“I have accepted the fact that my parents are clueless”. “I am resigned to the fact that my child’s college search will end in disaster”.

If you flip to the very back of the Fiske Guide to Colleges book, you will find these two pledges, one for the confused and moody teenager, and the other for the helpless parent. The pledges outline both parties’ mindsets as teenagers try to navigate the horrors of high school and college applications, and parents attempt to make their child’s burden just a little bit lighter. As ridiculous as these pledges both sound, they actually contain what students and parents alike must realize.

We students like to believe that we are independent, but who are we kidding. We complain when our parents try to get too involved, yet freak out when we realize that we’re all alone. We whine that others don’t understand the stress we’re under, and we deal with it all by pushing them away, only to put ourselves under more pressure. Our minds are stuck in a strange limbo between wanting to leave our hometown and childhood for good, and desperately clinging on to the time that’s escaping us. As teenagers we may think we know best, and may think that our parents are a nuisance at times, but we so often take for granted how amazing our parents truly are.

For those of us who are seniors and will soon be taking off to face reality, we must showcase our gratitude for all our families have done to love and support us these past 18 years. Because despite how awful we’ve acted towards them, how many fights we’ve picked with them, and how much we sometimes claim to hate them, they will be the ones who we call for help when we fail our first college midterm, or catch the flu in the middle of the night. They will be the ones who console us as long as we need them, and the ones who track down the 24 hour pharmacy that delivers.

For those still working your way through high school, appreciate, at least every once in awhile, the hard work your families do to make your lives better. No matter how annoying and involved parents can get, keep in mind they have you in their best interest. In the end, they won’t really care what your GPA was, or how many extracurricular you had, or even what your SAT/ACT score was. When it comes down to it, all they will care about is your happiness, and whether or not they did right by you as parents. They feel just as helpless as you do when it comes to how to best reach success and happiness, so cut them some slack when they overcompensate by trying to do anything and everything to help you get there.