Clove Cigarettes, College Tours, and Character Development
- rx4trauma
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
This past weekend, I visited my college. It was a real college visit for my youngest, and while I’ve been back to campus a handful of times since graduating nearly thirty years ago, it was the first time I was there in an official capacity: as the parent of a prospective student. As I walked the campus, I realized I wasn’t just revisiting my college years—I was imagining what I hoped my son would carry into his own, IF he decided to come here.
Back in the ’90s, when I was stumbling my way through early adulthood, I can’t say I enjoyed college very much. I transferred to the University of Illinois my sophomore year, but my college journey actually started at Saint Louis University. At SLU, I cried every day because I couldn’t find my place. Ironically, it wasn’t until I got my acceptance to Illinois during the second semester of freshman year that I finally relaxed at SLU and started to enjoy it. Of course, by then I had already committed to another school, and after all the turmoil I had put my family through, I figured I’d better follow through and transfer.
When I got to Illinois, I already knew a lot of people. There’s a joke if you’re from the metro Chicago area: half your high school ends up in Champaign-Urbana, turning the university into an extension of the suburbs. So, it surprised me that even though I knew so many people there, I still couldn’t find my place. I was so busy trying to fit in—with alcohol, clove cigarettes, and whatever version of myself I thought people wanted me to be—that I never really gave anyone the chance to know the real me. I drifted through classes, sitting in the back rows, keeping a low profile, while internally tied up in knots over every test, every expectation, and the fact that I had no one to confide in.
I padded my résumé with all kinds of activities, most of them done half-heartedly, mostly in the hope that other people would think I was qualified. Qualified for what? I had no idea. I hadn’t stopped long enough to ask myself. Which brings me to another joke: if you’re a first-generation South Asian kid going to college in the States, your options are doctor, lawyer, or engineer. I can tell you right now—my grasp of physics and calculus was remedial at best, so engineering was out. I considered law school, but I could barely voice an opinion in class without worrying I’d say something wrong, so that didn’t seem especially promising either. What I did know was that I was drawn to close, personal, authentic relationships—even though I was having a hard time forming them—and that, more than anything else, is what slowly led me toward medicine.
I managed to get through my three years at Illinois and then- I was done. Would you believe I left graduation and just… walked away? I didn’t promise to “KIT” (keep in touch) or make plans for visits over the summer. I’m not even sure I turned back to look at my apartment. I had moved my furniture out the week before and had driven down with my family just to walk the stage and leave. I don’t think I even tracked down my roommates to hug them after graduation.
So why is this important? Why, knowing all of this and remembering the kind of experience I had, was I suddenly a woman crying tears of joy and love in the back aisle of the college bookstore this week? After the experience I had—and the way I left college—why did I still want this experience for my son?
Thirty years later, I know myself in a way I didn’t back then. I know what I stand for. I know how to be authentic, and I voice my opinions now—maybe more than I should. I’m okay with being wrong, and even more okay with admitting failure. And when I think about what my experience at Illinois could have been if I had arrived as the person I am now, I know I would have loved it. That’s what hit me as I walked campus this weekend. I could suddenly picture it all so clearly: fifty-year-old me strolling down John Street, or sitting on a blanket in front of Foellinger, highlighting textbooks like some kind of emotionally regulated scholar. And then I’d turn around and imagine my son taking those same steps—stumbling, succeeding, becoming.
And that, apparently, is why I was sobbing in the back corner of the bookstore while other families calmly debated hoodie sizes like stable people. I wasn’t crying because I wanted my son to have my college experience. Dear God, no. I do not wish clove cigarettes and emotionally support-drinking on anyone. I was crying because I want him to have the experience I didn’t. I want him to arrive and feel permission—not pressure. I want him to make mistakes because he’s learning, not because he’s performing. I want him to find friends who like him for the devoted, wonderful person he already is. I want him to speak up in class, take chances, bomb an exam if necessary, recover, and understand that none of those things determine his worth. Maybe I wasn’t ready for Illinois when I was nineteen. Maybe I was too busy trying to be impressive to be real. But standing there thirty years later, clutching a sweatshirt I absolutely did not need (but obviously bought), I realized something through my very inconvenient tears: sometimes the place that didn’t become what you needed can still become exactly what your child does.
