Dartmouth College, an eminent Ivy League institution in the United States, enrolls hundreds of Indian students every year and has a significant number of Indian faculty members and research scholars. Early September this year when the families of freshmen, the Dartmouth class of 2028, more than 1,200 young fresh faces, landed in Hanover to drop their children off for the beginning of their college journey, there was an atmosphere of excitement, pride, and no doubt a touch of nervousness.

This mixture of feelings, as I watched the ceremony live – streamed, was palpable and was captured and articulated by Lee Coffin, Dean of Admissions at Dartmouth College, when he addressed the parents of incoming freshmen, saying: “Be proud as you watch your child fly. Smile from afar. Give them space to experiment, and remember, we have Band-Aids when they trip.” The transition from high school to college is a milestone not only for students but also for parents. After years of guiding their children through school, a grueling application process, and campus visits to search for the best and most affordable college, parents are now faced the challenge of stepping back and trusting their child to navigate life more independently.

When Dean Coffin said, Let go and “watch your child fly,” he was reminding the parents to celebrate their children’s growth and readiness for the next adventure ~ in a zone of freedom and inevitable error. Dr. Karen Levin Coburn, coauthor of Letting Go: A Parent’s Guide to Understanding the College Years, advised that parents must move away from being supervisors of their child’s life to being empathetic observers because college is an immensely consequential time for students to learn self-reliance and........

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