How Was I Supposed To Know?!
With a week to go before college orientation, Dylan still hadn’t done a lot of the stuff on his pre-orientation checklist. Fortunately, he had done a lot of stuff on the list, which turned out to be more essential than any of us could have realized.
On the day that I insisted that Dylan finish his checklist – because he wasn’t going to be home any other day prior to orientation – Dylan had an attitude. He wanted another “day off” to “relax” and there were no more “days off” to be had.
So he spent all day grouching around the house at me, even though I spent my morning shuffling back and forth to the high school for Shane’s benefit, then preparing for our ten-hour trip to Dylan’s upcoming orientation.
Meanwhile, Dylan spent hours trying to register his bicycle. He had questions, so he tried calling and then emailing, and got no answers. After an hour, his bike still wasn’t any closer to registered than it had been previously.
While he was waiting to hear back, Dylan tried to figure out the financial aid requirements. This was way harder than either of us realized and we gave up promptly.
Then Dylan started tearing the house apart, looking for the class schedule he’d prepared for fall registration. He’d spent hours – a full month earlier – creating that schedule. It was the most important thing he’s done for college, but he lost his list of classes. He had read through all the core requirements and major requirements, checking out the online registration system, and deciding which classes he wanted. He’d even chosen alternates in case those classes were full.
Then he simply lost the piece of paper. In fact, he lost all the related papers I’d printed out, too, highlighting the core requirements and those of various majors. Of course Dylan had no idea what classes he’d decided to take, let alone what alternates he’d chosen.
While he was still perplexed by the lost paper, he heard back from the bicycle registration people. So he started registering his bike again. Unfortunately, after another half an hour and some time in the garage with his bicycle, he discovered that the serial number didn’t fit into the appropriate box – which held only nine of the ten digits.
And that was the end of the line for Dylan. In spite of the two hours he’d wasted not quite registering his bicycle, he decided to leave his bicycle at home.
Hours later, as Dylan was bashing his head against the wall because he’d have to re-do all that course registration work, I hopped on my computer and reprinted the list of classes that he’d chosen a month earlier.
Just in case he misplaced his earlier work, I’d cut-and-pasted Dylan’s class choices from the college website into a Word document. I didn’t even remember doing it.
Dylan hadn’t even looked in his designated folder on my computer.
When I handed him the reprinted list, he didn’t say, “Wow thanks, Mom!” There was no sigh of relief. Instead he said, “How was I supposed to know you had a list on your computer?!”
My guess is, there will be no list when he tries to register for the second semester. In fact, he’ll be lucky to remember to register at all. And if class registration is far away from his dorm, Dylan won’t be able to get there at all, because he won’t have his bicycle.
I’m glad I won’t be there next time. Mr. I-Can-Do-Everything might have to actually Do Something.