I have never had the gift of scintillating dinner conversation with my children.

“What happened at school today?”

“Nothing.”

My mother-in-law used to joke that she called her son, my husband, the “little neck clam” because he also had nothing to say about his life as a child.

They clearly inherited this tendency from his side of the family.

Instead, I have had to rely on the beneficence of friends with children to let me know what is happening in my own children’s lives. “Hey, congratulations on that music award Daniel won.” What?

One neighbor in particular whose daughter was the same age as our middle child would call to warn of science projects, fundraisers, tryouts and scholarship deadlines. But she only had one child and I was clueless without her help for my other two.

I have tried various approaches: “What was the best thing that happened at school today?” “Nothing.”

“Did anything bad happen at school today?” “No.”

“How was practice?” “OK.”

My husband sought levity. “Did anyone fall off a chair?” At least that elicited a raised eyebrow before the head dropped and the response came. “No.”

Then my kids went off to college and entered a black hole without any sources of illumination. I read the website and subscribed to the school paper – the upshot being that I seemed to know more about their schools than they did, but at least it gave me a focal point for our periodic phone conversations.

Relationships have changed tremendously since my eldest trotted off to college 10 years ago. Texting was in its infancy and Facebook was perhaps a gleam in its founder’s eye, but was a long way from the 400 million users we know today. Back in the day, what happened at college stayed at college.

Now, we have access to “TMI” as the text abbreviation goes. While as a college parent I don’t want to know about keg parties or beer pong or any of the other inappropriate stuff that makes its way to Facebook. I lecture them on appropriate use and then stay away from their pages.

I do, however, want an entree to coursework, career aspirations and goal setting. I want to see grades and pay bills (not really!). And I want to have an occasional conversation that consists of more than grunts and head nods. I assume you feel the same way.

Now that your sons and daughters are heading home for nearly four months of homemade meals, a limitless pantry of food and free laundry supplies, it is time to plot your communication strategy.

No expert myself, I have nonetheless come up with four useful pointers to help communicate with the college crowd: get access to their records; be prepared to talk when they make an overture; lower the volume on your nagging; and, forge common ground. It really is that simple.

The bill paying aspect is easy – my son and daughter gladly handed over a PIN that accessed their grades and financial records in exchange for Mom writing the check. The FERPA policy that protects your son or daughter’s right to policy can be signed and faxed to our Registrar. That gives you the right to access your student’s financial and academic records. Given the choice of signing or paying, my children both chose the former.

But quality conversations? Those were, and still are, rare. Yet, as parents, we need to seize the opportunities for meaningful discussion when they arise – on their terms, not ours. All my prodding and poking gets me nowhere, but every now and then one of our three will wander in our bedroom just as we are turning out the lights and be in the mood to talk. As inconvenient as it may be, we stifle our yawns and settle in for a chat. Being there for them when they are ready to talk is huge. Invite them to dinner, one-on-one, or drive them places. And then be quiet. All that silence usually gets them talking.

I also tried to lower the volume on my nagging. I gave up the rants about dirty rooms and laundry piles because it occurred to me that they couldn’t hear the difference between my conversational tones and my nagging voice. It all sounded like “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…”

I learned about punk music in order to forge common ground with my son. My sister became a Met fan when her oldest became obsessed with baseball and a theater buff when her younger boy started acting. Meet them where they are. Talking about guitar riffs, or on-base percentages, or auditions might open doors to meaningful talk about career aspirations.

Finally, hold your tongue. Only say half of what you want to say and hold the other half for another day. I’ve come to the conclusion that they really do want our advice, it’s just so boring for them when we give it.

Enjoy them this summer.

By Tracy Gottlieb, Ph.D.

It’s that time of year. Spring is in the air, FAFSA’s have been filed, the IRS

deadline is looming and your college student proposes that it’s time to move

off-campus into an apartment.

Beware: students are smart and make some great arguments. They do their

homework and come to you with an equation that shows how much cheaper it

is to live in an apartment off campus.

And sometimes it really is. But…

What’s a parent to say? Parents have a lot to consider in weighing whether

the time is right for your son or daughter to strike out on their own. I didn’t

allow my daughter off campus until she was a junior. I felt that the timing was

right then for her (and me!).

