College Bound

I just have to pause for a moment and share my experience of the day.

Our son Tyler has flown from the nest and landed at www.mtsu.edu where he will find himself and learn much . . . and perhaps discover what he's going to do when he grows up. This is Middle Tennessee State University. Having grown up in Nashville, you would think that I would know ALL about MTSU, but the truth is . . . somehow I missed out on the fact that such a great school was only a few miles down the road.

My high school - Montgomery Bell Academy - didn't seem to have MTSU on its radar whatsoever . . . perhaps MTSU was not "Ivey League" enough.

We (Deb & I) knew that Tyler was considering MTSU a while back. We had no reason to discourage this and the more we learned about the school, the more enthusiastic we became. Suddenly, we found MANY highly successful folks in our sphere who had graduated from MTSU . . . and then we learned that it is one of the largest schools in the SouthEast.

Size can be intimidating . . .

So today as we drove to Murfreesboro to Check Tyler into his dorm, my expectation was complete mayhem. Imagine 25,000 students with parents in tow descending upon the campus in the period of 48 hours.

Our experience was phenomenal.

As we drove on to campus, we turned into the wrong set of dorms . . . There was a nice man at the entrance who promptly gave us a map of the campus and very specific directions to Tyler's dorm.

So off we went . . .

As we approached the dorm, we saw the road divided by orange cones - another "host" directed us to pull to the curb in front of our dorm - there would be people there to help us unload the car - and there WERE . . . and these nice folks then directed us EXACTLY where to park.

We parked and Tyler registered at the dorm and got his key . . . and a veritable army of volunteers gathered ALL of Tyler's belingings and carried it to his room for us . . . and then told us there was free lunch just across the courtyard.

WOW!

Now, THESE folks have a SYSTEM - A FLAWLESS system . . . and ALL of those folks were VOLUNTEERS. I can honestly say that this was a completely different experience than the one I had when I checked into my first college which was MUCH smaller.

Driving away, we felt very good about leaving our son at this university.

The population in our house has (sadly) now decreased to 4 . . . although Tyler knows that our door is always open, and we are hopeful he will find his way home often.

Best,

b
Barry Owen
www.theowengroup.net
www.activerain.com/barryo
Simply & BOLDLY Living the FourFold Way in Open Space!