Time to Graduate

There is no turning back of time and Cher’s song is stupid. As I was sitting in my own bucket of tears yesterday at my daughter’s Graduation, I realized that the umbilical cord we shared 23 years ago is now rotted and non-existent. I should have been able to be so happy at her achievements and there were many. I was grateful that she in some way survived college and did all the right things. On her own she maintained 4.0 average and graduated with Cum Laude status. She worked hard to submit all the requirements that managed to get a Benefactor to pay $250,000 for a four year scholarship. Then completed her Master’s Degree in one year after writing a 400 page thesis. Passed her licensing exam on the first attempt. I should have been ecstatic over her achievements but society and its lack of ethics wouldn’t allow me to enjoy the moment in time.

Instead my thoughts wandered during the two hour event to sorrow over the countless number of college students who do not survive the college experience that exists now. Parents are stuck in a time zone about college that just doesn’t exist anymore.   They are suffering from the guilt and feelings of failure because they can’t afford to pay for their kid’s education and they realize that their precious child will be beginning their adult life being buried under a mountain of student loan debt. We can’t turn back to the time when I attended college and I only had to pay for fees and books.

I found myself sitting there in deep sorrow and yet gratitude that my daughter survived terrorism during the Boston Marathon. As we frantically tried to find her we were relieved to learn that she didn’t even know it was happening. She wasn’t listening to the horrific news, wasn’t there but was working in her dorm room. Many colleges have riots, shootings and now political protests on campus that is hard to escape. I don’t remember thinking about any of that when I attended college.

I will never forget years ago when we toured the college and noticed that the cafeterias provide breakfast foods till four in the afternoon on Sundays. Why? Then I realized that there is a large population of students that are up all Saturday night drinking, drugging and having sex till dawn.  If they survive all that then they can have Sunday breakfast in the late afternoon. That is how school administrations deal with the problem. Just this week in the news there was a highly publicized murder of a handsome 19 year old who died from a Frat Party prank and was left to die. I wanted to be able to turn back time when ethics mattered.

School administrations care only about their tuition and look the other way at the dangers of student life or in reality death at their colleges. The administrators have a lack of morality and ethics and the students are failing in that department too. I have to be proud that my daughter did not date much in college because most young women are being raped or assaulted if they try to date. Dancing now is twerking while the guy’s rub their penises as close to your body as they can and you don’t really know the guy at all! There is no turning back time where there was that square dancing or renaissance dancing where people hopped around the room exchanging glances and barely holding hands on the dance floor.

She didn’t get raped thankfully. Many college girls are drugging and drinking and don’t even remember how many guys raped her on those Saturday nights. Health insurance provides guys Viagra where their penises can stay hard for hours but health insurance will not provide birth control or the morning after pill for the violated and degraded girls on campus.  School administrations don’t believe the violated girls and do not claim any responsibility for the behavior of the students.

She didn’t get involved in the drug culture thankfully. Prescription drugs are easily available on campus and pot and cocaine is easy to get too. The new pot is often laced with PCP that causes one to hear voices and   do crazy things while under the influence. Your healthy child is now bi-polar and schizophrenic and needs constant mental medications to control their visions of suicide. They drop out of college and have a lifetime of therapy. Colleges just want their tuition and their dorm rooms filled.

She didn’t get involved in sports either thankfully. Colleges now spend more money on their lavish sports teams and stadiums and coaches than they spend on teachers and classes. They recruit athletes because they are the money making slaves who fill up those stadiums with their great unpaid athletic services. The winning coaches get million dollar salaries while the student athletes don’t even have time for studies or classes because they are always at travel games, or team practices. Many don’t even achieve all the credits needed to graduate. There is no ethics at colleges anymore.

Last week my daughter was in tears after she finally realized that it was all over. The distraction of working hard at her studies and at her campus job of dishing out mashed potatoes was all over. Instead of her tears of happiness she had tears of sadness. Did she have regrets that she was supposed to be somehow related to terrorism, should have had empty relationships with aggressive boys, should have partied till she didn’t remember anything and ate breakfast at 4 P.M. on a Sunday, should have been a sports slave for the college?

I cried yesterday for her grief and the breakdown of ethics and morality at colleges. Later last night she went out with her friends and brother to dance to live music and have a few drinks. I knew they would be asked for identification to prove that they were over 21 years of age. I wouldn’t even think of joining them because I knew that my identification would just prove that my uterus has expired and that I don’t belong there. Sometimes I wish I could turn back time where we could all be happier even when we do achieve all the right things.