With spring break approaching, April is prime time for college hunting. You’ve got juniors in high school checking out colleges for the first time and undecided seniors who want one last look before making the final decision. I know from experience. My oldest son is a high school senior and we visited colleges intermittently from January 2007 to February 2008. Barring a big change, it looks like he’ll go to Stony Brook University, the biggest of the state school’s on Long Island.

With this in mind, I’m passing along some suggestions from the son of a colleague here at The Journal News/LoHud.com, Emily Kratzer. Her son, Russell Voss, who is finishing his junior year at a Hudson Valley college has a fresh take. It also provides a dose of reality for parents.

When you’re around the campuses, no matter what you are trying to find out about the school, keep in mind one simple and over-reaching idea: You will live here for four years. A few things to consider…

What are the dorms like?  Think of it this way: All the time you spend in your house when you’re not in school or at work, you’re going to spend that time in your dorm – with at least one roommate whom you’ve never met.

Dorms are small, smelly places, but some campuses do better than others. Be wary; Some schools squeeze a third student into rooms designed for two. My college says almost all freshman dorms are doubles, but with growing adminissions, most are home to a third student. Also note the location of vending machines, the ratio of bathrooms to people and the like. It doesn’t hurt to check out the bathrooms; you will need them. Look at how they’re laid out. Is there soap? Are there paper towels or blow-driers? Are there individual shower stalls, or is it communal like at the gym? Does it look like it gets cleaned ofen?

What are the school’s security policies? Is there a security guard at the main door of every dorm at certain hours? Do you have to sign in to visit friends in other dorms? My school has a reputation as fairly draconian for requiring students to sign in when they visit other dorms and also leaving by a certain hour. You may not think about it now, but you will spend a lot of late nights talking to people, and you won’t want to be thrown out. This also becomes important if you have friends who like to sneak in cheap domestic beer… not that I endorse that sort of thing… especially if it’s cheap domestic beer.

How close is the nearest chain drug store? The bookstore looks nice, but it’s highway robbery. A nearby drugstore usually will beat the school store on the price of many necessities and it probably has a better selection of ramen and soda. Speaking of soda, a lot of schools sign exclusive contracts with soda companies. My school is a Pepsi campus. Nowhere can you buy Coca-Cola. If soda brand is very important to you, keep an eye out.

How edible is the stuff they’re trying to pass off as food in the cafeteria? Until you move into a dorm with a kitchen, you’ll be forced to eat mass-produced mystery meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Some schools are good, others are not. Never ask your tour guide about it, they always say the food is good. The best way to find out is to venture out after the tour and try it.

Where’s the nearest good restaurant? Whether the cafe is good, bad or ugly, you will get tired of it and an affordable restaurant within walking distance is something you’ll pretty much kill for. Bigger colleges tend attract businesses like sandwich shops, casual restaurants, office supply stores, etc. Is there a mall nearby? A movie theatre? You will live at you school for four years; You will want to go off-campus to maintain your sanity.

Finally, a few questions to put your tour guide on the spot:

What nights of the week do people tend to go out to party?
What is the STD rate on campus?
Does the college provide students with condoms?

I’m sure you can think of more good questions.

 My wife, oldest son and I visited Stony Brook University yesterday to check out the school that’s vaulted to first place on my son’s list of college choices.

 It’s a big school; lecture halls are routine for most classes he’s going to take his first year. Also since its an NCAA Division One school, chances are just about zero that he will play for team basketball, something that occuppied a lot of his time in his last two years of high school. That’s not to say the school doesn’t have a lot going for it. Three’s just a lot to sort through.

 Asked what my son thought about the school, he answered: “Good.” What did he like in particular: “Nothing.” What didn’t you like: “Nothing.” And how it compared with other schools we’ve visited: “About the same.”

My son can make Humphrey Bogart seem absolutely chatty.

After the tour, as my son and I walked to get the car, I suggested that it’s OK to feel anxious about going to college. He immediately insisted he wasn’t. Is that exhibit number one that he is worried?

So how do I get him to talk a little more? I’m kind of at a loss because talking about feelings is not something he is particulary good at. I’ve told him some about my experiences at college. I guess I’ll tell him a more, especially the funny things. That can’t hurt.

 Meanwhile last night, I made an offer: ”I know you’re not worried about college, but anytime you want to talk about college with me you can.”

He gave a half smile-half laugh, a gesture that could have meant nearly anything. It could have meant ”I’m not talking; it’s no big deal.” Or perhaps, ”Thanks, dad.”  

  

  

ther he liked the schoolOver lunch

 in a school cafeteria that feature Indian, Chinese and Vietnamese food

   

An oversized envelope from SUNY Stony Brook arrived at my house this week. It’s appearance had been heralded by a phone call from the elder of my two sons who told me that he had something to show me when I got home from work.

