Need Advice for University: Practical No-Nonsense Tips For Parents Of New College Students
I was folding extra sheets in the guest room last Tuesday when my phone pinged. It was my next-door neighbor Lisa, whose oldest is moving into state college three weeks from now. The text read, “Can I stop by later? I’m completely overwhelmed, I need advice for university and don’t know who to ask.” I texted back sure, put the half-folded sheet down, and thought back to three years ago, when I was standing in exactly her shoes, refreshing college parenting blogs at 2 a.m. and throwing extra sweatpants into a moving bin like I was prepping for a storm.
Lisa showed up an hour later with a bag of store-bought chocolate chip cookies, iced tea in a tumbler, and a notebook already out. She’d written a list of questions: what do I actually need to pack? How often should I call? What if she fails a test? What if she runs out of money? I poured us both tea, and told her I’m not a college advisor, just a mom who’s sent two kids off already, and the stuff that actually helped me wasn’t the generic “let them grow” garbage I read online.
Three years ago, when my oldest Mia left for school, I spent $300 on dorm organizers, a specialty mattress topper, and 12 rolls of washi tape for decorating. I stayed up three nights making a shared Google calendar of all her assignment due dates, told her “call me anytime you need anything, day or night.” The first two weeks, she called once a day, everything was fine. Then the calls got shorter, she sounded snappy, and one night she called crying saying she’d failed her first chem quiz, forgot to register for her minor discussion section, and had already spent half her semester grocery money on takeout because the dining hall closed at 7 p.m. My first instinct was to grab my keys, drive the three hours to campus, and fix every single thing. I even drafted an email to her chemistry professor asking what extra credit she could do before I stopped myself.
That’s when I called my cousin, who’s worked in student affairs at a public university for 20 years, and she told me the first thing I needed to change was how I asked for problems. Instead of asking “do you need anything?” I should ask “what’s one thing that annoyed you this week?” I tried it the next time we talked. Instead of my usual “everything okay?” I said, “What’s one annoying thing that happened this week?” She laughed and said her shower was so slippery she almost fell every morning, and the vending machine by her dorm ate her $5 three times in a row. It was such a small shift, but it worked. She didn’t have to frame something as a big emergency to bring it up, and I stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop every time she called. I told Lisa that’s the first tip I give anyone, because it’s so easy to do and it changes everything.
The second thing I told her is don’t pack more than two boxes of non-essential stuff. I packed Mia’s entire childhood stuffed animal collection, four extra pairs of boots, and a full set of baking pans “just in case she wanted to bake.” All of it ended up in a friend’s storage unit after move-in, because her dorm closet was smaller than my bathroom. When my second kid, Jake, left last year, we packed one box of clothes and toiletries, one box of keepsakes, and everything else he realized he needed after the first week got shipped to him from home, or he bought it at the Walmart off campus. Dorms are tiny, no one needs that much stuff, and shipping a box costs $15, which is way cheaper than buying all that stuff ahead of time just to haul it home for winter break.
For money, I told Lisa the trick that stopped all our fights: auto-transfer a set amount for weekly spending, no lump sums. The first semester, I gave Mia $1,000 at the start of the semester for food and fun, and she ran out in two months. She was too embarrassed to tell me for two weeks, which is why she was so snappy on the phone, I had no idea what was wrong. Now we do $100 a week auto-transferred to a separate checking account I can see, that’s for groceries, coffee, going out with friends. If she runs out before the week is up, she waits. No emergency transfers unless it’s a medical bill or a car repair, not an extra concert ticket or a late-night takeout run. That’s it, it’s boring, it doesn’t require any fancy budgeting apps, and it works. No more fights about where the money went, no more awkward surprise requests for cash.
The last thing I told Lisa, the one that’s hardest to do, is don’t fix their small problems for them. When Mia failed that chem quiz, I wanted to email the professor. Instead I just said, “What do you think you can do about it?” She thought for a minute, said she could go to office hours and get the free tutor the department offers. That’s exactly what she did, and she pulled her grade up to a B by the end of the semester. If I’d emailed the prof, she never would have learned how to ask for help on her own. If they forget to do their laundry, they’ll figure out how to use the campus machines. If they sign up for a class they hate, they can drop it themselves. You don’t have to catch every mistake before it happens.
Lisa closed her notebook, ate two cookies, and said she felt way better than when she walked in. She left, and I went back to folding sheets, and put Mia’s old coffee-stained hoodie back in the drawer. Mia’s a junior now, she still texts me when she can’t figure out her student loan payment, and I still have to bite my tongue sometimes to keep from calling the financial aid office myself. Some weeks we don’t talk for three days, some weeks she calls crying about a bad group project or a rude roommate. It’s not perfect, and I don’t have all the answers. It’s just what’s worked for us, so far.
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