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.

I had jobs here and there, but nothing steady during the school year. Also, I spent a fair amount of time in the Netherlands. I did a lot of non paying theater gigs as well, both during the summer and the school year.

I was not as industrious as y'all. I just sort of scrapped through with $100 a month, some research testing here and there, and... christ, I don't even know.

I took out oodles of student loans which I'm still working through, though. Neither me or my parents were anywhere near affording my education at the time it was procured.

Cashmere, ugh! I can only imagine how stressful this must be.

Can you just unplug the phone? Run a longer cord and stick the phone in the hallway?

Alas, no. There's no hallway, for one thing. Just an outdoor walkway.

I totally got an allowance in college. I don't remember how much it was, but my parents were my main source of income. I did get work study jobs, but not I think until my sophomore year (and then worked up the coolness ladder, until the inevitable bookstore job).

I tell you, I think cell phones are fabulous and wondrous, but they've completely changed the assumptions people make about communication. For me, it's a wondrous new thing that means if necessary I could make contact at almost any time -- for my students, it's just a fact that they ARE in contact at all times. I actually haven't had any problems with my kids this year, but there's definitely this weird generational gap where to the teachers it's a phone and to the students it's more like... a mouth.

I'm stoked...the guys at High Hat *love* my Rescue Me/ World Trade Center article. They said there are only...four edits. Not bad for a pitched afterthought, huh? I've noticed that, sometimes, that it's often not the thing I slave over that is the most successful.

Good grief. But then, I also went to college some 1000 miles away from home. My mother met one or two of my professors because she attended a parents' weekend during my freshman year. (But she talked most about azaleas blooming in New Orleans in March.)

I can see a parent calling someone at the college with whom they have a personal relationship to stop by the dorm and make sure the kid's okay. If the kid goes to the school where Aunt Marge or Dad's college roommate works, the kid should expect at least the occasional, "You doing okay?"

But calling to complain about an exam? My parents would never have dreamed of such a thing. And I can't imagine that anybody in my social circles would have dreamed of asking their parents.

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

aw! just had a vision of pre-teen!sparky on her bike, pedaling furiously two dollars!

I complained to my mother about things like that, but just to vent. My mom and I like to talk to each other. She would never have tried to be my fixer, as far as tests or anything. People really do that? Cause I sit here all gimped out and everything, crying out for rescue in the eyes of the world, and yet? Excessive much?

It's a trend known as "helicopter parents." I just read some article that was talking about how it was leeching into these kids in the workplace as well. t shudder

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.

That is what my $700 was for (books, flights, etc.). It wasn't random spending money--that's what work study was for. And I took out the max amount in student loans, at the time $2500/year (which is nothing compared to the debt I have from my PhD). Of course, I'm still bitter that my parents "stupidly" saved enough to send us to college, when we would have qualified for pretty decent financial aid.