Learning Resilience: What My Daughter's College Visit Taught Me
Today, I stood on the sprawling campus of the University of Michigan, watching my daughter's eyes light up as she took in the Gothic architecture, the bustling Diag, and the unmistakable maize and blue that seemed to color everything in sight. It wasn't just any college visit—it was *her* first college visit, to the school she's dreamed about since her junior year.
The journey to this moment wasn't straightforward. When my daughter first mentioned Michigan as her dream school years ago, I smiled and nodded, remembering my own college dreams—some realized, some abandoned. I never finished college, but the path had been rocky, filled with financial struggles, changed majors, and moments of doubt. What I didn't realize then was how closely she'd been watching my journey. While I saw my college experience as a mixed bag of successes and failures, she saw persistence. She saw someone who kept showing up, even when it was hard.
Standing there on State Street, I watched her confidently step into her dream of psychology, I realized something profound: the resilience I thought I was teaching her had actually become a two-way street.
My daughter has always been methodical. While I stumbled through college without a clear plan, she's researched everything about Michigan—from the clubs she hopes to join, to the "big house" football game environment. Where I saw obstacles, she sees pathways.
During our campus tour, I watched her navigate conversations with current students, asking thoughtful questions and considering things I would never have thought of at her age. When the admissions counselor mentioned the competitive acceptance rate, I felt a pang of worry. She, however looked like she was ready to get her "M" card and go to her dorm.
This isn't blind optimism—it's a resilience different from my own. Mine was forged through trial and error, through getting knocked down and standing back up. Hers has been built deliberately, through preparation and perspective. There's a peculiar transformation that happens when your child stands on the threshold of adulthood. For years, I've seen myself as the guide, the one who's been there before, who knows the way. But as we walked through the Law Quad, with its ivy-covered walls and solemn dignity, I realized our roles were shifting.
My identity as a father isn't diminishing—it's evolving. I'm no longer just the teacher; I'm also the student. The lessons I've tried to impart about perseverance and determination are coming back to me, reflected through her experiences and ambitions. Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of parenting is this reciprocity—this give and take that grows more equal as the years pass. My daughter doesn't just need my resilience anymore; she offers her own version of it back to me.
When I expressed concern about the tuition costs, she brought up the scholarship opportunities she'd already researched. When I worried about her being so far from home, she reminded me of the time she went to "Summer Of A Lifetime" at Brown University her sophomore year in the Providence of Rhode Island—an experience that taught me how ready she really was.
This reciprocity doesn't diminish my role as her father; it enriches it. It transforms our relationship from a one-way street of guidance to a mutual exchange of strength and wisdom. As we finished our campus visit and sat in the shuttle back to the hotel—she excitedly giggled with her friends while I tried to calculate tuition costs in my head—I realized that our individual purposes had become beautifully intertwined.
My purpose as a father has always been to help her find her path. Her purpose, still unfolding, includes carrying forward the lessons of persistence that she's observed throughout her life. But together, we share something more profound: the purpose of growing together, of allowing our relationship to evolve as she does.
I don't know if Michigan will become her home for the next four years. The application process is still ahead, with all its uncertainty and anticipation. What I do know is that whatever campus she eventually walks onto as a freshman, she goes with a resilience that we've built together—part mine, part hers, and part something entirely new that we've created between us.
And as for me, I'll be learning to embrace this new chapter of fatherhood—one where I'm not just imparting wisdom but receiving it in return. One where my daughter doesn't just carry forward my resilience, but where I learn to incorporate hers into my own life. I'm realizing that's the thing about resilience, it's never finished. It's built day by day, challenge by challenge, and sometimes—beautifully—it's built together.
