Our daughter has made it home safely from Colorado, battered and bruised but pleased as punch. Her week-long “Frog Camp” experience left her exhilarated and exhausted. I’m not sure what she was most eager to talk about. Whitewater rafting was high on the list.
The scrapes and bruises came from rock climbing.
It was a physical week, to be sure. There were zip lines, ropes courses and other team building exercises. The idea was to meet fellow incoming TCU freshmen and form fast friendships before school starts. Based on the smiles we see in the photos, things seem to have worked out.
This was an experience focused on the freshmen who did not know one another before Frog Camp, Now they know one another well. Naively, I did not even think about the gender mix when she signed up for this. Somehow, seeing photos my daughter posing with a bunch of guys I haven't met caused me to raise my eyebrows a little.
There were TCU faculty members there, as well as some upperclassmen and they hit it off well. Or, as our daughter put it, “It was awesome!! I met the coolest people.”
So, mission accomplished, I suppose. That late-summer trepidation she has been feeling seems to have been washed away by the healing waters of the roaring rapids, with the help of a few camp fires and smores.
Now, she can hardly wait to start school. I guess this trip was good preparation for her parents, too. We need to learn to love hearing her stories from far away.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Feeling Froggier by the Day
Monday, July 26, 2010
There She Goes Again
Time is starting to compress on the family as move-in day for our daughter at Texas Christian University draws near. She made her college decision early and has exuded calm confidence about it from the start. Now, reality seems to be setting in. She and her friends have been comparing schedules and have come to the sobering realization that the actual number of days they have to spend together is alarmingly small. She has been closely-knit with many girls since middle school, and the inevitable unraveling of that long-established support system has become unsettling.
The days are diminished by their late-summer travel schedules. My daughter boarded a flight this morning to participate in an official TCU function dubbed “Frog Camp.”
She’s traveling alone to Colorado for an “Alpine” experience with more than a dozen people she does not know. That’s the idea: twelve incoming freshmen, a couple of upperclassmen and a faculty member spend several days together in intense togetherness. The plan is to create a support group before you arrive on campus. It seems like a great idea, and we are told the program has a long history of achieving its goals.
She had many Frog Camp options and chose Colorado for reasons of her own. I suspect a chance to escape the heat had something to do with it. As her mother drove her to the airport, she felt confident about the camp but a little nervous about close connections. The double meaning there is quite intentional. What will she do in the Colorado wilderness if her bag doesn’t make the transition from one plane to another? What kind of people will she meet when she arrives? How will this week affect the course of her life? Perhaps profoundly, maybe not at all. 
She certainly will know more about herself when she gets home. The thing is, she will only be home for a couple of weeks before she’s off again, this time for a fresh start in a whole new world. Hopefully there, time will begin to expand for her once again.