The first and most important question to consider is just how mature is your

student? Is he or she ready to be set free in an apartment building where

other tenants go to bed at 11 p.m. and get up and out by 7:30 a.m.? Is your

student an upstanding citizen? If, in your heart of hearts, you know the answer

to that fundamental question is no, then it’s your obligation to nix the big plan.

South Orange landlords can be tough. Some have little tolerance for parties

and noise, so it is important to know your student and make sure your student

knows the limits. If not, living among the permanent residents of South Orange

will be fraught with difficulties.

If, however, your student has been making sound and mature decisions

throughout the academic year, then perhaps you can move on to the second

concern: just how much is this going to cost?

South Orange is an expensive suburb. People (read that “Grown-ups”) live

here in order to have easy access to New York City, so the apartments and

houses aren’t cheap. Apartments range from about $790 a month for a studio

in the area to about $2500 for a well-appointed two-bedroom. Houses can be

rented for a base of about $2400 monthly. You get what you pay for.

One nephew of mine paid $370 a month one year and $450 a month the next,

but told his mother it was better she never saw where he was laying his head

at night. Another SHU nephew paid $640 a month for the fall semester, but he

and his three friends were evicted when the house was sold in December.

Personally, it was only after my daughter signed a lease that I realized the fire

escape in her house was made out of wood. It was a worry in the back of my

mind the entire time she lived there.

The biggest plus in favor of off campus living, Seton Hall’s Peer Advisers tell

me, is the opportunity to continue the growth toward maturity and

independence. Students also say it is easier to study in an apartment than a

noisy residence hall.

The biggest con is the student’s need to take charge of the fundamentals of

living – cooking, cleaning and paying bills. One student said he moved in to

his apartment in the spring and never budgeted for the $530 oil bill that came

after the heat was turned on. Another student observed that the food bill can

be hefty if you want to eat more than Ramen noodles.

Some “resimuters” (students who live nearby campus) solve the food

conundrum by taking a small meal plan that brings them to our caf?? to eat. My

daughter used to come home and raid our pantry after we had been to the

supermarket. Whatever works.

There are hidden charges that must be budgeted. Parking in South Orange is

expensive – about $80 a month. The cable bill adds up if wireless is needed.

Sometimes heat and hot water is included, but that charge is usually an add-

on. There’s also a sewer bill, a water bill and a phone bill. Make sure your

student has it in writing what is included and what still needs to be paid. Ask

the current tenants if you can see some of their monthly bills to get an

estimate of the real cost of moving in to the village.

Students forget that with a house comes responsibility (after the tough winter

we’ve had, the first question that comes to mind is, “Who is going to

shovel?”!) but there are also lawns to mow, pests to control, garbage and

recycling to take out, utilities to pay, and plumbing to maintain. One student

said he and his housemates were almost ticketed for failure to mow the lawn,

but that now they all take turns caring for the front yard.

For many students, the transition from on-campus living to an apartment is an

evolutionary process. And you will know if and when the time is right for them

to move off campus. Students who move off campus tend to be a little more

disconnected from the university and its activities, so if your student isn’t a

joiner, off-campus living might isolate them further.

There is no right or wrong answer. It’s a family decision that comes after

frank conversation and some introspection on the part of your students – are

they ready to make an early jump into the world of paying their bills on time

and being good neighbors?

It’s one thing to be the dean and to speak to parents about the hypothetical experience of sending your child off to college.

It’s a whole different thing when the dean is a Mom this time around.

Seventeen-year-old Tom waved a big white envelope emblazoned with “A Home for the Mind, Heart and Spirit,” in front of my face, his smile as big as the sky. “Looks like I am going to college,” he cheered.

Seton Hall University will never be the same.

I have renewed respect for the process we parents must endure in order to send our young adults off to college. I know that sympathetic parents lament what their children must go through — SAT prep, SAT testing, college visits, applications, and so on — but for the self-centered among us, it’s all about me and my nagging! So many things to oversee.

In one way, it’s actually gotten simpler since my older two were high school seniors and applications had to be filled out neatly in pen. It is still a daunting task. Unless you are one of the lucky ones (like me!) whose children know where they want to go to college, students are filling out more applications than ever. One mother told me her son’s guidance office suggested applying to 10 schools!

