{"id":170334,"date":"2025-09-04T16:08:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T20:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=170334"},"modified":"2025-09-04T17:08:25","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T21:08:25","slug":"a-call-from-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2025\/09\/04\/a-call-from-home\/","title":{"rendered":"A call from home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"The
The set up in front of Hathorn Hall for families to send messages to their first year students. (Phyllis Graber Jensen \/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How do you convey the deepest, sweetest batch of parental emotion to your child when you\u2019ve just returned from a sweaty, last-minute odyssey all around Lewiston and Auburn to find a replacement for the carefully selected mattress pad you \u2014 or maybe they \u2014 forgot on the way out the door from New Jersey or California or Texas? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most times, you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day you drop your student off at college is intensely practical in focus, exhausting, and, for parents, often filled with the momentous feeling that you\u2019ve<\/em> graduated from something. Except there is no degree awaiting you, and the person you love so much would kind of like you to leave right now. It\u2019s not that they don\u2019t love you too, but they want to get on with the life they\u2019ve been waiting for and working toward for as long as they can remember. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by something Wake Forest University did last year,  our photo\/video team decided to give family members a place to convey some of those big feelings. Multimedia producer Theophil Syslo dug an old-school phone from deep in the Bates archives \u2014 garnet in hue \u2014  and set up microphones around it. With three cameras rolling in front of Hathorn, the very first building on the Bates campus, we started flagging families down to ask, were there things they hadn\u2019t said during move-in? Congratulations, entreaties to call, advice on the year ahead and how to live well in their new home? Say them now.<\/p>\n\n\n

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On the wisdom hotline: As families wrapped up the moving-in process, we asked them to send messages to their students. Click cc to enable captions. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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