College * S.A.T. * and other thoughts about growing up

I heard an NPR story this morning about the stress that the U.S. youth are feeling about getting into college. I listen to a parent, who told her daughter, when she was in 7th grade, she'd better "get some interests" - so she could get into a good college. The story went on to tell us how her daughter shortly after this conversation began to have stomach aches. What's up with that?

The story continued on and on about the pressures of teenagers are feeling to get into a top tier school. As if not making it into one of these schools means you are a failure for life. More reasons for the fall of the modern Roman empire.

The story resonates with me because over the summer the son of a cousin of my husband, announced his intentions to try and go to Princeton. When the story was relayed to me, I responded by saying how wonderful, what is it that he wants to study at Princeton? Silly me, I had assumed that Princeton held some sort of specialty focus that he was interested in. Nope. Just wants to go to Princeton. Well part of me was like - yeah good for him go for Princeton and the other was like wholly crap you're going to pay some enormous amount of money and you don't even know what you want to study?

How sad that our society values most is what you do with yourself before college and not during or after. This all sounds to me like a society focused on money and power - not learning. I can't wait for the backlash to this push for everyone to attend Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.