Episode 45: Supporting Your Student Throughout College

Episode 45: Supporting Your Student Throughout College

• Episode 45 Transcript

  [00:00:07] BHA: College isn't a path that your student travels alone. Walking right beside them is a whole community of professors, counselors, classmates, alumni and, of course, you — the family members who have guided and nurtured your student their whole lives.

  [00:00:20] BT: And your support doesn't stop the moment you drop your student off on campus for the first semester. In fact, there are numerous ways that you can continue to advocate for your student, whether they're in their first year of college or rounding out their fourth. I'm Brooke Thames from Bucknell University, and this episode of College Admissions Insider is all about supporting your student throughout college.

  [00:00:38] BHA: I'm Becca Haupt Aldredge, also from Bucknell. Today, we'll be covering how to navigate your student’s transition into independence, stay up to date on essential information and get involved at your student’s school of choice.

  [00:00:50] BT: Here to lend to their firsthand knowledge are Clare DeNicola and Maryellen Sheehan, who are both executive members of Bucknell’s Parents Association. Clare is a mother of two college graduates, one who just walked the stage a few weeks ago at Bucknell’s 172nd Commencement. Maryellen is also the mother of three Bucknellians, one that also just graduated and another in the class of 2024. Also joining us is Lauren Furman, who is a senior assistant director of admissions at Bucknell and has been a guest on a few of our episodes in the past.

  Welcome to the podcast, everyone.

  [00:01:21] CD: Glad to be here.

  [00:01:23] MS: Thank you for having us.

  [00:01:23] BHA: I'd love to start by hearing a bit more about each of your college students or college graduates, now that they've recently completed their education.

  [00:01:31] CD: Well, why don't I go first? My husband and I are now officially empty-nesters. But my daughter, Olivia, she just graduated from Bucknell. She was a MIDE major — which is markets, innovation & design — and she’s starting work at an investment firm in the fall. As I mentioned, I also have a second graduate that wasn't intended. It was Olivia’s brother who went to a whole different school and majored in game design, but he took a year off because of COVID and went back. So they literally graduated within three days of each other, and he's starting work as a computer science high school teacher in the fall.

  [00:02:05] MS: I have three students who are either currently attending or have attended Bucknell. My oldest, Jimmy, was a class member of 2020. So they actually just had their graduation ceremony. He was a double-major in biology and economics and was a member of the football team. My son, Daniel, just graduated with Claire's daughter, Olivia, the Class of 2022. He was in the School of Management and an accounting major and has a job lined up with KPMG. He was also on the football team. Then I have a daughter, Meredith, who is in the class of 2024. She is also in the Freeman College of Management, and she too is a marketing, innovation & design major. She actually has an internship with the College of Management, so she's very involved on campus, she's in a sorority.

  So I've had kind of a mix of non-Greek kids, Greek kids, athletes, non-athletes, male, female. So I have a pretty good perspective of student life on campus.

  [00:03:02] BT: Yeah, that's awesome. I'm sure you're very proud of all of your students. So in a minute, we'll launch into your advice for supporting a student after they've arrived at college. But before we get there, can you give us a quick recap of your experience through the admissions process? Was it a breeze, was it challenging, or maybe somewhere in between? Or maybe different with each child?

  [00:03:24] CD: I would say with both of my kids, the admissions process was a marathon, not a sprint. But I intended it that way. We visited more than 20 schools with each kid. I did with them, not my husband. I did. I did it because I wanted them to have a well-rounded opinion and be able to decide on the school. I think when I picked my school, I picked it within a second without really thinking it through. So I wanted them to have all the information they could and get real feedback.

  We didn't always take the standard tour either when we did the whole admissions process. The standard tour started to sound a lot alike from school to school to school. So we would sign up for other programs the schools were offering. Sometimes, it was meet the professors. Sometimes, it was a day in the life. Sometimes, it was you could attend a class. We would also try to meet with students that we knew at the different schools.

