If you're a college student, about to be a college student, or a parent of a college student you might be interested in this essay by Greg Veltman. Veltman talks about college life and weaving the themes of Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons and a book titled My Freshman Year together with lyrics from Dave Matthews, among others, to paint a portrait of the joys as well as the emptiness and alienation that can accompany college life. He writes:
For me, college was marked by the experience of dissolving relationships, by family's scattering about the globe, and by home-packing-up and relocating hundreds of miles away. I have rarely returned to a place. Everything seems different where I used to belong. I am a stranger. But that reality is not just in the past, it is with me in the present. And this tangled life makes me remember that a heart can hurt. But it has also given me courage to take risks, to know that the way of real redemption means taking off an old self, and being made anew. The solution cannot be to turn life into an abstraction. As we tell our stories in community, we see our entanglement, and our vulnerabilities become connections with who we are, together.
There's much of value in Veltman's essay and I commend it to our readers. I also recommend this article in Rolling Stone for a disturbing look at the seamy side of modern college life. It's not just about drinking anymore. If you're a parent you might want to consider sending your daughters to a convent.
