My First Time ... Dropping My Kid Off at College

A devoted dad packs a van full of dorm room necessities — plus some sage life advice

David Hochman,

AARP

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Published August 08, 2024

David and Sebastian standing in front of body of water

David and his son, Sebastian, prior to college drop-off.

Courtesy David Hochman

On the day we emptied our nest, I rose early to survey the pile-up of boxes and zippered duffel bags heading to college with our son. Fortunately, one of my gifts as a parent is car packing. Give me a bicycle, a window fan, a stack of Hula Hoops and a life-size Stormtrooper action figure, and I’ll fit them into the back of your Prius.

But moving my only child, Sebastian, to college would be the packing job of all packing jobs, the mother lode of father loads. We rented a gleaming white minivan for the occasion, and I entered a kind of dad trance as I puzzled together the component parts of my son’s soon-to-be campus life. Into the vehicle went blankets, desk lamps and vinyl records, plastic tubs of sneakers and Shakespeare books. And was Sebastian really bringing the fuzzy blue elephant he’d slept with since toddlerhood? Ciao for now, Babu!

Taking your children to college isn’t just about getting them from point A to point B, or even to points B.A., B.S. or Ph.D. As a father, I felt the responsibility to help launch Sebastian in a way that set him up for every success. All those years of “use your inside voice” and “look both ways before crossing the street” suddenly felt like a lead-up to this one epic departure on a random Monday in September.

That’s why one of the things we packed was something you can’t just buy at Target. For weeks, my wife and I had been quietly compiling a list of wisdom nuggets that we hoped would help Sebastian weather the inevitable storms ahead: first-year mistakes, stressful exams, painful breakups. In case the everyday lessons we tried to transmit over the ages somehow didn’t stick, here they were writ large, tucked under his pillow to find after we said our goodbyes: “100 Thoughts From Your Parents as You Begin College.”

Ruth wrote 50 and I wrote 50, and when I read my entries aloud to her, I got through exactly five words before melting down into a blubbering hot soup of tears. The opening line went:

“You deserve to be here. Don’t let anyone (including yourself) tell you otherwise.”

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What cut me to the core was that, no matter what we wrote in a little book, it would ultimately be up to Sebastian to learn these lessons for himself. No amount of micromanaging will shield your child from reality. As the poet Kahlil Gibran expressed it: “Your children are not your children.… You may give them your love but not your thoughts, / For they have their own thoughts. / You may house their bodies but not their souls, / For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”

It’s true that I had dreamed my son would go to college one day, but the wonder of his being there outdid anything I’d envisioned. There’s nothing like a freshly empty rental van outside your kid’s dorm to remind you that the future is theirs, not yours.

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After some farewell hugs and a clear-eyed nod from Sebastian that made us realize it was really time to go, my wife and I got back in the rental to head home — and into the next chapter of our life. He disappeared into his dorm, and I turned the key in the ignition.

Then, a joke from the universe: The engine wouldn’t start. Click, click, nothing. We’d worked so hard as parents to set our little chickadee free, but there we were in the loading dock like a couple of grounded dodos. We heard Sebastian inside, already entertaining new friends at the piano in the common room, and we certainly weren’t going to interrupt that. So we sat and waited nearly two hours for roadside assistance to find us on the vast campus. A book of comforting affirmations might have come in handy.

White van with front hood and driver's side door open; black and yellow pickup truck behind it

After they helped move their son into his dorm room, David and his wife needed help from roadside assistance when their rental van wouldn't start.

Courtesy David Hochman

For us, the way forward required a new battery but also a fresh mindset. We were saying goodbye to our son, yes, but not goodbye forever. He’d get to have his own adventures and make his own mistakes — but so, we remembered, would we. And we’d all have stories to tell when we saw each other next.

It was dark by the time the mechanic got the van started again, but we felt brighter as we drove off.

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David Hochman is a longtime contributing editor for AARP The Magazine and AARP Bulletin. His bylines appear in The New York Times, Forbes, GQ, Food & Wine and many other publications.