A selective nagging strategy worked well in the Gottlieb house. I let things slide — even though it was gnawing at me — until we (read that, he) needed to absolutely swing in to action and then I would nag, nag, nag until the chore — the college essay, the application, the extracurricular activity sheet, fill in the blank — was complete. That’s how we got to the moment where we pressed the submit button and breathed a sigh of relief. I am not advocating this as a best practice, but it did work for us quite nicely.

Now that the decision has been made, the burden shifts to my husband and me. We need to tackle without procrastination a job we normally delay until about April 13: our income taxes. But April 15 needs to be backed up by several weeks so that we can meet a more daunting deadline. As parents of incoming freshmen or returning students, we all must have our student’s FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) complete and filed by March 1.

I have been supervising the Financial Aid department since August and, thus, have been privy to all sorts of heart-wrenching stories. Some of the stories could have had happier endings if the student’s FAFSA had been filed in time to be considered for state and federal aid and for Seton Hall’s limited pot of need-based aid.

The FAFSA isn’t that hard, but it does take organizational skills: what the heck is this kid’s Social Security number and has any one seen last month’s bank statement? In order to complete all the information, you will need:

• Social Security numbers for parents and student
• Your student’s driver’s license
• Your student’s W-2 forms and other records of income
• Your 2009 income tax records
• Your student’s 2009 income tax records
• Bank statements for you and your student
• Business and mortgage information
• If your student is male and over 18, his Selective Service registration
• An alien registration or permanent resident card if you are not a citizen

If the task still invokes fear, log on to the SHU web site’s financial aid page and you can watch a clever short video about the FAFSA. There is also a link to the government’s FAFSA form.

Remember, we are always nagging our students to be prepared and to meet their deadlines. Now the onus is on us. Let’s make one of the primary resolutions for 2010 (in addition to losing the baby weight we gained with the birth of these college-age students!) to tackle our taxes and file our FAFSA so that if there is any free money out there, our students can be in line to earn it.

Links that can help:

FAFSA: www.fafsa.ed.gov

5-minute YouTube FAFSA video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kor_9cK593M

SHU financial aid: http://www.shu.edu/applying/undergraduate/financial-info/financial-aid.cfm

I know I am supposed to feel all weepy and sad about this, but I clicked my heels and sang as I finished up my 23rd and final “back to school” night at my son’s high school.

What kind of a mother am I, anyway?

I’m feeling guilty as I write this because I am just so darn happy that I never have to have another language teacher speak to me in Spanish, that I never have to race up and down the five flights of stairs for a five-minute lecture on proper homework supervision and that I never have to see another PowerPoint presentation on the importance of gym in a child’s school day.

My baby is a high school senior. I don’t know who is more excited – him or me. He’s reveling in his position at the top of the high school food chain and I am reveling in the fact that I just paid my final PTA dues and sent in my final health form. I am checking things off my imaginary final “TO DO” list. I am looking forward to our final concert, our final guidance visit, our final baseball game and, finally, our final high school commencement. It is almost time to put away childish things. Finally.

Those of you with your oldest child in college perhaps had a more nostalgic approach to these rites of passage your children have just come through. For me, it’s been a long time coming!

But even as I am putting aside these childish things, I am wise enough to know that parenting is fundamentally an endless series of worry and concern, punctuated by occasional episodes of tremendous joy that make it all worthwhile. “When does this worrying end?” I asked my 85-year-old mother. “Never,” she responded, and pointed out that she is still fretting over the assorted burdens each of her nine children is facing at any given time.

My sister sent her middle son to college. She called me a few weeks ago in a panic. She had been to visit him for his 18th birthday and for the first time in his life he wasn’t hungry. What did that mean? Meanwhile, I have other mothers concerned because their children are packing on the pounds. Still other mothers are worried because their children are homesick or they seem to be struggling in some of their classes. Worry. Worry. Worry!

What’s a mother to do? I’d like to recommend a deep breath and a glass of merlot, but perhaps it’s more appropriate to remind ourselves that all of these adjustments to college and adulthood that come this time of year are opportunities for growth. Our children need to learn how to function independently and how to solve challenges on their own. “Jim doesn’t know that he can’t live without me,” my sister confided. “Don’t tell him just yet,” I advised.

It’s the time in the school year where things really can start to unravel. First year students suddenly realize that no one is going to drag them out of bed when their alarm clock rings. The math class that was a breeze the first three weeks is starting to get difficult. An English essay is due and an Anatomy and Physiology exam is looming. Meanwhile, upperclassmen who have lived through the perils of freshman year aren’t immune to poor choices.

