I just did the arithmetic and was staggered by the fact that as Dean of Freshman Studies for the past 11 years I have shepherded about 13,000 freshmen through Mooney Hall! It’s given me a unique perspective into the mindset of an 18-year-old.

Now, I move beyond the freshman class to the concerns of all students as the Vice President of Student Services, a new area that encompasses Student Affairs, Special Academic Programs and Freshman Studies. I will be supervising student activities, student judicial affairs, health, counseling and career services, retention and advising, Greek life, housing and other student concerns. But before I go forward, I decided to pause and reflect on what I know to be true about student life.

When I was a professor teaching News Reporting, I used to make my students reserve a section of their course notebooks for “Tips from Tracy.” By the end of the semester they had accumulated a litany of advice about journalism. When former students come back to visit, “Tips from Tracy” is the one thing they remember (although I am not certain they can recollect any of the scintillating tidbits). Thus, for parents, some “Tips from Tracy” culled from years of observation on what works, and what doesn’t, in trying to shepherd our children toward commencement.

• Let them make their own mistakes. This is the hardest one for us, myself included, to abide by. For better or worse, this generation of students is closer to their parents than we ever were. And more dependent. When I started in Freshman Studies, I used to beg my students to call home so their parents knew they were alive. I would tell them to call when no one would be home and say, “Hi Mom! Just checking in. Everything is great. I love you and miss you!” Now, when I am advising students, I often see that they are texting their parents the information that I am giving them. Still, it is our job as parents to teach our students how to achieve academic independence. We are hampering their journey to adulthood if we refuse to allow this to happen.
• Make sure the career they choose is theirs, not the one we want. I must concede that we ask an awful lot of 17- and 18-year-olds by forcing them to declare their life path in high school. If national stats are to be believed (and I think they are pretty much on point), about half of the 13,000 freshmen who trekked through our program changed their major en route to graduation. My intention as a high school senior was to be a math teacher. Ha! That fantasy only lasted one semester, when I was introduced to calculus. Students come to college with majors based on day dreams, on their parents’ hopes and aspirations, on really cool television programs and, in a few cases, reality. Some students really are destined to be doctors and nurses and teachers, but for many, the first year of college is one of exploration. Testing whether they were meant to be biology majors is a part of the mix. And first semester grades, whether they are among the 49 4.0 students or among the students on probation, provide a litmus test for a student’s aptitude for and interest in a major. Students who didn’t do well in their major courses need to assess their plan of action. Students who thrived but were miserable also need to assess.
• Give your students lots of advice, but then step back. I call it coaching from the sidelines. My suggestions should in no way diminish your role in your children’s lives. My children would chuckle at the very idea —they always know what Mom is thinking.
• Encourage your students to embrace all of college life. The happiest students are the ones who are engaged in the college. If your student doesn’t seem content or is making noise about wanting to transfer, the best course of action is a heart-to-heart conversation. What went well last semester? When was your son or daughter happiest? And what went wrong? By far, the No. 1 way to assure satisfaction is to be engaged. Was your student involved in an activity? Strategize now and make sure your student promises to get involved. Try a club or organization or extra-curricular activity. As a Comm professor, I always encouraged my students to join The Setonian, our student newspaper, or WSOU-FM, our radio station, or the Theatre Council. All of these extra-curricular activities take solid chunks of idle time away from students, provide a ready-made circle of friends and also provide a line on a resume. But most importantly, the activity helps your student adjust to college. And it provides students with a group of “peeps” who look out for each other. Best of all, it makes them happy, and that’s what all of us really want.

Hope your student has a great semester.

By Tracy Gottlieb, Ph.D.
Vice President of Student Services

We parents are sometimes so busy molding our children’s lives that we forget that we are the ones who really need some serious work. That was my situation a few years ago when I came home from a family vacation and saw the photos my niece posted on Facebook. I was flabbergasted. There was no denying that those pictures showed an aging, overweight woman who could barely move. I had to do something.

Now, 26 months later, I am here to tell you that I changed my life. I lost 70 pounds. I went from a sedentary, arthritic person who watched a lot of reality television to a walker/jogger/hiker who exercises every day. When people ask me how I did it, I usually give them the short answer — a combination of Weight Watchers online and the dance program Jazzercise. But the long answer is a lot more complicated than that.