  With Olivia, we visited Bucknell just before the accepted students day. We couldn't come to the accepted students day, so we came the Friday before, and it was the second time we had been to Bucknell. She had previously gotten the chance to attend some classes with a student. But literally a day later, she knew that was where she wanted to go. She had been accepted through general admission. She didn't do early admission anywhere, and that was it. It was Bucknell from then on.

  [00:04:41] MS: For me, each of my three children were very different. My oldest child, Jimmy, struggled with the decision. He actually wasn't sure if he wanted to play football and was kind of getting pressure from the coaches to make a decision. He didn't know what path he had wanted to go. We visited many schools too, and he actually made the decision kind of last moment. Deposits had to be in by May 1, and I said, “You need to make a decision by April 23 by two o'clock.” He waited till April 23 at two o'clock to make the decision.

  My younger son, Daniel, went Early Decision and knew by November his senior year in high school where he was going to go. He went the athletic route too, so it was more of a commitment type thing, where he was committing to play football.

  My daughter, Meredith, just fell in love with Bucknell because she had had two older siblings going there and thought a real comfort level. So she only wanted to apply to Bucknell. She didn't even want to apply to any other schools, and we kind of encouraged her to have like a list. But she applied Early Decision and got in Early Decision, but we had a list of schools that she was going to apply too should that have not worked out for her.

  Each kid had a very different process, but they all ended up at the same place, and they each had a unique experience there once they were on campus as well.

  [00:05:52] BHA: So it sounds like no matter where students end up or what their paths might look like, sending your student off to college is a huge transition — even if you're familiar, like Meredith was because her older brothers had gone to Bucknell. So as a parent, you no longer have everyday proximity and immediate knowledge of what's going on with them. How soon do you think parents should start talking to their students about expectations around communication?

  [00:06:15] CD: You're asking a very interesting question because I just kind of fell into it. I never had a big conversation with my kids like, “Oh, you're going to talk to me this amount of time, or it's going to look like this.” I kind of followed their leads. Now, that may not work for every family, I realize.

  And my kids are both different too. So my daughter is a huge texter. She texts all the time. She didn't text me so much when she was in high school because she saw me. But when she got to college, I started getting texts. I would get short text, long texts, a lot of complaint texts. One text I got was with the weather recently, where she took a picture of her frozen face walking to class and telling me how cold it was that day, and she should have a car. But I got texts any time of day, and it was actually really great. For me, I assigned a specific sound for her. So I would kind of know when she was doing a text on my iPhone. So during the work day, I could distinguish it and decide whether I could respond or not. Then added to that, my husband and I would try to call her or talk live maybe two times a week. We're not big video folks so we were just doing the voice calling.

  The other thing I thought about, Bucknell was three and a half hours from our house, so we'd visit on the regular times like parents weekend. I know, we're going to talk about the parents board meetings, so we would go for those weekends. But I also used to pick up and drop off my daughter at all the various times that she was coming home, and I really enjoyed those drives because those were times when she'd be right at a class or finished with her testing, or something, and she would talk to me the whole way. I remember when she was a freshman and I was picking her up after finals. Maryellen, you'll appreciate this because we went to Hershey. I figured she's getting out so late, we did a night at Hershey at the Hershey Hotel. So I just picked her up, we drove to the Hershey Hotel, and it was just kind of a little celebration. So really following their leads and figuring out the communication worked for me.

  Now, my son was totally different at school, and I had to plan it out more because he's not a texter. You ask him the question, you get the answer to the question you asked. So with him, I had to be much more specific, but he was a lot closer. He was only an hour away. So we would plan to go have dinners with him and other things like that.

  [00:08:34] BT: Yeah. It's really interesting that you had two different experiences and that the student who was closer actually ended up being the one that you spoke to less. That's really funny. So when it comes to setting those boundaries or parameters or figuring out how communication is going to work, Maryellen, could you talk a little bit about your experience there and making room for your students in that conversation? Obviously, parents are invested in their child's wellbeing, but students should also have a say in what works for them as they branch off on their own, right?

