University Offers……the agony and the ecstacy continues!
Well this week saw the continuation of the agony and esctacy of finishing school for Aussie kids…………….University offers.
Tens of thousands of Victorian kids were waiting at the Newsagent on Tuesday morning to open the newspaper and scroll through the eight pages of printed names to see if their’s appeared…………….if their name was there….hurdle 1 passed.
The next obstacle involved identifying the number listed behind their name to see if it was the course that they had listed as their first preference (out of a possible 12) or wether they would have to be satisfied with their third, eight or last preference (which may not be a Uni course but their ’safety net’ technical course, listed on their preference list as a ‘last option’).
Then the jubilation……………..if they were offered a place………………if it was their first preference………YIPPEE.
If they were selected for their third place…………….relief wrapped in a little disappointment.
If they were offered a preference way down their list………..relief wrapped in lots of disappointment.
If their name didn’t appear at all……………….devastation coloured by the ray of hope that they may be offered a place in SOMETHING in the second round of offers, for which they would have to wait an agonising three more weeks.
The second round of emotions then kick in……….as they wait for the Postman to deliver their official letter of offer. FEAR if their name appeared in the paper, that maybe the paper was wrong and they hadn’t received an offer at all. A ray of hope, if their name wasn’t in the paper, that the paper had made a mistake and the Postman would deliver a letter that offered them a place.
The Postman delivers the letter………………RELIEF…………….THE PAPER WAS RIGHT……….I’M IN!!!!!!!!
OR ………….devastation……………….the paper was right………….I didnt get an offer…………..WHAT DO I DO NOW?????
We put our kids thru hell via this whole process………………the stress of exams, the fear and anxiety attached to awaiting their exam results and their ENTER score (the number they are allocated as the result of adding up all of their results, standardising them and then evaluating them against the mean average of other results)…….receiving the ENTER score and then feeling either validated for all of their hard work OR destroyed, because despite sacrificing everything, their score doesn’t reflect the amount of time and effort they put into their last two years at school.
Then we make them wait for more than a month to see if the University course and career they are desperate to do will be offered to them OR wether they will have to ‘make do’ with a course and subsequent career that they will ‘put up with’ OR worst case scenario, they don’t get an offer and have to ‘go back to scratch’ and work out ‘what the hell’ they are going to do with the rest of their life.
So maybe we need to rethink how we approach this whole process. Maybe we should be giving the kids more opportunity to develop coping skills for the stress and rollercoaster of emotions the last two years of school involves? Maybe we should be emphasising more that a good ENTER score, a University degree and the ‘dreamed of’ career are not the measurement of your worth as a person. I know we pay ‘lip service’ to this concept, but what are we actively doing to assist our kids in moving from childhood to adulthood?
I really think this is something we need to be exploring in depth, in order to make this transition a little less stressful and a whole lot more affirming for them………………..Food for thought!
Post script: ENTER score day was HELL in our house…………tears, disappointment and self esteem destroyed.
Tuesday was a wonderful day in our house………………..our daughter got an offer for her first preference…………..a degree in Architecture at university. We danced, laughed, hugged and jumped around the loungeroom…………………..lots of other families weren’t as lucky………. and for them, I feel really sad…………. But remember life is about cycles and rhythms, when things seem really bad, remind yourself………..it can only get better!