If You’re Going to Take a Trip, Don’t Lose Your Way

I turned 20 in 1974, the summer before my sophomore year at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC. Two years before, I was launched from Albany, Georgia as my parents celebrated getting me through high school in one piece. Then they worried about the heightened drug use and sex in college. But like many of the day, my parents were hands-off-old school—you raise them right and hope for the best. Let’s face it: those of us who did were very lucky to make it through unscathed.

Fast-forward 40 years.
In 1974 there was nothing remotely resembling the devices today that fit in your palm and put the good, the bad and the ugly instantly at your child’s fingertip. We all know this has upped the ante of child-raising exponentially and frankly, as parents, I think we’ve been robbed. The “technology” of parenting has not evolved while digital technology is changing as I type this. Pretty much all we can really rely on is that same philosophy—raise them right (if you can figure out what right is).

Our daughter, Miranda, turns 20 this summer, just finishing her freshman year at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA. My husband and I are both in awe of who she is compared to who we were at that age. Now it’s our turn to be concerned as things spiral out of control on today’s college campuses: the domination of social media, extreme (all too often fatal) use of alcohol and drugs, and yet another new meaning to “hook-up” sex. We were grateful for the chance to peer into Miranda’s psyche around much of this via the article below, which she wrote for her school paper. After reading it we find new solace in the philosophy that guided us in raising her—the closest we could come to “raise them right”: prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child.

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Featuring Guest Blogger

Miranda Roehrick

Contributing Writer
The Peel: Pitzer College’s student-run, online newspaper

If you’ve had a good trip, seen things otherworldly, and found yourself on the other side of what you previously viewed as the limits of reality, many people in college communities automatically view you as a seemingly more well-rounded individual. Numerous Pitzer students hold drugs in high esteem. Drug culture surrounds a spiritual mindset—many regard drugs as a vehicle to the soul, a way to escape reality and find oneself. This soul-finding attitude serves to distract from the real consequences of continued drug use. Read More