I had an epiphany. I smile as I write this because here at Seton Hall University I am always urging my freshmen to have their “epiphanical moment.” You are not going to find the word “epiphanical” in the dictionary anywhere because I made it up to describe the “aha!” moment our students often need to have. They need to change their lives — when they abuse their new-found freedom as college freshmen; when they realize that the major they have chosen is too hard; when they discover their life’s vocation; or, when they make poor choices and get themselves in some sort of trouble.

We parents are very good at barking out orders that force our sons and daughters to  change: “You’ve got to fix that math grade;”  “You need a haircut;” “Get a job!”; “Stop hanging out with that kid”; Maybe the best thing we can do, however, is to lead by example. We need to be agents of change.

My niece who is a senior in high school just asked me to read her college essay that describes someone she admires greatly. She picked my mother, a woman who raised nine children and graduated from college at the age of 75. What a great role model for her 31 grandchildren! At a time when many are retiring from work and putting up their feet in front of a television, Maryrose’s grandmother was trudging between Fahy and Corrigan halls (yes, another SHU graduate!) to get to her classes. She showed first hand that we are all capable of change and that, even as we age, change is hard, but good.

My own epiphany came at a time that I was at a crossroads. Either I gracefully accepted the indignities that aging was foisting upon me, or not. I chose not. I can’t really say why it worked this time. My mindset changed. I had friends being diagnosed with breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, heart conditions. My bones were creaking from arthritis.  Something clicked. And I changed.

My epiphany spread ripples around my house. I threw out junk food, turned off the television and got moving. My husband, in a show of support, started eating what I ate. He lost 20 pounds.  The turning point came for both of us about nine months after we started. We arrived at the train station in Giverny, France, and had two choices: we could get on a shuttle bus that would take us to the artist Claude Monet’s home, or we could get on a bike. We pedaled the six miles each way. There was no turning back. We started hiking. Our weekends are now spent trekking through remote corners of North Jersey.

Our children have gotten on board, too. While there is a certain amount of grumbling about the paucity of junk food in our cupboards, everyone is reading labels, discussing and incorporating fiber into their diets. “Our family is obsessed with food,” my daughter declared recently when all five of us were chopping and sautéing a family meal together. “But in a good way,” I added.

The message this month is that we too can be agents of change for our children. Sometimes we can make our points better by saying nothing but by going about our business making ourselves better and more fulfilled. That kind of change speaks volumes.

~Tracy Gottlieb, Ph.D.

As the academic year gears up (this year, in fits and starts thanks to the path of Hurricane Irene), I am immersed in the cliché-ridden language of over-used sports metaphors. Sports seem to naturally creep into our vocabulary as we try to focus our students on things like winning, success, and persistence. We say things like “Get back in the saddle,” or “It’s the bottom of the ninth,” or “It’s only the first quarter — there’s plenty of time left on the clock.”

Here at Seton Hall, we have a new initiative — Academic Coaching — for students who are struggling or lacking confidence. Working with our new “coaches” has thrown me in to the ring, so to speak. It was boxing’s “Greatest” Muhammad Ali who reminded us that success only comes to those who work. “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’” It worked.

I’m no hockey fan, but Wayne Gretsky’s explanation of greatness is easily translated into a metaphor for academic success. “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” Surely, great students anticipate and infer where the professor is taking them and find ways to get there at the front of the class.

Olympic runner Jesse Owens, whose participation in the 1936 Olympic games created an international incident but helped chip away at America’s prejudices, observed about his sport, “A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.” Surely, our students dedicated to careers in nursing, medicine, and other health professions can apply his wisdom to the life and death situations that just could arise in their work. They may never need the knowledge, but they must be prepared.

Football’s Aristotle, the late Green Bay Packer Coach Vince Lombardi, had a lot to say about being a winner and about attitude. “Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing,” he quipped, words of thought for students who get in the habit of doing poorly.

Tennis great Billie Jean King also had words for our students who are beaten down by failure: “Champions keep playing until they get it right.” I regularly remind students that Michael Jordan got cut from his high school basketball team.

