I Didn’t Want to Share This With Dylan.
Dylan scheduled a meeting with his advisor, a precursor for spring semester course registration.
Since I have so little to do for myself – what with working nearly full-time, doing the best I can with Shane and raising a puppy – I started looking at class options for Dylan.
I looked, and I looked, and I looked. Days went by. I kept looking. I checked the website for what he needs for his major, and what he needs for general education. I thought about Dylan’s likes and dislikes. I considered the number of credit hours, and looked into how many – and how few – he can take without changing tuition.
After four days, I had a list of 28 color-coded course selections with five alternate one-credit courses, complete with days and times of each class and a sample schedule that I thought he should take. I even threw in the course literally titled, “Special Interest: Bob Dylan,” because I think he needs to know more about his namesake.
And of course, I didn’t want to share any of this with Dylan. He was at college, doing his own thing, keeping up with the classes he’s currently taking, and doing nothing on his own behalf to get ready for spring.
In fact, Dylan was in the midst of a four-day fall break with nothing to do, and he still didn’t find any time to look at the website and see about his options.
Meanwhile, I kept tweaking my version of his schedule. I texted Dylan every day and asked him to call me when he had an idea of what he wanted to take. And every day, Dylan didn’t call.
But eventually, something came up and Dylan had to call. So he did.
“So let’s talk about classes!” I said with excitement, pulling up my list.
“I knew you were going to say that,” Dylan said. “I knew you would want to talk about classes and I absolutely HATE looking at classes.”
I couldn’t believe it. I’d been having so much fun finding classes for Dylan! How could he not enjoy – even revel – choosing his course selections?
“I HATE IT,” he said. Dylan doesn’t hate much, but apparently choosing classes is a thing he hates.
“Well,” I said. “I sure had a lot of fun with it.” I started asking him questions, to see if he’d done anything at all.
He hadn’t.
So I talked about the things I knew, about his requirements for graduation, about what’s left that he’ll want to get out of the way – and what he needs to take to pursue the major he chose.
Eventually, I just caved.
“Why don’t I just send you the list of the classes I found? They are all classes you need, and you can decide what you want to do.”
“That would be great,” he said. So I did – and as far as I know, he never even looked at a course catalog before choosing his spring semester classes.
I know what I did was wrong. I know, in my heart, that I have done him a disservice by cutting through all the crap for him. I sincerely wonder how he will ever get along in the world – and how he will graduate from college – if he doesn’t know exactly what he needs to do so.
And yet, I had so much fun! And I don’t have to take a single class! It’s like making travel arrangements for someone else: I get to do all the planning, but I don’t have to spend any of my own money!
I know it was wrong. But I really enjoyed it.