College Equals Fun

On August 1st, the results were released by The Princeton Review of the top party schools in the country.
On August 2nd, we were walking the campus of the number one party school in the country.
Of course, we were not part of the rush to tour campus because of its number one ranking. We had made the appointment a few weeks before in an effort to visit colleges before Spencer's senior year begins.
We're having a tough time narrowing down colleges because Spencer doesn't know what he wants to major in or whether he wants to go to a big or small college or whether he wants it to be located in a city or in the country.
"I want it to be fun," he told us after the first visit to a college in a small town, which did not stand up to his criteria of fun.
Well, with the new rankings by The Princeton Review, it appears that Ohio University meets the only criteria that Spencer set.
I will have to say that OU has had a party reputation since before I went to college. My best friend from high school went to OU, joined a sorority, graduated on time. She turned out fine.
The campus is charming, set in a town the same size as the student population. This is definitely a college town. The town actually butts into the college. Spencer was impressed with the workout facility. The major of Wildlife and Conservation Biology also caught his eye. He perked up at the idea of playing intramural basketball because they could create their own teams without having a coach or anyone to tell them what to do.
His friend Hayden came along although he had toured the campus before. Hayden, who has a twin brother, has gone on a number of tours and has remained unmoved, according to his mother. Yesterday, Hayden and Spencer seemed convinced that OU, which just happens to be the number one party school, is the right place for them.
We've got another visit set up next Tuesday that takes us to a smaller school that doesn't fall any where in the rankings on the party school list. Let's see if they can up the "fun" quotient.

College Search

Spencer will be a senior next year, which means it's past time for us to start looking for a college. We've made only one college visit and he was underwhelmed with the small college where I graduated. "Didn't seem very fun" was his observation. Okay, now we've established the parameters. College must be fun. Is that all we're looking for?
The thing is, even though I've sent one kid off to college, I don't know how to search for colleges. The summer between Grace's junior and senior year, she began to get letters from swim coaches. We looked at the colleges that tried to recruit her and that's how we chose. Maybe it wasn't our smartest move since she ended up dropping swim team, but she got into a great college and the swim coach probably helped coax the school to accept her.
Spencer is obsessed with basketball. He plays basketball every day or lifts weights. He is "the big guy" on the team at 6-foot, 4, 190 pounds. I had asked him before if he thought he would play basketball in college.
"Nah," he said. I couldn't tell if he felt afraid that he might not be good enough or if he genuinely didn't want to play. When we went on the college visit, he didn't want to meet the basketball coach.
Basketball must be harder to get into in college, since they only need five guys at a time, unlike swimming, which has teams of 20 or 30.If basketball is out, what do we look for, I wondered. He doesn't know what he wants to major in, so our only criteria is "fun."
Although it is June, high school basketball is going strong. On Friday the team had a tournament at a college outside of Columbus. Spencer took the bus with the rest of the team and reported when they got home that the team won 3 games, lost 1.
"Great," I said.
Later, as we sat together, continuing the two-week long grounding, he said, "Oh, the --- college coach asked about me."
He threw it out like no big deal.
The college coach approached Spencer's high school coach to ask whether Spencer was interested in playing college ball. The coach said yes.
"Even though we've never talked about," Spencer told me.
Of course the coach said yes. He knows Spencer is a gym rat. He can't imagine that a diploma will wipe out that passion.
I felt a relief, a joy, rush through me. Now our college search could be guided to certain universities that wanted Spencer to play ball.
Little details, rules, started to infiltrate my brain. That's right, college coaches can't approach high school students until after July of their junior year. They can talk to the high school coaches though.
Then I started wondering why my children are so competitive about sports, good enough to draw the attention of college coaches. Neither Earl nor I are particularly good at sports, but I was really good at school. I graduated from college magna cum laude. My kids seem to be fairly uninterested in grades. I'm sure they are just as smart as I am (was), but they aren't spurred to work hard for grades.
Let's face it, that can only be my fault. I homeschooled them through their formative years. Because I got good grades, I never pushed the kids, telling them they must get an A in class. And they seem to feel that a B for a little bit of work is better than an A for a lot of work.
At least they're motivated to work hard in sports and maybe that will transfer to their lives if they can find careers they are passionate about.