Lehigh University

The College Road Trip

Many of you are heading out on your first college road trips. Here coauthor Christine VanDeVelde remembers her first college visits with her daughter: A few years ago, my daughter and I ventured forth on a short tour.  We managed to walk the Vanderbilt campus in Nashville, Tennessee, in the middle of what they call a “dogwood winter” – the trees are blossoming as temperatures plummet. We then flew north to Chicago, just in time for an epic snowstorm that closed O’Hare for a day and a half. After trudging along the campus on the edge of Lake Michigan in ballet flats, we holed up in an Evanston hotel, bundled in our new Northwestern sweats watching Pay-per-View movies. My husband took the next trip that summer – Lehigh, Yale, Boston University, Dartmouth, and Cornell -- where they had to buy new shoes to accommodate  the amount of walking they did but enjoyed much better weather and a side trip to Legally Blonde on Broadway. Despite blisters, traffic jams and inclement weather, we found these road trips to be peak parenting experiences – some of the most memorable and enjoyable times we have spent with our daughter.