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“When the national media turns its eye to college campuses, it often focuses on the ways the college experience has evolved in recent years,” Ashley Fetters wrote in 2018. “So it’s easy to overlook the fact that one of college’s most beloved features—a round-the-clock culture of frivolity and togetherness—has barely changed at all.”
Eight years later, American college life is changing all over again, as AI and political and economic realities transform what colleges are like and where students choose to go. But those formative parts of the college experience—growing up, making friends, and making mistakes—aren’t going anywhere. Today’s newsletter explores what it feels like to be a young person preparing for the wider world.
On College Life
What I Learned About Life at My 30th College Reunion
By Deborah Copaken
“Every classmate who became a teacher or doctor seemed happy,” and 29 other lessons from seeing my Harvard class of 1988 all grown up (From 2018)
How College Changes the Parent-Child Relationship
By Alia Wong
The distance can actually strengthen the bond. (From 2019)
Where America’s College Kids Stay Up All Night
By Ashley Fetters
Students across the U.S. share their school’s version of that place—the one where everyone just winds up late at night, for better or worse. (From 2018)
Still Curious?
- America will sacrifice anything for the college experience: The pandemic has revealed that higher education was never about education, Ian Bogost wrote in 2020.
- “Dear James: I hate my post-college life”: “I’m utterly lost,” a reader writes.
Other Diversions
- The music of Millennial idealism
- The defiant conventionality of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce
- Gary Shteyngart: “Crying myself to sleep on the biggest cruise ship ever”
P.S.
I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. Donna Moriarty from Ossining, New York, writes: “My husband of almost 50 years has taken to posing two stuffed animals, Felix the Cat and Snoopy (of Peanuts fame), that we still have from our children’s childhood. He’ll pose the two characters in ways that illustrate what’s happening in our lives (or how he feels.) Recently our entire family had gathered under the same roof for the first time in more than five years. After everyone left, I went to our bedroom and found Felix and Snoopy gazing out the window as if watching their departure. My heart melted at the melancholy feeling emanating from the way he positioned the two little figures.”
It was like “he knew exactly what I was feeling,” Donna writes. “After being married so long, you’d think I wouldn’t be awestruck by my husband’s ability to touch my heart with a small gesture like this one. But his funny, creative expressions of what he’s thinking and feeling, even after all this time, make me fall in love with him over and over.”
I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
— Isabel
The post On the Brink of Adulthood appeared first on The Atlantic.
