we are meant to imagine that Lady Bird’s parents bought her a similar future? 

Whatever the case, you can tell that her parents won’t have much left to give her. She’s bled them dry. This is her one folly. Mrs. Brown says, “Remember, Velvet, it’ll have to last you all the rest of your life.” Does Lady Bird know that NYU could be all she gets, the one thing that has to last her the rest of her life. 

My mother, like Velvet’s mother, gave me the gift of folly when I moved to New York City. She paid my rent for months when I first moved to the city. I knew she didn’t have a lot of spare money at the time, but I was willing to take the help because I knew that she and I were both investing a bigger and more potent version of me, a version that could, as they say, “make it anywhere.” On a practical level, I knew it would take me where I needed to go professionally, but on a spiritual level New York City was my Grand National. It was not a very original thing to do, maybe, but I wouldn’t have been able to do it at all if I graduated with $75,000 in debt. 

This ☝️ is my mom singing “New York, New York,” right before driving me to the airport to move to New York.

I advised the parents I spoke with not to send their daughter to the expensive private school that would have put both them and their daughter in tens of thousands of dollars of debt. It is the advice I would give to you too: Don’t take on debt if you have any other option. Don’t let your child take on debt, if you can prevent it.

Your child may not understand. They may feel, like Lady Bird, that they simply must go where the culture is. They may consider anything less a spiritual death. Maybe they think they’ll never become a wizard if they don’t get to go to Hogwarts. It is your job, as their parent, to remember that there is no such thing as Hogwarts. And life begins, in earnest, after you graduate from college. 

At that point, your child will finally be at the starting gate. Everything up until then is prelude. It will be time for folly. Their follies, should they be lucky enough to have them, are what will determine the course of their life. The unexpected romance that blossoms as your child is WOOF-ing through Europe could someday lead to the grandchildren you are already dreaming of. And the brush with french baking on that same trip, sparks an unexpected passion for pastries that leads to your child opening up a patisserie in your hometown. Of course not all follies will be so glamorous and European. But maybe a debt-free undergraduate education, cobbled together through two years of junior college and a few more at state school, means your child can decide to be the first in your family to go to graduate school. That choice will only be possible if he is not already burdened by undergraduate debt. Perhaps you wrestle mightily over whether or not to take on debt to afford out-of-state tuition at Berkeley. Perhaps you are devastated to tell your bright, valedictorian son, no, you got the grades but you can’t go to Berkeley. I promise he’ll be thanking you when he realizes you saved him the chance to step into a rich and rewarding career as a therapist because you didn’t mortgage his future on an elite undergraduate education.

I worry that this may sound like an indictment of parents and students who chose to take on significant debt to fund an undergraduate education. It's not my intention to judge anyone for choices they’ve already made, although I do mourn lost opportunities and diminished lives where student debt has stolen the chance for folly. Still every family is different, and money and education mean different things in different contexts. It is impossible to evaluate anyone’s specific situation or choice without conversing about it deeply.

But for those who regret their choices, or labor under the weight of educational debt, I hope you aren’t too hard on yourself. The story we’ve told for the last hundred years about what education means and its role in our lives, is unraveling. It’s unraveling as we defund schools and the price goes up. It’s unraveling as the degrees we offer don’t translate into stable well-remunerated jobs. It’s unraveling as work and learning become less and less tied to in-person, location-based institutions. Its unraveling as the very future of human utility is called into question by artificial intelligence.

In this brave new world that we are barreling towards, the role of folly will only become more important. You must not send your child down the well-trod path of institutional fealty and student loan peonage. If they are encumbered like that, how will they improvise the way they’ll need to as the world shifts under their feet? 

You don’t really understand what’s happening. The story you were living in ended recently, on 9/11 or maybe during the Trump years. Whatever the case, I think we can all agree, we’re in a new story now, and it’s not one you understand. I don’t understand it either. But you know who will understand it?  Your children. They will figure it out. They’ll learn how to talk to robots, they’ll advocate for universal basic income, they’ll pull carbon out of the atmosphere and ruggedize our infrastructure. They’ll build new kinds of societies and reimagine what it means to be human. Just so long as they’re not kneecapped before they even get to the starting gate. 

Your children will forgive you for protecting their freedom. Don’t try to buy them a future with money neither of you have. Tell them you believe in their resourcefulness, that you know they will find their way, and that you can’t agree to anything that will hamstring them before they even start.

In the final moments of Velvet’s conversation with her mother in the attic, she is overcome with gratitude and exclaims, “We’ll win it for you, mother!” To which her mother replies, “Win or lose, it’s all the same. It’s how you take it that counts. And knowing when to let go, knowing when it’s over and time to go to the next thing.” 

“The next thing?” Velvet asks, clearly unable to imagine anything beyond her big audacious dream. 

“Things come suitable to their time, Velvet. Enjoy each thing then forget it and go on to the next. There’s a time for everything. A time for having a horse in the Grand National, being in love, having children, yes, even for dying, all in proper order at the proper time.”

Let this moment be one in which you show your child what counts. I promise you it’s not four years of an education you can’t afford. It’s the chance to race a horse in the Grand National and lose it and move on. Order their life wisely, with youth and freedom together as they should be. Let debt and financial burdens come later, if at all possible. If you play your cards right, you could give them the chance to throw themselves at life, to fail hard and fast, and to find out what they actually, really, truly want. But that will only be possible if they are relatively unencumbered by debt. This may not be possible, it isn’t for many people, but if it is within reach, for God’s sake don’t throw it away!

Emma McAleavy, Seattle University, Class of 2013

Did you enjoy this post? Please do share it far and wide with college-bound kiddos and their moms and dads!

Related Content…

This week the links are all about college. It’s that time of year so all the Mainstream Media Heavy Hitters are doing college content. Tbh, they’re doing a really good job. Here’s what I’m reading:

• Build Your Own College Rankings — This very cool tool allows parents and students to select the factors that matter most to them. Fortunately, sticker prices, net price and economic mobility are all factors you can weight —  The New York Times

• There’s Only One College Rankings List That Matters — In this opinion piece for the New York Times Frank Bruni tries to “encourage college-bound students to pause, reflect deeply on what sort of experience they truly want, factor in what’s logistically and financially realistic for them and consider a list of colleges assembled along those lines.” — The New York Times

• We Talked to 10 Graduates About Their College Regrets — Unsurprisingly, debt is a big factor for a number of the graduates in this piece. — The New York Times 

• Ivy League Prices Are Pushing $90,000 a Year — Needless to say, as the son of a minister, Norman Maclean would have a harder time financing his Dartmouth education in 2023 — Bloomberg 

• Stop Sharing Viral College-Acceptance Videos — I applied to college when Facebook was still barely a thing. I can only imagine what it’s like for kids these days —  The Atlantic 

• The Particular Misery of College Admissions TikTok — On the same topic from the New Yorker. Yikes! —  The New Yorker