Oh man, what a timely thread!
My DD graduates from high school in June and the past 8 months have been consumed with the college process. After all, her brother went right to college, then on to grad school and is now working in the field he always wanted. We had the same expectations for DD, however, DD is not her brother and she needs to find her own way. It took me awhile to come to this conclusion.
When it came down to the wire, 3 days ago, DD had only applied to schools that we really could not afford.
Believe me, she "knew" the budget, she "knew" what we were willing to do etc. etc. etc. but she did not listen.
This all came to a head the other night. I was stressed beyond stressed as we were facing either DD not going to school in the fall or all of us taking on a tremendous amount of debt which we had sworn up and down we would not do nor would we allow her to do via co-signing etc. We sat DD down and told her that we could not/would not make her choices happen.
So now what? Tears, two days of not going to school and hiding at BFF's house etc. I let her lick her wounds and then I tackled what I finally understood to be the real issue which DD confirmed.
She is not ready to head off to college, by only choosing unreachable schools (financially) she put herself into a position of not being able to go. By choosing a University in New York City, it gave her access to the city where she would like to intern/shadow a chef. She viewed college as a means to her adventure not wanting to consider the costs. She has absolutely no idea what she wants to do. She thinks she might like to be a baker, a lawyer, a politician or maybe an advocate of some sort - she is clueless and the idea of having to pick a path had her running for the hills, making lots of bad decisions etc.
Once we all realized this (sometimes us parents can be a bit slow) we took a deep breath and listened to what DD wanted.
She is going to take a Gap year, she wants to shadow/intern a chef as she really thinks culinary is in her future AND she is going to go off and travel a bit via WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms). I honestly had no idea she wanted to do this but I guess in retrospect, we have been so college focused that we didn't hear or see this. Fortunately we have connections in a few major cities to help aid in housing while she pursues an internship in culinary and we have a very close family friend who is very high up in the industry who can help her in this endeavor. We bought her a membership for WWOOF Hawaii and she is planning a few months in the islands on various farms.
We are not funding this like a grand tour of Europe nor are we funding this much in general. She has an 8 week residential job already lined up for the summer, that along with her savings will fund airfare and spending money to Hawaii - WWOOF farms will provide some sort of housing and some/all meals. She is planning 3-4 months in Hawaii at various farms. Her Grandfather thinks this is a wonderful idea and has offered up $100 a month deposited to her bank account for "pocket money".
Then she will return home where she will work for a few months, save her money and then set off on some sort of culinary adventure. She will work/travel over the next year.
We are going to revisit college applications in the fall for the fall of 2018 with a completely different mindset.
We maintain that no matter what she does, we will not support a decision that will leave her with major debt at such a young age.
Surprisingly to me, once we realized what was really going on and what we needed to do, the fog lifted, the stress was gone and I am totally ok with this path for DD.
The whole house slept much better last night.