Lately, I have been reading about how parents talked about their overwhelmed sons or daughter in dealing with university life.
Related to this, I also read a woman said that she preferred any academics pressure compared to any other pressure in life.
It reminded me of few things. A book, and few posts. Like this one for example.
Moving from childhood period, which is generally considered as 0-18 to young adulthood, once someone gets into college, is just like moving from swimming in the pool to swimming in the middle of the ocean.
Swimming in the pool has clear structure and scaffolding . Clear length and depth. You can see where it starts and where it ends. Usually, some pool guards also stand by around the pool to keep monitoring just in case someone needs some help. It’s exactly like school years in the childhood. Academic pressure has clear structure and expectations.
When one is entering university life, the pool is no longer there. There’s some advisors to help you navigate campus life, but mostly and normally, you are the main decider of many things you need to deal with in daily life.
It’s exactly like swimming in the ocean. No clear edge, you never know what you will meet along the way, rain and storm might be coming without warning. It needs you not only to do a constant swimming but also a lot of thinking about where to go.
There are three sports that are considered sunnah to learn to in Islam. Swimming is one of them other beside archery and horse riding. It feels even more makes sense now.
People say swimming is not just a sport, it’s a basic survival life skill. It actually has both literal and unliteral meaning.
Adulthood needs one at least basic swimming skill to survive. The more swimming skills you master, the better. That is hard with no shortcut, if no training is ever provided during childhood. No wonder those kids are overwhelmed.
As my daughter is entering teenager years and a new level of schooling, I find it’s really getting harder on my part. Previous years where I thought I had taught her enough, recently, many times, I feel so lacking.
Despite putting her in a swimming class consistently since the age of 2 up until now where she has slowly mastered the four styles in swimming.
With her learning difficulties on the background, sometimes, it makes things slightly even harder.
She has many qualities that are advantageous to the training, like strong endurance and high level of seriousness in learning. But, she still needs very much guidance in deciding the direction.
I once told her dad that sometimes I feel like hurrying the process and letting go the scaffolding too fast. Putting the balance between letting go and keeping the pace is really tricky. I want her to launch, but on the right way and direction.
As she grows older, I need to some mindset shifting too. She needs bigger pool to learn to swim better and stronger.
I also define three goals that I want to achieve for her, nothing about medals in metal, entering top schools, or anything similar to that.
At the end of her swimming training in the pool, I hope we can see someone with :
- A strong and straight Tauhid
- The right moral compass to navigate the world
- A functional adult for herself and people around them.
Fulfilled, all aspects healthy and happpy are the byproduct I wish her to have in achieving all those goals.
I have nothing to add other than May Allah make this easier.
Amin.
Other than the post above, I wrote two different posts with the similar theme as far as I remembered. This one and many years ago about real life ready. Also a book that suits the theme.
