Sometimes I wonder what life would be like as an empty-nester. With Teresa in kindergarten, it will be a long time before I find out. But Caroline is a senior in high school and looking at colleges from Massachusetts to California. We don’t know yet where she will end up, but she’s been clear that so far, at least, her preference would be to go out of state. She and I took a step toward that recently, traveling to the Boston area to look at colleges there. It was a quick trip, timed to allow one of her companions to get last-minute input before an early-decision application deadline. Listening to Caroline and her friends discuss their choices brings home how important this decision is to them, and how much pressure they feel to get it right. They talked about the academic strengths and weaknesses of various colleges and universities, the atmosphere on campus and what they could discern about campus culture. Do they want a self-contained campus or an institution that’s part of an urban downtown? What are the merits of a women’s college? What kinds of scholarships and financial aid are available? Those questions are all valid and important, of course, and it’s a good thing for young men and women to make the best decision they can with the information available to them. This is the moment they have been working toward since they were in kindergarten — maybe even preschool. This is why they took all those standardized tests and AP classes, why they started worrying about grades back in elementary school. What they’re not counting on is that they can’t know the future. They don’t know who they’ll meet or what they’ll learn that will change them. They don’t know how their circumstances will change, for that matter. According to a 2013 study by the National Center for Education Statistics, about 80 percent of college students change their majors at least once. The Chronicle of Higher Education estimates that a third transfer between institutions before graduation. So my hope and prayer for Caroline and all of her classmates is that they do their best to make a good decision, and listen to their hearts and the small, still voice that they can hear if they try. I want them to understand that they can change their mind and do something else if things don’t work out the way they planned. What’s the phrase? People plan, God laughs? Making a change doesn’t mean they failed; it means they are adapting to changing conditions and additional data. What I want Caroline to know is that what she does — what she majors in, what kind of a job she finds — matters far less than who she is. Last month, I watched her walk away from me in downtown Boston, a city she’d never visited before, in the company of her friends, and I remembered when I used to follow her around the block on her tricycle. It makes me nostalgic, of course, but I’m really looking forward to what’s to come. Martin is assistant editor of the Catholic New World. Contact her at [email protected].