Recovering from Parents’ Weekend
After parents’ weekend at my daughter’s university, I am still unpacking everything I saw — and everything I felt. Watching my daughter discover herself, meet new people, and find her way made me reflect on just how different her college experience is compared to how my father sees education.
My dad, an 88-year-old, foreign-born, and foreign-educated man, views education as a treasure — a sacred means to an end. To him, education is everything. You learn a trade, a skill, or a vocation, you find a job, and then your life begins. There is no room for “finding yourself” in his definition of higher education. In his world, education must lead directly to productivity. Anything else? Wasteful.
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But in this country, I try to explain, education is more than just a pathway to a career. It’s a journey, and sometimes that journey includes four years of “general education” classes — some of which may or may not be useful. I think back to my own time at UCLA. Honestly, I can barely recall a single class that felt practical or impactful. Well, maybe one — an AIDS virology course that sparked my interest in microbiology and, eventually, medicine. But was I job-ready after graduation? Not at all. My resume at the time reflected more of a blank slate than a launchpad.
My daughter’s experience, however, feels different. She’s learning how to be self-sufficient, how to navigate different personalities, and how to adapt to unfamiliar situations. These are life skills, no doubt. My dad, though, insists they can all be learned at home — without a $60,000-a-year price tag. And he’s not entirely wrong.
At the same time, she is also learning how to party, drink, and stay up late. Are these really skills we’re paying for? Or are they simply part of what people call “the college experience”? I find myself asking these questions as I try to reconcile my dad’s practical worldview with the more abstract benefits of a modern American education.
In this country, education is more than just a pathway to a career.
My dad doesn’t hold back when he challenges this version of higher education. “What’s the sense?” he asks. “She’s in another state, far from home, with no clear career path, and it’s costing a fortune.” And you know what? He has a point. There’s no guaranteed return on investment in today’s model of higher education.
For him, the idea of prioritizing self-discovery over tangible, practical outcomes are baffling — maybe even absurd.
Yet, there’s another side to this story.
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I see my daughter growing into herself in ways I never did at her age. Her experience, while unstructured, is teaching her lessons I didn’t learn until much later in life. She’s shaping her own future, one step at a time, in ways that I can only watch and support from the sidelines. These lessons don’t fit neatly into a box labeled “career” or “skills,” but they matter. They matter deeply.
So, how do I answer my dad? Do I just shrug and say, “That’s how things are here”? That feels unsatisfying — not just for him, but for me too. Maybe the truth is that education, at least in this context, isn’t only about learning a trade or finding a job. It’s about becoming someone. It’s about finding a direction and growing into the kind of person who can navigate life’s complexities, wherever they lead.
Will my daughter’s education prove worth the cost? I do not know. None of us really do. For now, all I can do is wait, watch, and hope.
