Most college-educated parents of college students become automatic hypocrites. We did the shit that we fear our kids are going to do when they're cut loose in an institution of higher learning. So our first instinct is to come up with revisionist histories about our college days — which is to say we lie, or at the very least are extremely selective with the truth.
But kids are savvy; they know we're lying, and they suspect that we were wild and stupid and drunk and high and sex-crazed for those four or more years. They probably think that we were more wild and stupid and drunk and high and sex-crazed than we actually were.
As for me, I knew that my kids knew I would lie, so I tried a little sleight of mouth. I shared with them just enough semi-sordid tales to throw them off the scent that Dad was an absolute fuck-up in his college years. By telling them about the time I streaked through campus or had a Saturday-night keg party that lasted until noon on a Sunday or when I commandeered a forklift and had my friend lower me onto the stage while a band was playing, I earned a little credibility with them, I think.
That way, when I counseled them with something like "Look, whatever you do, don't screw off to start the semester and then six weeks into it find out you've dug too deep a hole," I thought it just might sink in.
I did not tell them that in college I was an unconscionable procrastinator who would spend way too long dodging class and studies, and then halfway through a semester have to scramble to catch up, often with terrible, sometimes disastrous, results.
Perhaps more than anything else, I wanted my kids to avoid that particular behavior pattern. If I could go back in time, that's what I'd change above all else. Even now, three decades after college, I still have the occasional dream about taking a final exam and not knowing anything. In fact, I think I had a dream like that last week.
Did my don't-procrastinate advice work? I'm pretty sure it did, at least somewhat, with my daughter, now a 24-year-old graduate. I'm quite sure it had no effect on my son, 21, who is (probably) a junior and most certainly has had to figure out the procrastination issue on his own (if, in fact, he even has).
So students, here's some advice as you head (back) to college: Heed your parents' advice. Heed your parents' advice, because it originates in their failures and fears and bad dreams. They are not trying to force you to follow in their virtuous footsteps. They were screw-ups like you, maybe worse. They want to save you heartache and angst. When your folks counsel, for instance, not to party too much during the week, that's because they partied too much during the week and suffered the consequences for it. If you understand that your parents' guidance is not just idle preaching from some model-behavior handbook, it will be more palatable. Hell, you might even try to follow it.
But by all means, students, have some fun with these occasions. "So, uh, Dad, did you party during the week?" Make the old man squirm; make him earn his time on the soapbox.
I guess there's one more thing you should know, students, so you might take pity on your know-it-all, been-there-done-that, don't-do-what-I-did-do-what-I-say hypocrite parents: We would trade with you in a second. Our college years were the best of our lives. We'd do it over, not so much to correct past mistakes (although we'd probably try), but to live that life again. Do us parents a favor — don't squander it.
This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2008.