We have an intricate support system for your students — multiple tutoring options, counseling, academic advising and spiritual guidance. We stand ready to help. Your job at home is to nudge your students toward us. Together, we can help transform hesitant teenagers into successful adults.

As a parent with two college graduates under my belt I have learned to take the bumps in stride. Each bad decision is an opportunity for growth and each good decision provides a chance to applaud the path your student is taking.

A few weeks ago after a meal of take-out Chinese, I cracked open a fortune cookie that I have been reflecting on ever since: “Worrying never prevents the evils of tomorrow, it only destroys the joys of today.” That’s one wise fortune cookie!

In honor of Mother’s Day, I wanted to share some of the things my 85-year-old mother taught me.

She taught me how to share by giving me eight brothers and sisters. She also taught me that the meat platter will only make it once around the table so if I want some, I should grab it the first time.

Yet, she also believed the miracle of the loaves and fishes was a life lesson: there will always be enough to go around, so welcome your friends and your children’s friends to the table whenever possible and share what you have with them.

She taught me that life is not fair. I learned that one over and over again.

She taught me that lying is really, really wrong. When trapped in a childhood lie, each of us would be chastised with words of wisdom from her father: “I’d rather raise a thief than a liar,” she’d holler. I’ve been mulling that pearl for about half a century and I still haven’t figured it out.

She taught me to have fun. The child of a large extended Irish family, my mother regularly seized the opportunity to celebrate. We’d wrap a big box in red crepe paper for Valentine’s Day, decorate it with doilies and have a family party. We celebrated St. Patrick’s Day (as any self-respecting Irish Catholic family would), the last day of school, and the last day of summer vacation.

She taught me how to buy gifts for people. When you are buying presents for nine children, it would have been easier to buy us all the same things and be done with it, but Christmas meant the annual creation of a highly individualized top secret list maintained by my father but created by my mother. To this day, she is thoughtful about gifts. She recently tracked down a set of colored Pyrex nesting bowls that I nostalgically remembered from my childhood. When I turned 50, she gave me my father’s journalism fraternity key, something I had admired for years. She taught me that gift giving is more than passing on a gift certificate, but an art that tells people how much you really care.

She taught me the value of family. She used to say she never particularly liked kids. But HER kids, those ones she liked. She has now extended that philosophy to her 29 (soon to be 30) grandchildren and her four great grandchildren.

She taught me the importance of the individual. In a household of 11, this could have been a tough lesson to learn, but Mom made it easy. Each of our milestones like First Communion or graduation, each of our birthdays and each of our successes were celebrated individually. When I moved to Europe as a young married woman, my mother was bereft. Friends asked me if I was an only child. When I told them the truth, they burst into laughter. “How does she even know you are gone?” they marveled. But she knew, and she missed me.

She taught me accountability. I was responsible for chores, for my younger brothers and sisters and for my schoolwork. Shirking these responsibilities was not an option. She believed that you get up every day and you go to school or you go to work, a lesson that is lost on many today. She sent my sister to school with the measles because you don’t let a little rash stop you from your purpose.

She taught me my religion. She sent us to Catholic school even though the $10 tuition for each of us was a burden. She sent us to confession on Saturday afternoons and to daily mass during Lent. We gave up candy every Lent – not because we were self-sacrificing but because we were warned there’d be no candy in the basket if we didn’t sacrifice first. We had an Advent wreath every year and we each had a little crib for the baby Jesus. Each night before bed my mother would take stock of all the good deeds we had done and give us a piece of straw for each one. Then, on Christmas morning, the little crib by our beds would have a miniature baby Jesus nestled inside.

She taught me the importance of family traditions. When you have nine children in tow, you don’t get many dinner invitations. So she created family rituals around the holidays that made the days special even though it was always the same 11 of us around the table. We had a special Holy Thursday meal to commemorate the Last Supper. It was only as an adult married to my Jewish husband that I realized we were actually recreating a Passover Seder each year. When we got too old for childish Easter baskets, Mom made “nests” for us to hold our candy (I only learned as an adult that it was so much cheaper to put the candy on a plate than it was to buy individual baskets).

More recently, Mom taught me the value of pursuing your dreams no matter how old you are. When Dad died in 1990, Mom was 67. She had always said that some day she would go to college. So off she went. She graduated from Seton Hall University in 1998 at the age of 74, and modeled for all of us how to grow old excellently.