  [00:08:59] MS: Sure, yeah. My boys basically had to arrive to campus early because of the NCAA guidelines. So they arrived to campus in early August, and they basically had 15-hour days preparing and training for football. The communication from them was at a minimum at the beginning, so I let them lead the pace. When they could communicate, they did. Just touch base with them. The coach was very good about communicating to the parents what was going on, especially for those of us who are first time parents dropping their kids off. It's kind of an emotional time. I remember receiving an email from him saying, “Your babies are okay,” and it was like one of the most heartwarming things. It still touches me to this day, and I let him know that.

  Meredith arrived on campus with COVID full on, so it was a very different experience for her because everyone's in face masks, and you couldn't communicate. But I let her kind of lead the pace too. She's a FaceTimer. So it was just a challenge for her to meet people initially, but she did and just kind of navigate that whole process. Not only did she have the transition of acclimating to college life, but she had the challenge of acclimating to college life during a pandemic. So I just kind of let her lead the pace and just supported her as much as I could. If she needed anything, I tried to be supportive of her. But it all worked out, and she's very, very happy. So it was all good.

  But my advice is just like Clare's — it’s to let them lead the pace. It’s hard initially because you want to touch base with them, and you want to communicate with them. But I tried not to smother. I wanted them to kind of feel like they were on their own. I feel like there's two gifts we give our kids: One is wings, and the other is roots. And I was trying to give them a mix.

  [00:10:35] BHA: Oh, I love that. That's such a great takeaway, Maryellen. Speaking of boundaries, perhaps one of the biggest challenges parents will experience is having less of an idea about how their student is performing academically. There are no report cards sent home anymore. In fact, college students have the option to make their educational records private from their families. Lauren, can you talk us through exactly what that means?

  [00:10:59] LF: Yeah. The big change is who has the rights to the student's education record. All schools at all levels that receive funding from the Department of Education must adhere to something called FERPA. It's the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). So FERPA gives certain rights like being able to inspect and review education records that are maintained by the school, request corrections to be made if there's any inaccurate or misleading information, and schools need to ask for written consent before disclosing or releasing certain information on the student's education record. That's the basics. There's a lot more detail to the FERPA and that privacy act, and the US Department of Education website has a much fuller picture and description of exactly what that act entails and the rights therein. So I definitely would recommend going to that website to see the full definition.

  In grade school, and middle school, and high school, FERPA gives these different rights to the parents. The parents have the rights to review, request and consent for anything within the student's educational records. There are some schools that might have online portals where you can like see their grades, or their progress reports, or notes from teachers, those kinds of things. Other schools might be set up where you have to request the information. They don't have an online portal, you have to request it. As long as you can prove that you are the parent of that student, there's no problem with getting access to that information.

  The big change that happens is that once a student turns 18 or attends school post high school, the rights are transferred to the student. It's up to the student’s discretion who else can receive access to those records. They can choose to allow their parents or specific individuals, guardians, other family members to have access to those records. Or they can say that they want to hold on to them themselves — they want to be the keeper of those records.

  Sometimes, students might be asked to waive their different rights to see their educational records. Most of the time, this happens around recommendation letters. That's the most common time where students will be asked to waive that right. It allows recommenders to know that their work isn't going to be reviewed, even when they're saying really positive things. Sometimes, that's embarrassing for all of us, right? But it allows, in the admissions process, to also know that the recommendation wasn't edited by the student or their family and that it's the recommender’s full picture. So that's just one example of when a student might be asked to waive that right.

  At some point, once your student turns 18 or is going to another level of education, they will be asked to make a decision on what happens with their FERPA rights, if they want to add somebody else or not. When that happens will depend on the school. Typically, it's going to happen maybe around enrollment or course registration. Somewhere in that onboarding process to become a student at that school is when that will be asked. Whether it's a onetime thing or if it's a yearly thing, again, that could vary depending on the school.

  [00:14:08] BT: Wow. So it's a lot of information you just gave us about just that one decision to disclose your educational records or not. I imagine it can be a big conversation for families. Not just the records part of it, but also just being in communication about academic progress. So Maryellen, how did you navigate getting updates on your students’ academic performance and progress?

