Progenitors

Just Your Average 69-Year-Old College Freshman Studying Abroad.

 

ON THE DAY OF THE DEAD — Most Spanish-speaking students live at home when they’re in college, often until they marry.

Sadness flashes across the faces of professors when kids from the northern countries talk about moving out. The American ethic of rugged individualism — sallying forth to tame a continent and build gambling casinos — is foreign here.

“Telenovelas,” Spanish soap operas, feature in-laws, ex-spouses and all manner or relatives embroiled in tempestuous relationships. Since the Soaps are the truest of art forms, we know that Spanish families are not necessarily happier. The divorce rate here is about what it is in the U.S.

A 3-year-old, being dragged to day-care by her grandparents, threw a blood-curdling tantrum on the street the other day. Looking closely I saw these were actually great grandparents who won’t be available for a fifth generation of servitude. Adios means “Go to God.”

On the rocks protecting the western shoreline of Lake Michigan, students paint messages that last until someone paints over them. On one of the rocks is written “En memoria mi abuelo.” Maybe it will survive until the elements wash it away.

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman.

Even a humble community college can make people nervous. There are books here and they have ideas on almost every page.

Politicians accuse each other of being from elite colleges, even if they went to Harvard or Yale themselves. They pander to the Swamp People and Alien Hunters in all of us. Today we learned about the Know Nothing Party of the 1850s. They named it themselves.

There are parents who worry the kids they send of to college won’t be the same when they come back home. They should be so lucky.

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman.

Will this generation of young people do better than their parents?

Don’t be surprised if some students answer with a puzzled, what-outer-planet-are-you-from look on their faces. These are the children of the New Normal.

Their parents are working fewer hours for less money (wages are at a 65-year low). They’ve been in and out of emergency rooms, unemployment lines, bankruptcy courts. They probably didn’t finish college (sixty percent of us don’t).

There are no fairy godmothers sprinkling legacy dust on them, but these students do get help. Tuition at a community college is as low as $3000 a year. Pell grants and other federal student assistance cover most of the costs for an associate degree. The kids can get a running start. Some of the most amazing people I know were once townies.

Priti, Ali, Yourytzi, Hanna, Annam, Maria, Roger, Gentillio, Richard, Jared, Lisa, Cris, Cary, Michelle, Jonathan, Joanne, Isaac, Sang, Avril, Jonas, Hazam, Jennifer, James, Bryn, Rebecca, Jannah, Pedro, Andrea, Justin, Connelly, Aleksandrija and Hannah—yeah, they’ll will make their families proud.

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman

Last-minute cramming for college exams is so common there’s a name for it—it’s called “pulling an all-nighter.” There are students in my classes who pull another kind of all-nighter—staying up and walking the floor with Baby. They’re called “parents.”

Our campus has an Early Childhood Education Center that invites students to bring their child to school with them. They can attend classes and study all day without worrying about a babysitter. Financial assistance is available. You and I pay for this program—it’s cheaper than prisons and the inmates are a lot cuter, assuming they’ve had their naps.