Most importantly, Mom taught me how to be a mother to my own three children and for that I am most grateful.

Mother’s Day at Seton Hall always coincides with the end of our school year. It’s our Mother’s Day gift to you – they’re back! Enjoy them these next four months until they return to us. And know that, even if it doesn’t seem like it in the moment, they are learning great life lessons from you. Happy Mother’s Day!

May 2009

By Tracy Gottlieb, Ph.D.

Dean of Freshman Studies and Special Academic Programs

Ah, spring! Birds chirp, flowers push through bare ground, buds appear on barren trees. The heck with all that, in the Gottlieb house we celebrate the crack of the bat and the thud of a fast ball into a mitt!

In fact, for years, our whole neighborhood has gauged the onset of spring based on when our now 16-year-old son Tom emerges from winter hibernation.

He was about four when he fished one of those crummy plastic baby mitts from his brother’s discarded toy pile and recruited my husband, Henry, to teach him to throw. Then, he’d stand outside tossing a ball up in the air and plaintively begging his dad, older siblings, and cousins, “Have a catch? Have a catch?”

He was our neighborhood’s harbinger of spring. Forget Punxsutawney Phil. If Tom Gottlieb was outside tossing the ball around, certainly spring couldn’t be far behind?

Winter is not our favorite season. Indoors with the heat jacked up, the Gottliebs eagerly count down the days to “pitchers and catchers,” which for the uninitiated occurs in mid-February when the first players show up for professional baseball’s spring training. We deplore the weeks when the sports section of the newspaper is preoccupied with hockey and we measure the distance to opening day based on the slowly expanding newspaper column space devoted to our family sport.

Tom’s enthusiasm for playing and watching baseball fueled our whole family’s interest. It’s curious how each of our children has expanded and shaped who we are as a family. We’re not really good with family dinners, family vacations are a vague memory, but we Gottliebs rally around all varieties of baseball and, most especially, our Mets.

Actually, we were always a baseball family, we just didn’t know it. I have been a fan most of my life. My first baseball game was in May 1967 when Mickey Mantle hit his 500th homerun in an exciting come-from-behind Yankee win over Baltimore. I was smitten. For years, my sister and I took the No. 118 bus, the A train and the D train to Yankee Stadium (it was a different world back then) and sat in the general admission $1.50 seats. We sewed our own pinstripe uniforms and carried banners that cheered our favorite players. They stunk back then, but we loved them anyway.

As time passed, I put aside childish things and moved on, occasionally checking the box scores and taking in a game. Then, I fell in love with a Met fan.

Henry, a Queens kid who attended the first game ever at the Mets’ Shea Stadium, says he knew he had to marry me when he heard me explain the infield fly rule to a friend.

We lived in Europe the first few years of our marriage. Baseball was far away, except when we found an amateur international baseball playoff in Antwerp to satisfy our hunger. Then, when my first pregnancy caused nights of sleeplessness, we’d tune in at 3 a.m. to listen to the 1982 World Series games over the Armed Forces Network.

Thus, we always gravitated to baseball, but it was our Tom’s early and earnest love of the sport that solidified it as our family pastime. Tom became such an avid Met fan that I had to abandon old loyalties and join him. We joke that anyone can be a Yankee fan but that it takes strong personal fortitude to stand by a team that leads you along for four months and then abandons you just before the Prom (and, not once, but twice!).

When the Mets faded from the scene in 2007 on the last day of the season, Tom wailed in frustration and anger. “Now,” his dad said, “now you know what it really means to be a Met fan. This is as bad as it gets. It won’t ever be any worse than it is right now.”

Thus, baseball serves as our family’s metaphor for life. It has taught us about success, about failure, about ethics, about right and wrong, about lying, about cheating, about illness, about heartache…I could go on and on. It’s fodder for dinner conversation when an otherwise surly teen-ager doesn’t want to talk. It brings us together around our television from April through October (we hope!) in the evenings when we would otherwise be squirreled away by ourselves.

Baseball might not bring your family together. Perhaps it is a love of the outdoors, or a fondness for music, or travel. Whatever the vehicle for family unity, celebrate it. Embrace your children’s hobbies, if you can, and use them as opportunities to get to know your child a little better. As for the Gottlieb family, it’s finally April, so “Play Ball!”