  [00:14:31] MS: Well, interestingly enough, the boys, because they were in sports, they had to provide weekly academic updates to their coaches. So there was a lot of high management that went along with the academic process. Their academics were very important in their athletic world, so they had mandatory study halls, they had to give grade reports weekly to their coaches. So if their grades fell below a certain threshold — I don't know what that was — then they were kind of put on academic notice within the team.

  They'd have to increase their study hours, or they had to get tutoring. They were given very strict instructions by their coach. They had to go at the beginning of the semester the first class and personally introduce themselves to the professor, sit in the first row. If they had an away game, there was a protocol for letting the professors know that they weren't going to be there. So I felt like there was a process outlined by the coach that kind of taught them how to interact and what the expectations were. I didn't hear a lot about their academic process, but they both did very well. Once you maintained a certain GPA, you didn't have to go to the mandatory study hall. So there was a process in place to help them with their time management.

  My daughter was not involved in athletics, but I let her kind of lead the pace with sharing things with me. So I didn't hear a lot about their grades per se, but I would hear more during the semester like if there was a project that was stressing them out or she thought she didn't do very well on, and would just encourage her to keep the communication lines open with the professor, go get help, ask questions and so forth. I would just try to encourage her to advocate for herself.

  I never requested any type of access to their grades. They were very open about that, both my younger two. I think my son who just graduated made Dean's List every single semester, and my daughter has made a Dean's List every single semester. For me, grades weren't really a concern. They kind of put that pressure on themselves. So just to kind of recap, I would just let them set the pace, and it worked very well for our family.

  [00:16:38] BHA: How should parents go about evaluating this option with their students? What questions would be good to ask? How can parents ensure that the conversation is constructive instead of stressful?

  [00:16:47] LF: That's really hard to say because so much is going to depend on the relationship between the student and the parents or family members. Also, the way the student operates, right? Maryellen has shared that her students had a system in place, and were on top of their grades, and were students who going into it kind of knew what they needed to do to get things done. There are other students who maybe aren't as on top of what's happening throughout their semester, who maybe feel more stressed talking about grades, or who are really excited to talk about their grades and want to ask about it a lot. So some of it is going to be deciding what is the need for knowing the academic information. What are your expectations as a parent, and why do you have those, and how do you convey that to your student?

  How does your student operate? Are they somebody who checks their grades throughout the semester and makes a note if something needs to change? Or are they somebody who's surprised at the end of the semester as to what their grade is and had no concept of where it was going to be? Most students are probably somewhere in between there, right? That checking every day but also not waiting to the end of the semester to know. Schools will also have fail-safes in place to catch students if they are starting to slide too far past being able to come back. So that's the nice part about the system as well is that they're not totally letting them fall under the radar.

  What are the benefits of you being able to see, request, talk to administrators about your student's academic record? What might be the drawbacks? Also, how will you help your student be their own advocate in their education if there's an issue or concern? Are they somebody who needs an extra set of ears and an extra voice to get them into that dean's office to ask questions about what they can do? Or do they just need your support, and then they're willing to walk in on their own?

  So a lot of it comes back to having smaller conversations more often about expectations. What's important for you to know, what's important for your student to know and how do you share that information together?

  [00:18:55] BT: Needless to say, staying informed on your student's experience is important. But that's not confined to the classroom. There's so much going on on a college campus. So Lauren, are there ways that colleges and universities work to keep parents up to date, whether that's changes to the academic calendar or deadlines for applications like housing?

  [00:19:15] LF: Especially for incoming first year students, there will be a lot of communication to help get everybody on the same page and on board for what needs to happen next — things that will go to the student but also to the parents. So for example, at Bucknell, we do monthly newsletters that are subject-lined, “Important Information for Class of,” and then there's a separate one that's almost identical that goes to the parents and family members that the students have indicated to have the same information, where to find deadlines, where to find different information and things that are coming up.