And then there’s baseball, my own special love. It’s a sport “where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire’s eye or on the ball,” to quote journalist James Patrick Murray. I love baseball because, aside from its beauty, it is a metaphor for life. It’s a sport where athletes who fail 70 percent of the time make the Hall of Fame; it’s a sport that has a lot of tedium and routine, punctuated by moments of breathtaking splendor; it’s a sport where the athletes look like the kid next door and the manager dresses up in a uniform that never gets dirty. It’s a sport that gave us the wisdom of Casey Stengel and Yogi Berra. It was Casey who observed the value of humility in sports (and academics): “If we’re going to win the pennant, we’ve got to start thinking we’re not as good as we think we are.” And Yogi, who says he never said half the things he said, tells our procrastinating students who are unable to plan ahead, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”

Baseball legend Hank Aaron’s advice works for students who have struggled with a poor test grade or a failed course: “My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging.”

Here at Seton Hall, former baseball coach Mike Sheppard, also a retired professor in our College of Education and Human Services and now one of our new academic coaches, reminds all students, not just the players, “Never lose your hustle.”

Our own Freshman Studies Associate Dean, Robin Cunningham, herself such an outstanding athlete that her jersey hangs from the rafters in Walsh Gym, works with our summer bridge program, the Seton Summer Scholars, to provide an extra boost of studying and academic preparation before classes begin. She adopted the motto, “It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish” to inspire her students.

Through our newest initiative from our Academic Success Center in Mooney Hall, we have mandated academic coaches for students on probation and we are offering the service to other students who are tentative about their work habits and time management. The concept applies the techniques of one-on-one athletic coaching to the academic arena. Seton Hall employees volunteered to go through two days of training to provide our students with a free service that parents could pay up to $60 an hour for privately.

I was working one-on-one with a student the other day to help him plan for a better semester than the one he had just completed. We talked about course options, we strategized about time management and I gave him some advice about communicating with professors. “Gee, I get the feeling Seton Hall really wants me to be successful,” he said as he was leaving. I told him to go hit one out of the park.

Students interested in working with a coach this semester may visit the Academic Success Center in Mooney Hall, Room 11, or call (973) 275-2387 for an appointment.

~Tracy Gottlieb, Ph.D.

I have a friend whose almost-adult children clamor to spend time with her and her husband. Now this comes with its own set of problems, but there is something tremendously appealing about “The Brady Bunch” togetherness that I somehow have never been able to pull off.

I have to admit here that we Gottliebs sometimes struggle to create quality family time. I dangled the lure of a family trip to London and everyone jumped at it, but then our oldest got a new job and she had to bow out. Then, we rented a house at the beach, but the older ones couldn’t get away from work. We scaled down our expectations and tried to simply gather for dinner out at the Star Tavern in Orange. The line was so long, we ended up at two separate tables. What’s a mother to do?

I had this genius idea a few weeks back that I was going to invite my children to a dinner party. It was over Easter weekend and I gave them plenty of notice so I didn’t get too much push back. Our 18-year-old was away with a school event and was out of the picture until dessert. I was disappointed but that suited him just fine because he hated the very idea of the trendy butterflied marinated leg of lamb that I planned to grill.

The older children were intrigued. They had never been invited to a dinner party before. We had a little setback when we all had to attend a wake that Saturday night, but the delayed start to our dinner actually gave it a more formal feel. Darkness had descended so the candles we lit provided both light and atmosphere. The oft-neglected dining room table was set with the non-dishwasher-safe China. It was an event worthy of Christo.

If I am being honest, my expectations were pretty low. I simply wanted to enjoy my children the way I enjoy my friends. I wanted to fuss over them a little bit and I wanted to see if we could spend an evening gathered together in love and friendship.

I am pleased to report that my experiment worked nicely. Everyone was on their best behavior. The leg of lamb wasn’t such a big hit, but the Easter basket desserts for each child went over smashingly.

This modest success at family collegiality reinforced my belief that our relationships with our children as they grow to adulthood need to shift. We need to abandon the “Mommy will tell you what to do” often-adversarial relationship that we can find ourselves in and position our children in the same perspective we hold our friends and siblings and parents. Bite your tongue when they say something outrageous, just the way you would if your best friend went on a rant. Somehow, because it’s our kids who are talking, we think we need to solve the problem, change the behavior, run interference, slay the dragons… but we don’t.

Now that our children are emerging on the other side of a long, long tunnel that included infancy, childhood, and the teen-years, they are equipped to be adults. We made them so. We taught them through our own words and example how to fight their own battles and form their own opinions.