I started college a math major. Ha! That lasted through one semester of calculus, where I realized that being good at balancing a checkbook didn’t necessarily signal a predilection for higher math. So began my search for a college major.

I wasn’t alone. Nationally, statistics show that between 50 and 66 percent of all students who come to college WITH a major change it once they are here (that’s my group). Then there are the hoards of students who have no defined major when they come. At Seton Hall University last year, 55 percent of our freshman class came to college in that category. About half those students are truly undecided while the rest are students interested in declaring a highly competitive major but need to complete a series of course prerequisites.

All these statistics are on my mind because we’ve been planning our annual “Declare your Major Day.” It’s that time of year when students who have been mulling a course of study need to make a commitment. Sounds like a marriage proposal, huh? Unfortunately, too many students treat it like that and show cold feet when that’s just not necessary.

A college major is NOT a lifetime commitment. It’s just a commitment to tolerate a field of study until graduation. Then, all bets are off. I know a former admissions director who was a music major; history majors become journalists; biology majors go to law school; and, English majors become mentors in Freshman Studies!

The student who majors in art history ends up a college graduate who enjoyed learning about art as he or she moved toward graduation. Some art history majors continue for an advanced degree and some make their way to the workforce. In other words, a college major is a means to an end, the end being that all-important college degree.

Too many students today are afraid to make a commitment, but with the declaration of a major comes a home and a family. The sooner a student embraces the major, the sooner they feel the sense of belonging in their department, the better the college experience.

Students who are slow to declare a major also might have difficulty choosing courses. The math classes you take, for example, depend on what your major is. Biology students need Calculus; art history majors need Math Perspectives.

A little indecision, however, is a good thing. I have always thought that the undecided students have a leg up on the rest of us. They know that they don’t know while the rest think they know but really don’t! While obviously there are students who do indeed know what they want to be and do from early childhood, so many students think they have a career plan only to discover they really don’t like the courses needed to meet that initial goal.

The psychology department is offering a special topics course next semester, titled Career Decisions, which should help undecided students focus in on what they love and what they are good at. That course, coupled with advice from professional counselors in The Career Center and supplemented by sound guidance from Freshman Studies mentors, academic advisers, a beloved professor and other resources should help students find their way.

Encourage your undecided or derailed students to think about the classes they liked best, the classes where they performed best. What did they like about these classes and why? Have they ever had a job or volunteer activity where the time flew by? What were they doing then?

Too many students are so unfamiliar with the concept of self-exploration that they aren’t in touch with what they love and what they don’t. They also don’t realize that they already have made choices. Do they want to major in Chemistry? Do they like Physics?

Doors close, too. A student who has performed poorly as a freshman has most likely lost the opportunity to go to law school. A student who has failed to advance through a math curriculum will not major in business. While the sound of these negative doors slamming shut is depressing, it also provides an audible signal that it is time to move on.

We parents can help by asking probative questions that help shut doors and open windows. We can facilitate work experiences for our sons and daughters that help them experience working in an office, a retail establishment, a hospital, and such.

And, for those whose lack of academic success demands that they shift gears, our job is to be firmly supportive as we talk them through the disappointment and help them come to terms with that necessary wakeup call (I think the term epiphany sounds so much nicer!).

As for myself, I spent a semester exploring possible majors in psychology and sociology before my “aha!” moment when I realized that my facility with words and my inquisitiveness naturally led me to the Communication Department. And, for the record, I haven’t balanced my checkbook since college!

Dean of Freshman Studies and Special Academic Programs

You can divide the world in to two parts: the people who write things down and the people who don’t. I was always happily a part of the take-things-as-they-come crowd until the day I blew my boss off for lunch.

I was on the faculty back then when I got an invite to have lunch with our new provost. I taught a Friday morning workshop about journalism to a group of high schoolers, then got in my car, drove to the supermarket, spent about $200, drove home, unloaded the groceries, put them away, picked up the kids from school, made a terrific dinner with said groceries, and sat down to eat, when my husband innocently asked, “How was lunch with the provost?” Yikes!

How could I possibly explain? It was Friday night and I stewed about the problem the whole weekend. How could I possibly tell my boss, the No. 2 executive in the university and the chief academic officer, that I simply forgot about him? There was only one recourse: a complete mea culpa with the promise from that day forward I would write everything down.

