is a single mama in the city, super-savvy editor, writer, video host and shameless shoe whore.
Once upon a time I was in college (and no, I'm not scanning in any photos of me doing kegstands in the fraternity barn)
Monday, November 17, 2008 
No, you haven't heard of my college. Not even if I tell you it was tagged as "the Harvard of the Midwest" or ranked as one of the very top universities in the book on how to get an Ivy League education at a state school that my parents handed me my junior year of high school. Not even if you know the background of the woman I hired as an anchor when I produced the campus news a hundred years ago. Maybe not even if you can name all the schools tucked in all the corners of the Midwest, even through their name changes and mergers.
It doesn't matter that it is relatively unknown or Division 7 or even that it is sunken in Missouri. It was exactly the right school for me. It was easy to get lost in my high school, not just in the halls but in the crowds, the activities, the cliques, the competition. I walked with ease across my college campus and spent most of my time there feeling fearless and involved and happy.
It wasn't perfect. It was inconveniently far away -- a five-hour train trip or a seven-hour drive or a three-hour car ride to the closest airport to take a 90-minute flight home. It wasn't the ticket to a job in journalism that Mizzou, not far down the road, would have been for me. It doesn't impress anyone when they see it on my resume.
Still, it was the right school for me. It was where I
was able to shed all my insecurities about not actually going to an Ivy
League school, where I was involved in every activity I felt passionate
about on campus and where I met people who still stand rooted in my circle of closest friends.
I see small children in Lil E's preschool sporting the Go Blue!
sweatshirts and Notre Dame hats and U of I cheerleader costumes of
their parents' pride and I wonder what they want to impart on their
kids by putting them in those clothes.
It's not that we don't have that gear too. In fact, Lil E has plenty of Beaver wear from my days in grad school (shut up, I know...Women Studies, Beavers, hilarious)
but it's just not the same feeling or investment or wiggle of the
spirit fingers. It's not that their (or later, my own) schools or pride
is in any way lesser. It's not that they don't want their own kids to
carry on the collegiate traditions a rah-rah shirt seems to put out to
the world and apparently, preschool.
But I wonder how much other
people are saying about their pride in their school with that college
gear and how much they are revealing about what they got out of school
with it. I guess I can only wonder that because the name on the
sweatshirt Lil E wore to school today means nothing to everyone else.
There's no recognition from other
parents or people in the grocery store parking lot or fans of the
school who see the emblazoned child and give us the thumbs up.
What it is,
though, is a good reminder that this school was a place that was
perfect only in that it was good for me. And whether there were 500
people in the stadium or 50,000, I am happy to see my boy with the name
of my school on his chest.
He doesn't have to be a legacy
there and I certainly wouldn't ever expect him to go to any college
other than the one that is just right for him. For now, though, he can
carry a little piece of what worked well for me right there underneath
that big old smile. Feeling fearless and at home and in just the right
place as he puts his lunch box and down coat and sunglasses and stuffed
tiger away in his cubby in his own school, in his own city, in his own
right.
Reader Comments (6)
Just had to say I know someone who went to Truman. But I think it was Northeastern Missouri State at that time. Have a vivid memory of driving from Chicago to Depo IL/MO to Kirksville for a graduation. Good times good time. Now he works at the State Department and is stationed in S. Korea.
--chee