head light
P and D returned from Maine yesterday morning. I picked them up from the airport; they had been there since last Wednesday investigating an art college in Portland. I once described P as an “interesting bundle of contradictions,” and that’s certainly holding true for her college career.
After the disillusionment with the community college art classes, she started searching in earnest for someplace she felt more of an affinity with, and stumbled across the school in Maine after a Google search, of all things. Why Maine? As far as I understand it, her dream is to attend a college in a geographical location she finds desirable. Put another way, she wants to move someplace she could see herself living for the rest of her life, and our efforts to communicate that the majority of college students don’t end up living in the same region as the college where they received their degree have met with only limited success in dampening her fixation on her vision of an academic career.
Maine was a bit of a wake-up call to her in that regard. Both P and D loved the town, but P’s experience has shown her that it’s just too far away, too much of a leap for her at this point in her life. The subpar quality of the student and faculty art she surveyed played a role as well; she’s been very disillusioned at all the state of fine arts higher education, and what she saw at the Maine school reinforced that disillusionment. It’s just not worth it for her.
So, in a sense, we’re back to the drawing board (pun intended). She’s open to Appalachian State, but that would require her to live in NC for a year to be able to get in-state tuition. She’s also open to the local 4-year public university, but that surprised me given her repeatedly-stated desire to move away from home (but not too far, obviously). UTC is less than 30 minutes away (see note above about “contradictions”). Either way, we have a lot of work to do to prepare. College expenses and logistics are no joke.