It is now our turn to sit back and let them succeed as adults. And this, of course, means lots of personal failures and situational problem-solving. They will continue to run to us to make the bad things go away, but that’s not our job anymore. Every time a parent calls me at work to complain about his son’s grades or her daughter’s tuition bill, I want to shift the conversation to the disservice the parent is doing to the child. Fighting your children’s battles for them when they are old enough to do so isn’t helping them; it’s probably crippling them as functioning adults.

Thus, my rather simplistic solution: invite them to dinner. Talk about their lives. Chat about their problems over a leg of lamb and a package of stale Peeps. Offer perspective and advice. And then scoot them away from the table to solve their situations, while you tackle the dirty dishes.

~Tracy Gottlieb, Ph.D.

I can’t think of anything more irritating than dragging myself out of bed at the crack of dawn all summer long for work while my college-age student sleeps until two in the afternoon. Then, while I am prepping for bed at a reasonable hour before David Letterman starts cracking jokes, that same college student begins primping and preparing for an evening out. So, since this is all about me, that nightmare scenario is enough to prompt a heart-to-heart with my freshman in college.

“Let’s talk about the summer,” I say while the wind howls through the trees outside our house and the winter’s second blizzard is blocking all exits to our street.

I am greeted with a blank look.

It’s tough out there. My hometown slashed the summer work program for teenagers this year. With unemployment in New Jersey hovering near the double digits, the influx of college students into the seasonal work force is difficult. Our students need to be planning now for the three-and-a-half month hiatus from school that begins in May. In fact, if they haven’t given any thought to the summer, they are actually running behind.

We encouraged all our students, not just graduating seniors, to take time out from Spring Break to attend the Big East Career Fair in New York City. That opportunity is gone, but students should still be looking to parlay their Seton Hall credentials into networking or employment opportunities.

First stop for the interested student should be the Career Center website. We dissuade students from the erroneous notion that they don’t need to be concerned about the location of the Career Center (second floor Bayley Hall) until their second semester senior year.

We introduce students to the Career Center when they are freshmen in their University Life course. We require students who are undecided about their major to take an online career assessment course that helps them identify their personal strengths and consider ways of turning these strengths into work skills and, ultimately, a college major.

The savvy student takes this introduction to the Career Center and parlays it into a four-year relationship that provides regular stepping stones to the work force. For rising sophomores in the class of 2014, that often means using the Navigator job list (that they can link into from the Career Center website) to find summer work. For a sophomore and junior, that relationship should be extended to find an appropriate summer internship. Ultimately, the Career Center is the go-to place for post-college employment.

“Hiring employers expect to see that college students have utilized their summers in productive ways,” says SHU Career Center Director Jacqueline Chaffin.

As parents, we want our students to be productive so they gain valuable experience during college that makes them more attractive to employers when they are finished with college. We want them to learn how to network and to understand that the people they meet along the way can open doors, make introductions and move them along their chosen career path.

We parents want our children to use their summers off from school so productively that they collapse exhausted in bed at a reasonable hour every night and that they spring out of bed in the morning excited to see what the work day brings. Lacking that, we would appreciate a little money in their pockets so that the Bank of Mom doesn’t have to open for business.

The time is now to whisper good ideas in their head. Psssst. The Career Center. Psssst. Internships. Psssst. The Navigator Job Bank. Spring Break might be over, but there’s still nine weeks left until Commencement – plenty of time to transform the time off into a life-affirming summer.

By Tracy Gottlieb, Ph.D.

We call this upcoming term the “Spring Semester,” even though most of the semester occurs in the dead of winter. But I think we dub it the spring term because spring is a time of re-birth and the awakening of slumbering beings. That’s what happens on a college campus this time of year. It’s a pleasure to be a part of it!

The re-birth occurs in a myriad of ways. Most importantly, students who failed to thrive in the Fall Semester must recreate themselves into the students we all know they can be. For many of our students, the transition to college was a seamless one, but there is always a population of students who need a do-over. While most of our students are basking in the glow of a successful Fall Semester, some are forced to reflect on poor choices during the past semester and consider the “what ifs.”  Parents demand to know what went wrong and why. Unfortunately, more often than not, students take the easy way out and blame the professor when, in fact, the real reason is that they are the ones who need to make adjustments.