Stuffed with a colorful brochure touting the advantages of this state school, the envelope contained an acceptance letter. So now I know – it’s those skinny little envelopes that bring the bad news. One down, eight more to go. 

As a parent it’s reassuring to know that a college actually wants your child. It’s a relief because, like most parents, I have had occasion to mutter under my breath that I no longer want him. Please, tell me I’m not the only one.

The interesting thing is, that’s happened less frequently in recent months. He seems to have finally figured out that his parents, while they love him, are not his unpaid servants. He actually helps out around the house without much of a fuss now: He goes to the supermarket once a week and vacuums nearly as often, among other chores. This son is growing up. One down, one more to go.

Please write and tell us how your family is handling the wait for college-acceptance letters.

Yesterday was the deadline for many college applications. So my eldest son was at his school until 10 p.m. last night finishing his applications. I know that because at 8 p.m. he called to ask for an example of his stubborness, something he needed for his college essay.

“An example of your stubborness? How about waiting until the last minute to finish you college applications, even though we told you to do it months ago,” I said.

“I can’t use that in this essay,” he said.

That leads me to the following question: Is procrastination genetic? I once had a tendency for lateness that led a friend to come up with the concept of Maniace time - a time zone that’s somewhere to the left of the Eastern zone. I think the final straw was when I arrived a half hour late to drive him to his wedding. 

But procrastination had nothing to do with that. It was love. Before arriving at his house I gave my then-girlfriend some tips on driving my car, which she would need to get to the reception hall  since I would be in a wedding-party limo. It was love. I treasured that gleeming, cream-colored 1972 Super Beetle.

Eventually my wife cured me of my procrastination (This may come as a surprise to my editors; not the part about my wife, but that I’ve been cured). While I could be anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour late, my wife topped me by orders of magnitude. When it came to leaving on vacation trips, this meant we’ve been anywhere from three to six hours late. My reaction to her lateness was to reform; I’m now semi-punctual. That has allowed me to name a time zone after her.

Hence my original question: Is procrastination genetic? If so, my kids are going to be world champs.  

For the last nine months I’ve been on the college hunt with my oldest son, who is in the 12th grade. All of a sudden I have to add another academic search – a high school for my youngest son who is in the eighth grade.

Both sons are in an unusual public school – for our area at least. It goes from kindergarten through high school. Four years ago I had my doubts about keeping my older son in the same school for 12 years. I wanted him in a new school, where he could meet new kids and also benefit by better facilities of a full-fledged high school.  My wife, though, was convinced he couldn’t handle a bigger school, in part because he has dyslexia. My oldest son was never a shrinking violet so I didn’t share those fears. But it’s a marriage and you have to compromise (even when you know you are right.)

Now it’s time to make the decision for my youngest son – who like my oldest son,  has dyslexia*. I still have the old reasons for him to go to another school, but also a new one too. I want him to be able to pursue his interest in track. His school has a basketball team, which his brother plays, but does not have a track team.

It’s helpful for kids to grow up with a sport to which they are devoted. It provides another thing for a kid to feel good about. And those teen years can be rough; a kid needs as many things as possible to bolster his or her confidence.

Right now we’re looking at more traditional public high schools and a couple of Catholic high schools. So far my wife is on board with this plan, but the deadline is looming. We have to make a decision in early December.  

*In one of my first postings, I wrote about some of my oldest son’s experience with dyslexia. I promised more but never returned. I hope to do so soon.

I was taken aback last year when, during back-to-school night at my son’s school, his fourth-grade teacher noted that students would not be taught cursive writing if they had not learned it in the earlier grades. There just isn’t time to teach it by the fourth grade, he said. For those that don’t know, cursive writing is what we commonly refer to as “script,” or what a friend from England told me this weekend is known as “joined” writing back home.

I’ve thought about that teacher’s comment ever since, and it came up in conversation over the weekend. It strikes me as sad that such a school policy — perhaps a natural consequence of the modern-day, state-test-driven public school system — might spell the demise of cursive writing. I was therefore not surprised to find that I wasn’t alone in that concern, and that there has been some debate over this in recent years, as expressed in this article from The Washington Post last year.

Now, my son does write in cursive, and I frankly don’t know that any of his friends don’t. But it seems clear there are kids out there that still use block writing, and perhaps it is just a matter of time before the computer keyboard replaces all penmanship. I certainly hope not. Heck, our own Constitution and Declaration of Independence are written in cursive. Are we heading for a generation of children who won’t be able to read them?

