Here Come the Parents

Juniors, take heed. Your bedrooms will soon be up for inspection. Your eating habits will be evaluated, your clothing approved or scorned. Your class schedules will be analyzed for the content of their reading lists; your friendships will be scrutinized and either accepted or dismissed. In just a few days, our campus will be invaded by marauding hordes of would-be KGB agents--all this, of course, in honor of "Junior Parents' Weekend."

The term "parents" carries different connotations for different people. Some of us talk to our mothers or fathers almost every day. Some haven't made contact with them in months. Others might not have any parents to get in touch with at all. And even among those of us whose family life resembles a 1950s sitcom fantasy-world, parents' attitudes toward visiting college will vary. Those juniors who are first-born or only children might still inspire their parents' awe by showing them Lowell House. My parents, by contrast, are tuition junkies well on their way to burnout. As of next year, they'll be burdened with three children in three different colleges and one in law school, simultaneously. For them, the college thing is beginning to get old.

Compare this coming weekend with its counterpart two years ago. On Freshman Parents' Weekend, many of us were counting the six awkward weeks between move-in day and our parents' return, like kids at summer camp longing for the glories of Visiting Day. We eagerly brought our parents on campus tours, pointing out buildings where our classes met and even those in which we didn't have a class. We went to all the panels and inspirational speakers and concerts that the weekend's organizers had so zealously planned for us. When our parents arrived on campus, we frantically introduced them to everyone in sight--every occupant of our entryways, everyone from our freshman seminars, the random girl we had a nice conversation with in the dining hall the previous week. Just as we confused setting with plot, showing our parents empty buildings as if they had something important to do with us, we confused novelty with friendship and bragged to our parents that we had made dozens of new friends.

The planners of Junior Parents' Weekend have arranged a schedule of events remarkably similar to that weekend two years ago. Starting this Friday, parents of the Class of '99 have been invited to a full program of food, folks and fun, including three separate welcoming ceremonies, "luncheon" in the Houses and inspirational panels galore.

But as juniors, most of us aren't particularly interested in inspiration anymore, let alone the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra. Instead of leading our parents into cavernous dining halls to show them where all our amazing conversations took place, we will plead with them to take us out to eat. Instead of attending faculty panels, we will ask them to take us out shopping, or to a movie or museum. Instead of showing them where our classes meet and where our friends live, we will sit down with them and tell them about the classes we love and the people we hate(and vice versa). And, of course, the cast of characters to whom they will be introduced will be much, much smaller. After three years here, we juniors have all become some-what like my four-tuition family in our attitude toward college. The novelty has worn off.

Except, that is, in the thorny context of our social lives.

During the first few weeks of our first year, "social life" generally involved renting a movie with our entryway-mates or following a horde of people out to some establishment requiring a fake ID. Now, as juniors, we either care much less about being part of the horde or are part of an institutionalized one. In either case, most of us are well on our way to being socially settled, at least for now.

And therein lies the smoldering secret conflict of Junior Parents' Weekend, one that during Freshman Parents' Weekend barely lit a spark. Many of us are primarily concerned with our academics and extracurriculars, thinking of our social lives as outlets for fun and relaxation. Many of our parents, on the other hand, have a different agenda. More often than not, they are secretly working on the unspoken but ill-concealed project of marrying us off. This project heightens during graduate school and the years following, but for many parents, junior year is when the hint of the notion first appears.

That itch will make this coming weekend awkward for many students, like those who have surreptitiously moved in with a significant other, or those who introduced a boyfriend their first year and who now must introduce (or avoid introducing) a girlfriend, or those who risk their parents' misinterpretation of a friend who is really just a friend or a fling who is really just a fling, or those who would simply prefer to do without their parents' impromptu advice about which of various passers-by they should ask out.

So some of us will have to hide from our parents. For many students, parents have long ceased to be our chief confidants; for others, our closeness to them is marred by physical distance and the pressure to make our own choices. And perhaps the saddest part of Junior Parents' Weekend is that when our parents come, chances are we'll barely have time for them. After all, we have to study for our MCATs and our midterms, don't we?

On both Freshman and Junior Parents' Weekends, parents see nothing. The first time they visit, we can't show them anything. The second time, we don't want to show them anything. College is now merely a backdrop for our lives, a setting for our own personal characters and plot. But luckily for those who still look forward to seeing family, these parents' weekends actually don't have that much to do with college at all. Your parents are not here to see Harvard; they're here to see you. Get them to take you out for dinner, and, if you must, have them buy you a class ring. If their secret plans for you come true, may be you'll be back 30 years from now to inspect your son's or daughter's room. If and when you do, please remember not to be too critical. They can take care of themselves.

Dara Horn '99 is a literature concentrator in Eliot House. Her column appears on alternate Tuesdays.