Successful students made the cosmic paradigm shift from an active teaching situation to an active learning model. In high school and grammar school, students are taught by professional educators —people who went to college for the sole purpose of learning how to be good teachers. These educators learn to teach with bells and whistles that keep students attentive and engaged. Then, students go to college where the education process is carried out by people who are experts in a particular field, but have never gone to school to learn to teach. They are high-level thinkers who rank among the best in their respective fields. Thus, the burden is on the student to make the shift from the active teaching they experienced for the first 13 years of their education to the active learning model they need to adopt to succeed in college. The responsibility for learning is now on them.

Successful students also realize that college isn’t just high school with lots of recess. Even if a professor never takes attendance, the absolute best decision for success a student can make is to go to class. Students are busy right now making all sorts of excuses to explain away the F on their report, but Mom and Dad, please know that most students who fail a class do so because their attendance was bad. You can’t learn what you aren’t present to absorb.

Students also have figured out in time for the Spring Semester that college is harder than high school. This is another tough transition for college students who found high school easy. Students who managed to get As and Bs without difficulty in high school discover that a semester sails by quickly and that it is often difficult to repair the damage that is done by forgetting to study for one little test or by never handing in one small project.

It’s also hard for new college students who are used to working independently to take advantage of the myriad of tutoring opportunities available to all students. Students tell me they will study with friends, or that they know someone who did well in this class before, but the formal structure of a real tutoring session sets the stage for learning better than anything else. Students who never needed tutoring before learn complicated material quicker and better when they work with others who have been trained in the subject matter.

The good news is that the Fall Semester is behind us. The beauty of the Spring Semester is that everyone has a clean slate. Everyone has the opportunity to fix what went wrong and to learn from their experiences. Students who under-performed need to reflect on the amount of effort they put in and realize they need to increase their efforts, their study time, their reading time and their preparation time. Students who needed help but declined the offer need to start the semester with a plan for formal assistance. And students who had an epiphany during the fall and realized that their career plans were unrealistic or unappealing need to use this Spring Semester to recreate themselves.

And we’re here to help: Freshman Studies, the Academic Resource Center, the Academic Success Center, The Career Center, Tutors in Residence, Student Support Services, Counseling Services, and Disability Support Services — a network of people whose goal is student success.

By Tracy Gottlieb, Ph.D.

We are a campus in mourning. We have lost one of our own. The unthinkable happened when Seton Hall sophomore Jessica Moore was shot and killed one Saturday in late September. It was a senseless, random act of violence.

As parents, it is our deepest fear. Indeed, our first reaction when we heard of the off-campus shooting was to track down our own students and — even from a distance — gather them close to us. To hug them and hold them and shelter them from harm. It’s what we do as parents. Then, despite our inclinations to the contrary, we needed to let them go again.

But safety is always a concern. How do we impress upon our sons and daughters the need to be prudent, to make good choices and to avoid risks without forcing them to live in fear?
Here at Seton Hall, safety is a regular part of our conversation with our students. It should be with you, too.

As much as we think our children are just like we were and as much as we think they were brought up much the same way we were, they are children of another age. They are children who know the reality of an anxious world. They are the post-9/11 generation and their reality is so different from the halcyon days of our own childhood. They know what a lockdown is. They understand Amber Alerts.

Our own childhood fears, prompted by the talk of a Cold War and an Iron Curtain, conjured up visions of a far distant evil. For our children, the reality is a vulnerable America.

We need to be blunt. They can take it, these children of ours. We need to sit them down and talk about the realities of 21st century America.

One mother called me in September to be reassured that we were safe in South Orange. She lamented that her older daughter was at a college where students left their doors propped open and people wandered in and out of their residence halls unchecked. I was shocked that a college could pretend that here in America there are places where crime and evil are unknown. The Columbine killings happened in a sleepy hamlet in rural Colorado. Then there was the massacre at Virginia Tech nearly three years ago in the bucolic rolling hills of Blacksburg, Va.

The fiction that students are safe in tucked away hamlets only allows them to be unaware and unprotected. Students need to think about where they should go and how they should get there. In bustling areas like the New York Metropolitan Area where we are located, students are taught to be aware.

