Senior Stresses

The things I love about coming home after being away are: eating my own home-cooked food, sleeping in our comfortable bed, getting back into a “normal” routine, and, well, that’s about it! The things I don’t enjoy are: catching up with mounds of endless laundry, sifting through piles of snail mail, getting re-acclimatized to the weather and time zone, getting back to a “normal” routine. It takes about a week to return to our regular schedule.

When I picked up the mail from the post office, it was mostly junk. I shook out the correspondence to make sure nothing was stuck and thrown out accidentally and I found an official looking envelope from a university. I walked into the kitchen and the message light was blinking on our answering machine with a voicemail from an Israel program. While away we had respite from some stresses to which we now returned in full swing: the continuation of the college and Israel application process. Though twelfth grade is a fun and exciting year for students, it is also an uncertain time filled with applying, waiting and making decisions.

Some of the choices my daughter and her friends are making were moot for most of my cronies and me in the same milieu a generation ago. Although I attended a modern orthodox day school similar to where my kids went, it was clearly a different time. Today it is expected that seniors should seriously explore the option of spending a year in Israel. There is both school and peer pressure to attend Israel night, make an appointment to speak with the Israel guidance counselor and submit applications (sometimes regardless of what parents may think about it, though they will surely be paying the hefty financial and emotional price).

In my high school class, the vast majority of seniors went straight to college. A handful attended a program called Tochnit Yud Gimel, which offered a half-year of seminary or yeshiva study in Israel during the spring term of senior year. Another handful spent a single gap year in Israel before moving on to university. I don’t think there was such a thing called “shana bet” back then. I don’t recall “Israel night” and certainly wasn’t pressured by anyone to look into the gap year option, thereby saving my parents stress and dollars. Instead I spent summers in Israel during college when I was a bit more mature and responsible and could contribute to the cost.

I remember meeting with college guidance, which is amusing since I knew without a doubt that I would be attending Brooklyn College. I was given a survey to fill out about my likes and dislikes to figure out which careers suited me best. When asked by the counselor what I thought I’d like to study at college, I came up with the idea of wanting to be a meteorologist. I was told that Cornell offered this degree and went home and told my parents that I wanted to apply there. I am sure they were amazed by my declaration, since private university and leaving home weren’t realistic options for me. I was already enrolled and well-ensconced in Brooklyn College life, because seniors at our high school were offered the option of taking our fall and spring electives there.

My daughter’s experience is vastly unlike mine and already quite different from that of her brothers who are four and six years older. Whereas they mailed their completed applications via the postal service, she fills out forms, uploads files and submits everything online from home and from her school’s helpful college guidance office. We hand submitted my oldest son’s art portfolio slides to certain local admissions offices. My daughter’s portfolio is digital, though still snail mailed to the universities.

College guidance staff is required to steer students through the maze of common apps, supplements and financial aid. Though the Internet is making the application process somewhat more efficient, it is not removing any stress; that can only be mitigated by deep breathing, a calm parent and your friendly college guidance professional.

Although my classmates and I took SAT’s, we didn’t obsess over the numbers the way students do today. We took regents, perhaps an AP but no ACT’s. Only a couple of my classmates had tutors or studied at all for standardized tests. I remember one friend, a brilliant, funny student, walking around with a dictionary, attempting to memorize the entire tome in preparation for the SAT (he got into an Ivy). Today’s application process is a huge business, encouraging schools, parents and students to buy into expensive tutoring and multiple applications. This contributes to making the process increasingly frustrating and competitive.

Like my kids, I endured a rigorous dual curriculum during a long school day. In addition, my friends and I commuted to high school, taking a bus or subway or two, and walking. This was done in rain or shine, snow, sleet or hail. Transportation wasn’t on a schedule like the LIRR, so getting a bus often entailed waiting at the stop for twenty minutes in the freezing cold. I remember running to catch the Kings Highway bus, to switch for the D train, to get to an early morning Calculus class. I slipped and fell on the ice and fractured my wrist, but continued on to school unwilling to upset my strict teacher by missing his difficult class!

We didn’t have organized car pools or high school bussing. We were mostly self sufficient but my dad was the unofficial late night driver for me and my friends, offering to pick us up from basketball games or other extra curricular activities. Our lives were filled with schoolwork and socializing. Our Judaic studies were “ivrit b’ivrit” and our secular studies top level. I had plenty of homework and exams and there was definitely stress, but I do believe it was far less than my kids have now. We had way fewer choices to make us confused or crazy. That’s partly because of my parents’ generation’s ideals and restrictions, but it is also simply due to what was available at that time.

I’m happy that my children and their friends have so many exciting options. There is now a myriad of gap year options in Israel which include learning, community service, Ulpan and “yediat ha’aretz” accomplished by touring throughout the land. Some offer college credits so students can still graduate “on time.” Beyond CUNY and SUNY, so many universities now have Hillels and Chabads offering kosher food and all the needs of a modern orthodox student, enabling our children to live away from home.

Whether our kids decide to opt out on a gap year or learn in Israel, attend CUNY or private university, stay home or dorm, they should each make the choices that are right for them with a clear and open mind. Perhaps if they remember that it is only because we live in privileged times that they have these options, it may help reduce some of their stress. I wish them these important things: health, happiness and success. I wish for myself and all the parents to feel a bit more at ease about letting them go, allowing them to grow up, and move on to their futures.

Miriam Bradman Abrahams is Cuban born, Brooklyn bred and lives in Woodmere. She can be reached at mabraha1@optonline.net.