  Other ways that families can stay on top of different pieces would be to make sure their university has the most up-to-date contact information. If there are really important messages that need to be shared, those will go out as listserv emails. So we've had ones that have come from the dean of students, or from the president of the university, or from bursar. So there are listservs where information will be shared if there's big deadlines coming up, or big changes, or just end of semester kind of wrap up information.

  You can also stay on top of the institution’s social media information. They'll be sure to make any big announcements that way as well. There might be a Facebook page, whether it's official or unofficial, for parents of different class years or just have the university. That's a great place to crowd source some information. Although if it's unofficial, definitely take it with a grain of salt and do some of your own follow-up information. You could also find out what their parent and family associations are like. Are you able to volunteer that way? Or do they send out a separate newsletter of information that's good for you to keep up on?

  If there are things that universities know parents are going to be involved in or need help getting students to complete in order to have them enrolled for the next year, I promise you, they will find a way to be in touch with you. If there's information you need to know, it'll just be a matter of figuring out how it's set up at that university. Those are always good questions to ask during Orientation programs to find out what is the best way for me to stay up to date with what's happening here.

  [00:21:23] BHA: Claire, I'm curious from your specific experience. What are some resources or opportunities that have helped you stay informed as a parent throughout your students’ journey at Bucknell?

  [00:21:32] CD: I have to say, so all of the things that Lauren talked about, they were great for me and us. Certainly, thinking back to freshman year and getting all that information, it is a whole new world for you, right? So really being able to dig into that. The social media has been phenomenal. I follow all the Bucknell official accounts and recently in the unofficial group, but you get a lot of information that way.

  But just starting, your own child can be a great resource, right? We started talking about the communication and getting all that communication back. So I just love talking specifics with my daughter about what classes she was taking, what she was learning, what her assignments were. Sometimes, she would gauge me on a brainstorm, “Hey, we have to name this. Do you think this is a good name?” That really kind of engaged me in what she was learning about. I kind of loved that, what she thought about her professors. I am kind of known for it, I'm big on asking lots of questions —too many questions sometimes. But this would really help to be able to talk on a detailed level.

  I also loved being a member of the parents board, and I know we're going to talk about that. But it was a real opportunity for me to hear what's going on at Bucknell from the University. Often, I learned about stuff my daughter didn't even know about herself and would be able to say, “Hey, have you checked out this activity or this club?” So that was kind of fun.

  [00:23:26] BT: Yeah. Those all sound like really great ways to stay connected, especially the Parents Association, which both Clare and Lauren previewed a little bit. So both Clare and Maryellen are executive board members of the Bucknell Parents Association, which is an organization that all parents of Bucknell students automatically join when they send their students to Bucknell. So Maryellen, can you tell us a little bit more about the association, what its goals are and why you chose to be more involved?

  [00:23:53] MS: I think that the transparency and the communication from the top administration down is key there. I mean, for all parents, whether you're on the parents association board or not, if John Bravman, the president, or Amy Badal, the dean of students, sends an email to the students about anything…There was a lot of communication going on during COVID. They would send the email to the students, then President Bravman would send an email to the parents and say, “I just communicated this to your students.” So we were kept in the loop regarding communications very well by the top administrators, in my opinion. I love the communication. I love the openness. I love the transparency.

  I remember reading, I think, in one of the parent newsletters that was emailed about the opportunity to join the parent board. So I'm a member of the parent board, as is Clare. There are signature initiatives that the parent board basically has, that include admissions, career, diversity and inclusion, outreach and philanthropy. I specifically am most involved with the admissions and outreach end.

  I love hearing about the admissions process. I think it's so fascinating. I would just love to be a fly on the wall, just to hear the process. I think it's very important to make people feel welcome, make parents feel welcome. So one of the things we do in the outreach program is we actually do phone calls to parents and say, “Welcome to the Bucknell family.” This is before their first-year student arrives. Do you have any questions? Can we answer anything for you? So I just think it's a great way to meet people, to stay involved. During the parent meetings, they do a great job of bringing administrators in — Kevin Mathes, the director of admissions, or Amy Badal, the dean of students — just to give us updates on what's going on on campus. What are the issues at hand? How can we as parents support the administration?

