My sister's bridal shower is going to be held in late October. She really wants it to be costumes. I keep telling her we should do Joan Crawford and Bette Davis from "Baby Jane". How fun would that be?

I, of course, would be Bette Davis, even though my sister has better eyes.

heh. I think my allowance after rent and bills was about that. Like, my rent was $350 and they'd send me a check for $500, or something like that.

But, if I trekked home I'd get a grocery trip and a $20 bill slipped to me as I was saying goodbye.

But, if I trekked home I'd get a grocery trip and a $20 bill slipped to me as I was saying goodbye.

oh, yes. And if they visited, a trip to the grocery store, mall and dinner were de rigeur.

I've always been on my own as far as expenses and stuff, which is good, since it's going to have taken me 15 years to get my degree!

UMB is very different, though. Most of the people I go to school with work and have their own loans and stuff. Many of them get nothing from their parents, even if their parents are very proud of them.

Huh, I've never got an allowance. I got a paper route at age 11 and I've been employed ever since.

My parents gave me something like $700 at the beginning of the year and that was it. Of course, I had worked every summer since 14, so I made a lot of my own spending money. But it sort of sucked when my roommates all had Visa cards for which their parents paid the bills.

Not only did I get no allowance in college, including I paid for my own books, I had to contribute to my tuition annually (I think it was $1500 a year, in those halcyon days of $20K private college tuitions) and when I went home for vacations, I had to buy my own train ticket.

Possibly relatedly, our student paper had an editorial by an undergrad whose parents are a Cracker Barrel manager and school gym teacher, and who noted that according to admissions, 3700 (of 6200) of our students don't qualify for financial aid. AND all students with family income under $200K pretty much qualify. Which means that 3700 of the undergrads here come from families that are making in the top 5% of incomes nationwide. It is to sigh, for lil' ol' progressive me.

{{{Cashmere}}}

{{{Kristin}}}

Ah. This is The Knife vid I thought would appeal to Jilli [link]

Ooooh, you're right. I like that a lot.

I didn't get an allowance once I was 16 and could work. I did have my mother's VISA that occasionally had to be used for grocery store trips in college. It was nice to have that safety net, especially since our caf didn't exactly promote healthy eating.

One thing that has changed parent-student relationships on campus is the cell phone. It wasn't long ago that undergraduates talked to their parents once a week on Sunday night. Juniors and Seniors less often. Now there are many undergraduate women who talk to their mothers several times a day. Every difficult exam. Every foreign-born instructor who is hard to understand. Every social slight. Every bureaucratic inconvenience. Every purchase gone wrong. All discussed with mom in the hallways and outside the building entrances.

It's good to have emotional support. It's good to know what's going on with your kids. But I think that pushed too far, it can interfere with the business of moving from adolescence to young adulthood. You can go a whole day without maternal reassurance!

Of course, I may be biased because it also means that I get e-mails from parents who insist that my exam must have been unfair because their daughter is a very good student who would never get a D if the test was fair. Sometimes within minutes of the end of the exam.