With the final semester of her junior year in full swing the gap between the end of high school and the beginning of college is narrowing quickly for my daughter and I am finding myself nervous and excited for her. Mostly excited because college is this lovely little world where I am confident that someone like Sierra will thrive and have a great time.

Maybe more thrive than great time or at least a few notches below the great time meter her father attempted to max out. Someone should have given that boy a good talking to about frittering away the precious time of youth on such shenanigans. He would have smiled and nodded as he watched your mouth move but the concern in your eyes would not be reflected in his because he wouldn’t have been listening. So it is that he only has himself to blame. A blame fully accepted and fondly remembered.

It is with some relief that I have detected slightly more sensibility and direction in my daughter than I was capable of at the ripe old age of seventeen. She already has genuine concern for her future career. I feigned concern my second year of college when my academic advisor wouldn’t accept “play baseball” as my response to her question of “what do you want to do in college?” Sometimes the truth fails to set you free and you end up sitting in some stuffy office listening to some adult blather on about rudderless sailboats and what not.

Of course before you can attend college there are several well-meaning hoops that one must jump through before a university will consider exchanging four or five years of your time for twenty to thirty years of debt and irreversible liver damage. The first hoop is the ACT test. A standardized test designed to assess an individual’s general knowledge in the areas of English, Mathematics, Reading, and Science. I can remember going to Minot to take the ACT and determine if I had any general knowledge when I was in high school during the last century. I remember being thankful it was a multiple choice test because effective guessing has always been one of my strengths. I guess therefor I appear to have general knowledge..

I also remember the superintendent bringing us into the study hall one at time to go over our test results. I had assumed I had I failed miserably and that the superintendent would ask me to clean out my locker and immediately leave the premises as my presence was detrimental to the mental capacity of my fellow students. Judging by the surprised, impressed, and confused tone and expression of the superintendent he was just as baffled as I was as to how I did so well on the exam. It’s smart to be lucky.

Sierra has many hoops to navigate and decisions to make in the coming months but she’s a smart girl with a plan and I’m confident she will get to where she wants to go.