Stephen's at College

Well, we have a kid in college.

Diane, Rachel and I are fresh back from Morris (about a six hour drive) having successfully deposited Stephen in his dorm room at UMM. It was a very interesting day. Timeless, in a sense. I had the strong feeling much of the day that this is one of those moments you just don’t live through twice. Yes, we’ll be dropping Rachel off at school soon (hopefully not too soo. There is this performing arts high school in the Cities, but I don’t want to think about that just yet) but Stephen is our first born. Leaving your first born at college is just one of those things; like getting married or actually having the kid.

The day went about as well as it could. We got a fitful night’s sleep in the Prairie Inn, then got down to campus right around 8:30am. A crew of upper classmen was on hand to haul stuff into Stephen’s room (a tradition at UMM). They were surprised at how little he had, and very impressed by the Xbox and the fencing foil. Stephen is in room 18 of Pine Hall. It’s a pretty standard dorm room, in the basement just like his Mom’s dorm room had been.

We took a ‘Green Tour’ of the college’s biomass heating plant and its wind turbine. They do a fair amount of practical energy research at this school, and are planning to be energy self-sufficient and off the power grid by 2010. Then it was back for lunch and a return to the dorm room where Stephen finally met his roommate, a nice kid from Granite Falls, MN named Andrew. Andrew’s whole family was in the room as well, so we had a chance to chat with them a bit. When they decided to head off to the Student Center and see about Andrew’s mailbox, we took it as our cue to make, ‘The Big Departure.’

Stephen walked with us out to the car, and he looked ready. There had been some nerves earlier in the day, but those had passed, and he was laughing, and joking. He was – well, ready.

Jury’s still out on Mom and Dad.