Yesterday, I dropped my 13-year-old son off at an educational program just outside of Washington, D.C. It’s a program that he was nominated for by his sixth-grade teacher and he’s been looking forward to it for the past year.

It sounds like a wonderful way to spend a week: He’ll visit Gettysburg, Jamestown, Williamsburg and all the sights in D.C. During the parent orientation yesterday, the facilitator said we all probably wished we were 13 again, so we could go too. And she was right -I think we were all ready to take a week off, be driven around and learn all about our country’s history.

Parents were all happy. All smiles. Some – especially parents of kids from the West Coast – were a little concerned about the 6 a.m. wake-up time for the kids, but basically we all nodded to each other, commenting on how fortunate our kids were to have such an experience.

But when started driving back to New York on I-95, it all hit me: I’m leaving my son, my biggest baby, with strangers. In Washington. And tomorrow is Sept. 11. I must be out of my mind. Suppose these people are insane? What if they’re part of a cult? What if they’re not as nice and wholesome as they seem? And that led me to think of many of my colleagues and friends, who have had to drop their kids off at college, and how traumatic it was for many of the parents. It made me REALLY glad to know that college is still 5 years away for me.

I’m not sure why this parting troubled me so. My son has gone to weeklong sleepaway camp, and has spent many evenings at friends’ sleepovers. But there was something so serious about this, that it made me think about how I’ll deal with him leaving for college. I supposed I still have five years to get ready for that.

Is parting with your child difficult? Do you find that it gets even more difficult as they get older? Am I just a wimp? Share your thoughts – And I can take the heat.

What blows me away about my son’s generation is how quickly they were immersed in computers. Don’t get me wrong, I spend the bulk of my day in front of a keyboard or online. Comes with the job. But my generation was so late in coming to it. I’ve often told the story of my first computer class in college, which takes us back all the way to 1981. I can’t recall what I learned, but I do remember the professor telling the class that one day every home would have a computer. We all laughed.

Yet, here we are. I’m 0-1 on computer predictions. The only question now is how many computers you have in your home. My son has his own laptop, and a computer at both his mom’s place and my place. At 9, he has more passwords to remember than I did at 29. I found one analysis from the National Science Foundation that reported that 21 percent of children 2 or younger have used a computer; 58 percent of children 3 and 4; and 77 percent of 5 and 6 year olds. And those are 2005 statistics.

Heck, I can’t even get over my parents using computers. If you told me 10 years ago that my dad would be computer savvy, I would’ve laughed yet again, as i did in that classroom in 1981. Yet, here we are. I’m 0-2.

Anyway, what got me thinking about all this is that my Internet access went down Thursday, and I haven’t been able to log in from home since. The repair guy came twice (to be fair, the second visit was because he left his tools behind the first time) to no avail. I even spent 20 minutes on the phone with my girlfriend’s ex, since he’s a computer programmer. Still, no fix.

So I started to wonder how my computer-savvy son is going to cope without Internet access when he gets back from vacation with his mom. He likes doing research online, playing games and checking out videos on YouTube.

Then it dawned on me: He’ll take it in stride. He’s got the neighbor’s kids and the playground to go play. He’s got books, games, sketch pads and, God forbid, X-Box in a pinch. Computers are just one part of his world, and a familiar part that will always be there again. I’m the one that’s going to miss the Internet: No checking email or the blogs; no online news from around the world; no YouTube (heck, I can waste a way an hour there myself). So even after years online, I think it’s still more of a novelty to me than it is to my son.

I mean, who would’ve thought in 1981 that I’d be missing my home computer. I guess I’m 0-3.

Thursday morning we will set off on a family trip to Niagara Falls, then Toronto and on the way back, Ithaca. The last stop serves two purposes: to explore the Finger Lakes and to visit Binghamton University, known for many years as SUNY Binghamton.

My oldest son, 17, is entering his senior year in high school and it’s time to check out yet another college. Binghamton, the college’s brochure crows, is “the premier public university in the Northeast.”  OK, now how do I convince him to go there and how do we get him in. (Just kidding. I know, I’m supposed to let him decide.) 

Now this brings us to the title of this post. My oldest son cannot be 17. As best I can figure it, he is about 12. And my youngest son, who everyone including the calendar says is 12, can’t be more than seven, OK, maybe eight. I’m not talking about maturity or intelligence; I’m referring to kids-age-in-parents’-brain time, the time scale that moves along at a more reasonable pace. 

As best as I can tell, someone or some group is tampering with time. I suspect they are slipping anywhere from five to 10 seconds out of every minute – at least double that at night, which explains why I’m always tired.

At the risk of sounding a lot like my parents, their friends and my adult relatives when I was growing up - this parent thing is going way too fast.  So how old are your kids, and how old should they be?