It’s one of the few promises to myself that I have kept religiously. I still use a rather large annual agenda and write down all my appointments and meetings. I refer to it several times a day. If a meeting is scheduled electronically, it only becomes real to me when I put it in the book.

It’s written somewhere that it takes 21 days to form a habit. Floss your teeth 21 days straight and you have created a routine, so the accepted wisdom goes. I (and my dentist who looks at my teeth three times a year) disagree. The only way I can make a habit out of something odious is to write it down and then follow the list. If flossing gets left off the to-do list today, there’s about zero chance it’s going to get done.

Now, we’re asking our students, your sons and daughters, to put it all down on paper. Our new Academic Success Center, an advising clearinghouse on campus, is inviting students who are at crossroads to come to Mooney Hall for a visit. We want students who are confused, students who are contemplating a switch in majors, students who are having little success tracking a difficult major and students who have had an epiphany about their future to come by for an informal chat. And to write down their options to make them real. Nothing like the truth staring you in the face in black and white to make it all real.

We are helping these students come to terms with what they are good at, what it will take academically to succeed and what kind of plan they need to have in place. One tool we will be using is the “four-year plan,” which asks students to anticipate the courses they need to graduate and to create a grid that fits the requirements in to the remaining semesters. This is especially useful for students who are contemplating a major change or have had little success tracking the major of their dreams.

Mostly, we will be asking these students to put it all down on paper. Sophomores who come to see us only have four more semesters to make their undergraduate academic dreams a reality or they will be on “overtime.” We want to help students graduate as economically as possible. Sometimes, seeing reality in black and white is a great wake-up call.

Some students are banging their heads against an impenetrable wall. If your son or daughter failed Developmental Math in freshman year but is still planning to be a Biology major, that student probably needs a frank conversation with one of our academic advisers. It will take them five more semesters to simply complete their math requirement and they won’t be able to take required science courses until their second semester sophomore year – if they pass everything.

This academic planning gives rise to some fruitful career conversations. Why, we ask, do you want to pursue this major? What are your career aspirations and is there a simpler path to fulfill your career goals?

The Academic Success Center in Mooney Hall is also inviting transfer students and others who are new and confused to visit and talk about Seton Hall processes, procedures and policies. We will supplement information they get from the faculty advisers in their majors and help them complete the transfer of courses and have those classes evaluated in the various departments.

If as parents you have concerns about your student’s path (rocky or smooth though it may be) suggest that they give the Academic Success Center a chance. They can make an appointment by emailing academicsuccess@shu.edu or by calling 973-275-2387. We look forward to helping them find their way.

By Tracy Gottlieb, Ph.D.

Dean of Freshman Studies and Special Academic Programs

When I was a girl and I asked my mother what she wanted for Christmas, she would say, “World Peace. And barring that, I’d like you kids to get along with each other for a full day.” I was one of nine children and, at the time, I thought she was kidding.

Now, nearly a half century later, I’ve come around to my wise mother’s point of view. World peace is still a great option, if feasible. But, barring that, what if we had a normal family dinner with all five of us around the table and we all liked and respected each other for maybe an hour?

Our family has shrunk in recent years down to just my husband, our 16-year-old son, Tom, and me. So we decided to downsize. We sold our 100-year-old monstrosity to an innocent young couple with lots of energy and moved to a townhouse. No sooner had we gotten settled in our new digs when our shrunken family started expanding. My wise, now elderly, mother is making plans for an extended visit with us while our adult daughter, who has been living on her own in Connecticut for the past two years, just got a new job in New Jersey. She’s baaaaack!

Actually, it’s quite nice to have a bonafide adult child in the house. She pitches in, she stops at the supermarket on her way home from work, she drives her brother to his events. When I remember back to the sibling turmoil during her college years, I am grateful that she has grown up so nicely. It was touch and go there for awhile.

When she came home from college after her first semester, my husband and I were shocked by the transformation of our once courteous and considerate daughter into this thing that treated our house like a dorm room and wanted to live the nocturnal life of a college student in a household where everyone else had to get up for work or school in the morning. She actually yelled at her brother for holding band practice at 4 in the afternoon while she was napping! It’s certainly better this time around.

When she came home from college, however, we solved a lot of stress with a family meeting where we hashed out all of our concerns. I reluctantly ceded control by easing the curfew on weekends, but asserted my need to get a good night’s sleep during the week. That worked for us.

