We Go Back to App State Every Fall

I'm not anti-college. I went. We still go back. I'm anti-sending a young adult out there unprepared.

I went to Appalachian State. I have real affection for the place, and I go back once a year for a football game.

So let me say the thing up front that people always assume I won’t say: I am not anti-college.

I’m anti-something much more specific.

When I was on that campus, I was, by my own honest accounting, a mediocre and disinterested student. I lost a partial scholarship after one semester. I picked a business major halfway through, mostly because why not? Then I stayed and got an MBA — and if I’m being truthful, I did it largely because I didn’t want to be an adult yet. Sixteen years of formal education, and I walked out with a graduate degree and no real idea what I actually wanted to do for the forty-plus hours a week I was now expected to work.

College didn’t fail me. I showed up to it unprepared and without direction, and a degree can’t manufacture either of those things for you.

I watched the same thing happen, gently and painfully, to my youngest daughter. She tried college because all her friends were going and she couldn’t think of a better idea. Within weeks, she was regressing — not growing. She made it to Thanksgiving, finished the semester, and dropped out. And here’s the thing: that wasn’t the failure. Sending a directionless eighteen-year-old into an expensive, high-pressure, crowded environment and hoping it would somehow generate the direction she didn’t have — that was the mistake. She found herself later, on her own terms, once she had room to.

College is a wonderful experience. For some people. At the right time. With a clear reason for being there. The honest framing isn’t “college isn’t for everyone” — it’s “college is only for some people,” and the job of a parent is to figure out, with eyes wide open, whether their kid is one of them right now.

Because here’s what the brochures never mention: the growth college is supposed to produce — self-knowledge, independence, knowing what lights you up — usually requires space, quiet, and unstructured time to reflect. A deadline-packed, activity-saturated, four-year bubble is not the best environment for that. Some people thrive in it anyway. Plenty of others come out the far side a few years later, asking, “who am I, and what am I even doing?”

So no — burning the tassel isn’t the point, and neither is skipping college to prove something. The point is preparation. A kid who steps onto a campus self-directed, with a reason to be there, can get enormous value from it. A kid who’s sent there to find a reason is being handed a six-figure question they’re not yet equipped to answer.

I’ll still see you in Boone this fall. I just want our kids to arrive ready — wherever they’re arriving.

So, honestly: if your teenager is headed to college, is it because they chose it with their eyes open — or because nobody could think of what else they’d do? Hit reply and let me know. I read every response.