On a sunny day, the walk to the South Orange train station goes through a bustling route, filled with people and car traffic. I wouldn’t hesitate to do it — it is a good, healthy walk. But, when the sun goes down and people go indoors, I would recommend that students jump on our campus shuttle to get to and from the train station.

Seton Hall tells our students to keep their campus doors locked and to close the campus gates behind them when they enter campus. We provide conversation about domestic violence and public safety. We offer RAD (Rape Aggression Defense) to our students and employees. Our siren alert is tested, we work with the South Orange Fire Department to perform regular fire drills. Last year, we received a federal grant that allowed Seton Hall to develop an interactive website that teaches emergency preparedness to our freshman students. The “Code Blue” webpage is a fun way to teach students three skills: Be Aware, Be Prepared and Take Action.

One mother called me last month and asked me to talk some safety sense to her son, because he didn’t listen to her. I told her that we were doing just that. But that she had to continue talking to her son too. Even if she thought he wasn’t listening.

Back when my kids first learned to drive, I constantly cautioned them to “watch out for the wet leaves.” I gave that admonition so often that it became a family joke, but it worked. No one in the Gottlieb family drives after a fall rain without slowing down and avoiding big piles of leaves. I kept the message light, but I made my point.

That’s what we need to do about personal safety. Keep the message light, but make them vigilant. Because, as parents, it’s what we are meant to do.

My baby moved in to Boland Hall as few days ago. I was startled by my reaction. When I pulled in to campus early that morning and saw a big sign with an arrow that said, “Boland Hall Check-In,” I burst in to tears. Now those of you who have sent your babies from San Francisco, or North Bend, or St. Louis must be rolling your eyes, because I sent my baby 11 miles. And the office where I work is about 200 yards away from his new bedroom.

But the tears came mostly from the symbolic fact that after nearly 28 years of parenting, 23 years as a PTA parent and 10 years as the parent of a college student, I am now transitioning to an empty nest. Perhaps, it was just relief.

The night before he left, we had a festive “going away” family dinner and invited our two older siblings and their significant others to dine. And we asked each member of the group who had already completed college for a bit of advice.

One sibling suggested to her brother that he be nice to the other new students and not unveil his true surly nature immediately. Typical elder sister words of wisdom. Her boyfriend, a Seton Hall Stillman School graduate, provided the sound advice that our freshman takes advantage of opportunities – to do activities and to attend speaker events even when he didn’t feel like it.

My husband quoted the Bible, “Never follow a multitude to do evil.” Surely, that is solid advice for an 18-year-old away from home for the first time who could be tempted to follow a crowd or exploit new found freedom.

My own advice was even simpler and it’s something I have been telling freshmen for the last 10 years: “Go to class.” Many professors don’t take attendance and, in college, students sometimes mistake this lack of attention to detail for an unawareness of whether someone is in class. But here at Seton Hall, I know for a fact that students who go to class tend to pass and students who skip class tend to fail. Is it because, if they are actually taking up a seat, they tend to listen and learn? Maybe, but I encourage new students to err on the side of caution. Go to class!

For us parents, it’s time to take a back seat. I hope you too sat around the dinner table before classes started and provided lots of good advice for your college student. And I hope that you continue to coach from the sidelines. But now, it is time for your student to hear your advice and make decisions on his or her own. Sometimes, we know that we could have made the decisions better, but college isn’t only about success; it’s often about missed opportunities, failures and wrong turns.

For example, we have a large number of Pre-science students who tell us now that they intend to go to med school. And they really mean it. But after a semester of challenging science courses, students often reevaluate their goals. Sometimes they feel like failures because they discovered they didn’t want to be doctors, sometimes they are afraid to tell their parents. I try to remind them that this change of heart during the first semester of college wasn’t a failure at all. It was a discovery. There are doctors who discover after med school that they hate their profession; how much better to discover that reality before four years of med school and about $200,000?

Let’s hope our students spend this semester learning about themselves, maturing into young adults, trying new things, making new friends, sharing their gifts with others, exploring foreign ideas and coming to a deeper understanding of their place in the big world. It’s a tall order. Some will do just fine. Some will fall short. Then, we as parents will pick them up, dust them off and help them find a new path and a new goal. It’s what we do. Have a great semester!

By Tracy Gottlieb, Ph.D.

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?