College Viewing

Yesterday Carter, Russ and I had the pleasure of looking at two colleges with Carter’s best twin friends, Cait and Adam. It makes such a big difference when a good friend can look at a school and say, “I can see you here.”

Russ and I try our hardest not to have opinions that we voice out loud until Carter has had a chance to give us hers. It is not always easy since we both are so opinionated.

Today we got up early in NYC, where we kissed and hugged our friends goodbye to go off to a new city to look at more schools. I am very thankful that we made the trip to Philly last December to get TSA Precheck, not only because we get to skip the really long lines which were extra long at regular security today, but also because sometimes you see celebrities in the pre-check line. Like this morning Anne Burrell, wild platinum haired chef on the Food Network was behind us in line wearing a fireman’s looking raincoat.
    
We arrived at our second city and went straight to a University where Russ had a friend who was a professor. His daughter is also a student there. They generously gave us a tour and we went to lunch together. Nice as they both were it quickly became apparent to Carter that this was not her place. I felt the same way. They were not her people. Poor Russ loved everything about this school and was drooling wishing he had gone here, but was a good sport when Carter broke the news to him. We went to the info session, but skipped the official tour since we had seen enough.

I am happy Carter gave it a try. So many people have told us stories about driving a kid seven hours to a school and when they pull up the kid says, “I’m not getting out.” It’s all about a feeling and if you don’t feel it there is nothing you can do.

Thank goodness we have another school to see in this city tomorrow so that we have another chance to make coming here worth it. Of course every school Carter knocks off her list reenforces other decisions already made. This is one long marathon.