We also had to hash out bathroom privileges in a house that only had one tub (now we have two, so it’s easier!). In my mind, there was nothing worse than Annie getting ready to go out in the evening at about 10:30 p.m. as I was heading to bed. The shower, the hair dryer, all of that, drove me crazy. So we agreed that if she was going to go out, she would get herself ready at an earlier hour — a good compromise that worked for both of us.

Now, at our homestead, Tom doesn’t yet have automobile privileges, but there can also be tension when college students return home and try to wrestle back control of the automobile that a younger sibling now thinks of as his or her own. This might take the wisdom of Solomon on your part, or at the very least a grid sheet that maps out appropriate car time for everyone.

Things are pleasant at the Gottlieb house this Christmas. We joyfully await the arrival of Grandma. And we’ve warned Daniel that if he gets it in his head to move home, he’d better bring a sleeping bag.

Meanwhile, since we are a feisty group, we Gottliebs are still striving to achieve world peace and an occasional family dinner that doesn’t end in raised voices. It is just so easy to slip back in to bad habits.

Enjoy your students as they, too, come baaaaack to you! Merry Christmas!

By Tracy Gottlieb, Ph.D.

Dean of Freshman Studies and Special Academic Programs

My mother-in-law introduced me to a great Yiddish term, “Nachas fun der kinder,” which means gratification or pleasure from the children. It’s that moment of overwhelming pride when your 18-year-old makes an unsolicited call to her grandmother to say hello, when your college senior graduates summa cum laude, or, in my case, when your struggling musician son signs with a record label and releases a CD!

Daniel always had music in his soul. He struggled in school as a kid, but had no trouble memorizing the entire musical score to The Wizard of Oz. He decided in fourth grade that he was going to play the trumpet. Finally, he had found a subject he was good at.

After four years of marching band in high school, Daniel realized that music was more than a hobby, it was in his core being. He majored in music in college, with a concentration in sound engineering. He hated school and couldn’t wait to graduate. He complained bitterly about school work. His trumpet playing gave way to an electric guitar. He spent hours teaching himself to play. I never once heard him complain about having to practice the guitar or rehearse with the band.

Last week, 16 years after his first piano lesson opened up the world of music, Daniel hosted a CD release party with his band, One Short Fall. Dan says his music is “Popular Punk,” which translates into melodic hard rock and roll with an occasional foul word sprinkled in. Bad language aside, I’m very proud.

We don’t get to choose the roads our children take. Our mistake as parents is that we sometimes think we can. I had a student who asked me to mediate a meeting between him and his parents. His folks wanted him to major in business. He wanted to be a graphic artist. And he wasn’t doing very well in the business courses that his parents had chosen for him. I suggested to the parents that perhaps their son was doing poorly because he was pursuing their dreams instead of his own. His dad thought he knew what was best, thought it was only smart to go where the jobs were. But that wasn’t where his son wanted to be.

When Dan was in high school and floundering around for a purpose, I could have easily dissuaded him from majoring in music. It’s not exactly an easy career choice. After all, what mom wants her son to grow up to be a punk rock musician? From my perspective, however, this was Daniel’s path to a college degree. He never would have stuck it out and graduated from college if he had been forced to study business, or science, or one of the other majors that a mom would have preferred.

Unless Dan is extremely lucky, he will never be rich. He’ll always be scrounging for money at the end of every month and holding down a day job to support himself. But Dan really is one of the lucky ones.

Dan’s one of the people who gets up every day with a purpose, secure in the knowledge that he is doing what he was born to do. He also has passion — the passion for his music — in his life, something so many of us are lacking.

I don’t think this passion and purpose are something we can create, but perhaps it is something we can nurture. Our job as parents is to give our children the opportunities to explore their strengths, then to let them decide whether it’s a strength they personally want to pursue. I say this from experience.

My oldest child, Annie, could have been a great musician. I was determined that she would realize these ambitions of mine. So I made her stick with that clarinet all the way through high school. It was only in conversations long after high school was done that I came to understand she had been sitting there without a reed in her clarinet for the longest time — her own little protest against her mother’s dictum.

Just for this week, as I drive to work every day, I listen to the music of One Short Fall with a happy heart and revel in this little bit of “nachas fun der kinder.”

Dean of Freshman Studies and Special Academic Programs