About Rebecca Eckler
Since becoming pregnant with her daughter Rowan, Canadian journalist and author Rebecca Eckler has penned three hilarious books, including the best-selling Knocked Up. Catch Rebecca’s weekly unique perspective on motherhood and single parenthood.
Early Ivy League Dreams
eckler plus one: post-secondary education canada
(Sep.16.11)
Ok, how many of you Canadian parents of young children have dreams of an Ivy League education for your children, or at least talked about it? I’m not sure how the discussion started with my daughter’s father, but we had just come back from an orientation meeting at the National Ballet School where my daughter takes classes.
I think it started because we had just bought all her ballet gear for the year and I said something like: “Ballet is not cheap! Can you imagine if she got into an Ivy League school, then we’re screwed.” To which her father said, “Yes, but if she got into Harvard of course we’re going to pay for it. It’s Harvard!”
Then we started talking about all the other cool out of country colleges we would love for her to get into: Stanford, UCLA, Princeton, the University of Michigan and Columbia. We talked about how one, especially one who is Canadian, gets into these schools and my daughter’s father said a lot of it, it seems, has to do with padding your resume with charitable work. Then we got talking about how he has a friend who is on a board of a charity that builds houses in Uganda and that he donates to this charity. “I can take her and we can build houses in Uganda,” her father said, which I thought was great. Her father also mentioned that he hoped it wasn’t all about charitable work, because he applied to Wharton and when he had his interview they asked him, first, what charitable work he had done. My daughter’s father had to tell the truth, which was that he gave through his law firm, but also that he was working 16 hour days so didn’t exactly have the time to be on charitable boards. Totally makes sense. He didn’t get in.
I should mention we were in the car when we had this conversation about how cool it would be if she got into Harvard and how to go about doing this, and our daughter was in the back seat, exhausted from dancing, so not paying attention to what we were talking about. Then, suddenly, she yelled out, “Look mommy! A squirrel!” Um, can you say, reality check!
Yes, my seven-year-old daughter gets very excited whenever she sees a squirrel and in the context of her father and I talking about her getting into an Ivy League school, it just seemed so funny. Her father and I looked at each other and burst out laughing, realizing that we were getting WAY ahead of ourselves, because while we were talking about beefing up her non-existent resume by building houses in Uganda, the only thing that excited our daughter was seeing a squirrel!
“Maybe we should see if she gets through grade three first,” we laughed. We stopped talking about Ivy League schools and went back to talking about squirrels.
Have you ever just talked or dreamt about your child’s post-secondary education way before it is even necessary? Share!
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