  It’s just a great way to be involved, and I've really enjoyed learning more about Bucknell. I've enjoyed interacting with the other parents there. When I first joined, I believe there's about 80 parents from all over the nation, as well as I think there are some parents involved who are abroad. So it's just a great way to get your hand in and be a little bit more involved at a deeper level, which I really enjoy.

  [00:25:58] BHA: I just learned something new. I had no idea that parents made phone calls to admitted student parents prior to their arrival to campus. That's such a nice personal touch.

  [00:26:07] MS: It is. It’s great, and you just get to hear what other people are participating in. We did a lot of Zoom calls for parents and families who had questions before their kids made the decision, just to kind of explain our process and our experience and answer questions —and there’s a lot. I mean, it's just a big decision for families and for students, so I just think it's great to be able to share the knowledge and share our personal experiences.

  [00:26:31] BHA: So it sounds like the parents board or association is a great way to help advocate for your student while they're in college. On a more personal level, though, how can parents help their individual students advocate for themselves as well?

  [00:26:44] CD: I think this is such an important topic, working with students, your own kids, to help advocate for themselves because you'll find yourself in my position soon enough, where they really have to advocate for themselves in a job, right? So college is super important.

  With my daughter, we learned this lesson back in high school. I remember distinctly — it might have been her freshman or sophomore year — when she was very upset with the math program, came home and had me write a note to the school administration. The school administration immediately sent me a note back saying, “We don't want to hear from you. Keep your opinions to yourself. We want to hear from your daughter.” So she was kind of taught that early that if it was going to be something, she would have to do it.

  But that doesn't mean she couldn't transition my role, or I couldn't transition my role into sort of a player coach, more of a coach, right? I'm not going to be the advocate. But I could tell her, “Here's how I might handle it, or here are the things you could do.”

  My son's a little different, and I'll talk about him even though he didn't go to Bucknell because I think his experience is also valid. He's much more quiet, not a person to draw attention to himself or advocate for himself, frankly. Even this year, I sort of had to be a little more direct with him about that coach role and say, “Go meet with the professor…” — he was working on a big project for his major — “…go meet with the professor during office hours and get feedback.” That was a professor who wasn't giving a lot of feedback. So I said, “If this is your only route to do it, figure out how to communicate with him and get feedback.” It was really important to establish that dialogue.

  Each professor, each club, each activity is going to be different in providing the feedback. You have to work with your students to maybe guide them and be as helpful as you can, but have them, in every instance, advocate for themselves.

  [00:29:00] BT: Yeah. I love that player-coach analogy. I think it's really great. Like you mentioned, Clare, college is a really formative time when students have opportunities to sharpen their self-advocacy skills and exercise more agency. So let's end with some advice from all of you on how parents can really start to take a step back and let their students grow into this new phase in their life.

  [00:29:23] MS: I think that the best advice I can say is it will all work out. When you're dropping your student off on campus for the first time, if there's something that they forget, guess what? Mail it to them from Amazon. I don’t know if it's a mail house or the mail department there, but they're phenomenal about receiving packages. I've mailed everything from letters to basically pieces of furniture, recliners or futons for the kids’ apartments. They notify the kids that they've received a package. So it can be there in two days. If they need something, they can get it quite easily.

  One of the other things that I think I remember hearing when I took my first son on an official tour this summer going into his senior year was that Bucknell is an atmosphere that's not competitive amongst their peers. So there's not a competitive feeling where you're trying to outdo your peers and your fellow classmates. It’s an atmosphere of support, and I actually confirmed this with the kids when they went through it. They don't feel like they're trying to compete with their classmates for grades. It's a very supportive community. I would encourage my kids to then go to their classmates and their friends in classes and just talk things out. Go to the professor. Advocate for yourself. I think there's a huge support system on campus with the kids in their own class.

