They’re baaack…


I just got back from the town grocery store, which was packed with students — classes start again tomorrow, so I guess they’re stocking up for the semester. About half of them had their parents with them, which was totes adorbs. It wasn’t that long ago I was that parent.

But no more! My kids are expected to save up their pennies now so that in a few years they can handle the bills for adult diapers that they’ll be getting from my retirement home.

Comments

  1. blf says

    I just got back from the town grocery store, which was packed with students — classes start again tomorrow, so I guess they’re stocking up for the semester.

    Nah, it means you are starving yer fish. You didn’t feed ’em enough students to make any difference…

  2. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    Tram is going to be filled with high school kids in the morning again. Ugh. The giggling. Loud music. Crappy loud music.

    Ugh.

    /curmudgeon

  3. otranreg says

    What? Uni students needing parents to buy food? I’m almost afraid to ask, but I wonder if spoon-feeding is a necessary procedure as well.

  4. marypoppins says

    Parents are also the ones with the vehicles to drive the food back to where they live. Always help or buy food for my child when I visit.

  5. A. R says

    I managed to have my teaching obligations for this semester waived in favour of more lab time and an enforced paid nine week “mental health vacation”. My happiness is without bounds.

  6. says

    Yep. They’ve been off on vacation, mom & dad drive them back to school, and as long as they’re here with a car, they run them off to the local stores for the essential supplies.

    We’re not a commuter school. Most of our students are here without cars, if that helps explain the phenomenon.

  7. stripeycat says

    As someone who once carried a 25kg sack of rice from the shop to her house-share, I was always grateful for parental visits with the parental car. Any kind of stocking up, or even buying drinks for a party, needed me to take my pack to carry stuff home in. Especially annoying as my preferred supermarket for most things was several miles away up a steep hill (at least it was downhill on the way home), and cycling with a heavy pack isn’t something I was comfortable with.

  8. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    We’re not a commuter school. Most of our students are here without cars, if that helps explain the phenomenon.

    My take is M&D buy them real food. Later, the ramen noodle cups will appear to help with the beer budget.

  9. says

    The college I went to back in the late 80s had “Interim” during January, where you could take a full course in four weeks. The course offerings were often more offbeat and lab-oriented* than the usual semesters, like “The Physics of Sound” or “Playing with Lasers” (not the real name, but that’s what it amounted to). Interim was optional, so the campus was pleasantly quiet for a month.

    * There were plenty of normal lab courses, naturally, but they were usually higher-level.

  10. echidna says

    “Totes adorbs”? PZ, your kids are corrupting you.

    Always better than predominantly using idiomatic expressions that passed out of fashion thirty years ago, which is something that I have an unfortunate tendency to do.

  11. JohnnieCanuck says

    Whatever slash it’s already out of date slash or soon will be and, like, marks him as a square.

  12. says

    Always better than predominantly using idiomatic expressions that passed out of fashion thirty years ago, which is something that I have an unfortunate tendency to do.

    Don’t be such a drag, dude. You some kind of square? Get with the times and be groovy and radical like us college kids. It’s totally tubular.

  13. PDX_Greg says

    Our son’s college is way too far away to drive there and embarrass him directly in front of his schoolmates, so my wife compensated by packing 22 pounds of food in his suitcase. I know this because we had to trim the food weight to keep his suitcase within the airline weight limit. My son was mortified with the whole procedure, but also, I think, secretly looking forward to having food that was not conveniently available to him on or near campus. Yes, peanut butter AND jelly made the flight, but I do regret not slipping “totes adorbs” into the parting conversation yesterday. I’ll have to work hard to keep that one tucked away until next fall.

  14. carlie says

    Our classes don’t start until next week!

    …but I haven’t chosen the textbook for my evolution class yet. *headdesk*