Educating Mom

My daughter will not be going to UC Berkeley this fall. When I broached the idea of applying to my beloved alma mater, she couldn’t have been clearer. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she said, gently patting my hand, “but it’s not my kind of school.”

Not her kind of school? What did that mean? That the crown jewel of the University of California was too urban and overwhelming for her? That she didn’t want to attend a campus lauded for its protest politics and Nobel laureates? Or maybe, I thought in a brief flash of enlightenment, she simply wasn’t interested in attending the same college as her mother?

Ridiculous.

I have made many mistakes, but my decision to go to Berkeley — or “Bezerkeley” as my conservative father railed at the time — certainly was not one of them.

From the moment I set foot on its historic campus, I loved everything about it. The students hawking petitions. The gorgeous London plane trees lining Sproul Plaza. The chimes of the Campanile. The thrill that no one knew me and the sense that I might meet someone from Greece or Kenya or even New York, places I had imagined but had never been.

Surely my daughter would find the same virtues in Berkeley?

That she did not was only the first of many revelations during the tortuous college application process. And I don’t mean hers.

Since she took her first SAT, I have been continually humbled by my expectations of my daughter, expectations that had very little to do with her and everything to do with me.

When we started this adventure, I was determined not to be one of those overbearing parents who can’t keep their hands off the controls. I was not going to shell out thousands of dollars for a college application counselor. I was not going to hire someone to “help” craft her college essays. I was not going to tell her where to apply, check to see that she’d filled out her applications or badger her about deadlines. If she asked, I would offer my opinion. But this was her deal, not mine. Besides, my daughter had a great high school counselor on the case. She didn’t need a meddling mother.

But before long I became exactly that.

My daughter attended a rigorous Catholic girls school in Los Angeles. For several reasons she had a difficult junior year — the year college admissions officers would judge her on. Never mind that she’d gotten A’s and Bs through most of high school, been captain of her varsity soccer team, logged hours of community service.

In an effort to contain the damage, I hired a math tutor. I begged — in vain — that she be moved from a cruel English teacher. I nagged, in a way I had not done since she was 10: Had she finished her homework? Didn’t she have a test tomorrow? Then why was she watching “Project Runway”?

Over the summer she raised her algebra grade to an A. But with many top colleges having their pick of students with 4.2 GPAs, her perfectly impressive transcript still didn’t shine. I have to admit I was annoyed with her. This was her one shot to attend the college of her dreams. Didn’t she know that?

I mostly kept these toxic thoughts to myself. But as the college application deadlines loomed, my anxiety kicked in. At first my daughter had been thrilled about the idea of living on the East Coast. Four of her schools were in Boston, New York and Washington. But then this adventurous young woman, this child who stood for hours on inauguration day in Washington in the frigid early dawn, who snowboarded in blizzards, decided she wasn’t sure she could abide the cold weather. Was she being honest? Or was she prematurely giving up, fearful of rejection?

That left her with a grand total of three schools. Some of her friends had 12 colleges on their lists. In the back of my mind I heard the bad mother voice, the one I kept trying to silence: “She can do better. Those schools aren’t good enough.”

I slyly began suggesting colleges. “What about Bard?” I would ask one day. “How about Colgate? Or Middlebury?” I’d try the next, dipping into a set of schools that weren’t on her radar. In the bookstore one afternoon, I pored over a copy of “Colleges That Change Lives” and then eagerly reported my findings to her that night. Through all these attempts to manipulate her, my daughter was extremely tolerant and polite. She did not roll her eyes. She did not tell me to go get a life.

In the end, it is to my daughter’s credit that she didn’t listen to me. By then she had already found the school of her dreams. She did it all on her own, just as I originally hoped she would, before I tried to get in her way.

In a few weeks, my daughter will start classes at the University of Oregon, a school she fell in love with when we toured its environmentally progressive campus, met some students, sat in on classes. After seven years at a small girls’ school in glitzy L.A., she wanted a big university with a strong environmental science program and an avid outdoor culture. (Not to mention male students.) A place with a cool college town and a small community feel. A place where she would be free to find herself and explore.

I can’t remember when she’s been this happy. It’s that same starry-eyed look I had when I was headed to Berkeley.

A few months ago, I noticed a large envelope on the dining room table containing her housing application. On the outside she had written: “U of O: Here I come!!”

Mona Gable is a writer in Los Angeles.