  During graduation two weeks ago, one of the professors, who I don't know, was speaking. He was talking to the graduates. There were 900 kids sitting there. A kid yelled something out, and the professor knew exactly who the kid was. My daughter said to me, “Mom, that's what Bucknell is all about.” Because the professors know the kids so well, he knew. He probably couldn't see the kid, but he knew the kid's voice and what the kid said. He knew exactly who that kid was. I was like, “That's so great,” because it's such an intimate setting where the professor and the students interact so much, that there's an intimate level of knowledge, and getting to know each other, and a comfort level. If they need the support, they can go and ask the professor for support, extra help, whatever.

  So my advice is just to let them know that it'll all work out. There's a solution for every problem. Advocate for themselves. Sit back. Let them enjoy this wonderful experience. It's the best time of their life, and it goes by so quickly. I can't believe I've got two now graduated from there. I feel like it was probably 18 months ago that I was beginning the process with my son, and it was six years ago plus at this point. So just enjoy it. It's a great, great time.

  [00:31:51] CD: I like that advice, Maryellen, that it all work out. It does, right? But sometimes, it's hard to tell an 18-year-old that. I think my advice is get involved in something. It doesn't have to be involved in everything. But I think it's so important.

  It's easier for some than others, right? My daughter is the kind that she'll take one of everything on the menu. She'll get involved with every single activity and then run out of time. So with her, I had to kind of talk through what was really working for her and what wasn't. But I know there are kids that struggle to get involved or try to pick the right thing. But get involved in something. It can be anything. Bucknell has so many choices of things.

  But I will tell you, I saw huge changes in my daughter from when we dropped her off as a freshman. Dropped her off, she was this kid. Then I was observing her six months later. She had become a tour guide, and I think that really helped with her confidence and confidence in talking to adults, in addition to the classes and everything else. But I really saw a huge impact on her growth in just those six months of observing her.

  As a parent, I think it's important for us all to be there as a sounding board. As I said, she joined a bunch of things. Some of the things didn't work out. She ran for a big position in student government and didn't get it, so a big loss. Being there to be able to talk about something that's not a win, it's not a gain, but how do you channel your energies into something else? It all worked out, Maryellen. It all worked out for her in the end.

  So I think that's important. The parents should be a sounding board, but try to help the students. Encourage them to get involved in something because, if they're not meeting people, they'll meet more people that way and more people who have similar interests.

  [00:33:35] LF: I want to pick up on something that Clare said. Seeing those huge changes in her daughter over just a six month time period, I can imagine that being the most shocking part of the college experience is as your student is in this really formative time of their life, academically, socially, emotionally, mentally, that there are going to be big changes that happen, and maybe you don't recognize them immediately. So just as they have to adjust to a new phase of life and a new way of doing things, families are going to have to adjust to that changing dynamic as well.

  So I think having patience, and giving yourselves grace in this process, and being open to asking questions, and know that things are going to change rapidly over the next four years, and they might swing back and forth as well. But then at the end of it, if you believe in your student and are there as a sounding board, as an advocate, as a question asker, you're going to be in a really great position in four years to watch them cross that graduation stage and get ready and feel that they're ready for that next phase of their life as well.

  [00:34:49] BHA: There have been just so many nuggets of wisdom woven throughout this entire episode. Our listeners are so lucky to have Lauren, Clare, and Maryellen to join us today and hear from all of their bits and pieces that just go to show how important families and parents are in a student's college search process. Thank you for being here.

  [00:35:07] MS: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

  [00:35:09] CD: Yes, thank you. It's been a real fun time with you guys. Thanks.

  [00:35:13] BT: And thanks to everyone out there for listening. If you're a fan of the podcast, please take a moment to rate, subscribe and share this episode with the parents and families in your life.

  [00:35:20] BHA: We'll be back with another new episode in two weeks. In the meantime, send your questions, comments and episode ideas to podcast@bucknell.edu. We read every note that arrives in our inbox.

  [00:35:33] BT: Finally, you're invited to follow Bucknell on your favorite social media apps. Just look for @BucknellU on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok. You can also follow our student-run Instagram account, which is @iamraybucknell.

  [00:35:47] BHA: Until next time, keep reaching for your dreams and your dream school.