Covid College Tours

My youngest child is an honour roll student in her last year of high school. As her scholastic aptitude did not originate from my side of the bloodline, I can only marvel at her accomplishments from an experiential distance. As we progress through her choosing an institute of higher learning, I find myself emotionally invested in ways I wasn’t ready for.

My daughter’s academic path contrasts starkly with my own student history. Financial circumstance forced me out of university and into the workforce before the end of my first year. While I eke out a middle class income today, I am frustrated by the limitations my lack of education has imposed. This has driven me to see that my children are not similarly restricted.

The university application process in our jurisdiction has the applicant rank their top three choices. The applicant then waits for offers. Under the assumption that she would be staying home to study, her first two choices were local with the third being a six hour drive away.

The third, out-of-town, choice was a throw in. We were financially resigned to her studying in town and living at home. All three universities on her application have communicated offers of acceptance with scholarships of similar value.

The out-of-town university, however, is, by far, the most prestigious of her three choices. It is also home to an advanced veterinary college that, if her grades qualify for admission, would dovetail ideally with her career plans. To our thinking, if she completed her bachelor degree there, it would be a seamless transition to stay and attend veterinary college.

On a whim, we took a trip last weekend to visit this out-of-town university. It sits in a picturesque town with a population of just over 100,000. We arrived on a beautiful Spring day. The campus was on idyllic display with tree lined boulevards, inviting agoras, and ivy-covered, heritage architecture. The town and university were big enough to impress yet small enough to befriend.

As we toured, I found myself enraptured, wishing that I had studied in such a dignified setting. I began visualizing a sweeping, glorious destiny for my daughter.

I tell myself that her future shouldn’t be compromised by the modesty of my limitations. If my socio-economic status, geographic location or lack of nerve hold her back, I’ll feel guilty of some vague, unnamable sin. I don’t want to be the cause of her failure to assume her rightful place among the world’s achievers. On my watch, her life will not be consumed with regret for what might have been. She could be our family’s Horatio Alger story.

The universities where we live are accredited with respected programs in my daughter’s field of study. After our visit to the out-of-town university, though, they felt like a fallback position.

Wouldn’t the pandemic force all schools online for, at minimum, the first semester? Surely we could make this work! If her labs were held in person, I could drive her a few times a month, couldn’t I? I’ve got plenty of holidays.

Why don’t I just retire early, move there, get a job with the university and get the employee tuition discount? This way she could live with us and study unfettered by economic duress.

My wife got caught up in the allure as well. She partook of entertaining visions of promising futures. With her own frustrations and disappointments experienced where we live, she was invigorated by the possibility of a new start in a new place.

The out-of-town university confirmed that the Fall 2020 semester would be delivered online. Suddenly, the advantages of going to a local university no longer applied. My daughter could study at the out-of-town university online for, at minimum, the Fall 2020 semester. But beyond that depends on the state of the pandemic.

After the lockdown ends and regular classes resume, housing her out of town is not in the realm of financial reality. We would need to pack up and move there to make this work.

After we returned from the out-of-town university visit, reality beckoned. My eighty three year old aunt in late stage dementia is now Covid 19 positive and on a respirator. My uncle in eldercare had a fall and was rushed to hospital. Neither his residence nor the hospital would provide his transportation back. I drove him home despite being in violation of lockdown protocol to do so. I am the only family member available locally to support him.

My wife’s new job has been a hard-won piece of stability for our household in a precarious labour market. To uproot now would be to throw that into chaos.

I am eligible to retire in 6 months and have some unfinished health and financial matters to attend to before becoming a pensioner.

Our 23 year old still lives with us. She’s finishing her last semester of Art School and is establishing herself with her employer. To move now would destabilize her.

Upon reflection, martyring everyone for my youngest daughter’s education away from home suddenly seems unnecessary, destructive and haphazard. It would also give the appearance of favouring one child over another.

Shelling out for university housing would torpedo any aspirations my wife and I have for world travel. All of my wife’s family lives in town and I’m one of those rare people who enjoys his in-laws. Life has ways of keeping us humbly in place.

We sat down with our university bound daughter and arrived at the realization that studying in town would not exactly ruin her life. In fact, there are tangible benefits to staying beyond convenience and cost. The local university also has a Nobel laureate on faculty. Perhaps the perceived downgrade of staying in town was our glamourizing the unattainable.

We have to submit our choice of school and offer of acceptance on Monday. But you can be damned sure that I’ll be playing every lottery between now and then, checking tickets right up until the final bell.