The quiet realities of Family Weekend

Family Weekend can bring up a lot of emotions.

Suddenly, it’s time to get your life together so you don’t feel guilty about your dear parents paying 80K a year on Bs in chemistry. It’s time to go out and party for the first time all quarter to show your family that you are having fun in college like they did. It’s time to smile and laugh despite the emotional numbness and robot-like existence of Week 9 of winter quarter.

Parents are often seen as the ultimate source of truth. They provide an intimate lens through which you can see your friends clearly or psychoanalyze the quirky habits of roommates.

Last Family Weekend, I found myself strolling into crowded dining halls and seeing it all: wholesome family reunions, meals where friends met parents and battlefields of awkward conversation. I realized that introducing friends to family could be one of the most vulnerable and nerve-wracking experiences a Stanford student could face, surpassing the daily challenges of existing at an elite college.

One of my friends sat a friend group down, pulled out a projector and presented a very serious slideshow explaining how we couldn’t cuss or show too much skin at Sunday brunch with their parents. Another friend created an elaborate seating arrangement at dinner so the most “parent-friendly” friends were seated next to their dad.

Family Weekend often explains the strange assortment of characters and behavior on campus. It shows just how diverse the Stanford community really is, a motley crew of people with unique backgrounds and experiences. Whether we realize it or not, those pieces shape who students are today. Like the community itself, this weekend means something different to everyone.

For students finally emerging from their dim dorm rooms into the sunshine, Family Weekend can be one of the best weekends of winter quarter. It can be the one weekend where students feel at peace and supported by unconditional familial love instead of feeling the constant weight of a to-do list pressing on their shoulders. This weekend cures the aching homesickness and emptiness accumulated since the beginning of freshman year.

For other students, this is the weekend for giving back. They might take their family out to a nice dinner, pay the bill and show them the life they’ve built at Stanford because of their parents’ sacrifices. They give back, because, in many ways, their family is the reason why these students work so hard on all those other weekends.

For those with alumni parents, this weekend could mean spending hours listening to them drone on and on about their glory days at Stanford and how much the campus has changed. It can also bring the pressure of a parent’s unfulfilled dreams at Stanford transformed into high expectations for their child.

For those from the Bay Area, it’s just another chance to see Mom and Dad for the third time this month.

For some students, it feels like an introduction to the world of healthy parenting. It awakens a faint sense of longing and displacement they didn’t know they carried. Maybe the weekend meant a regression from three years of hard work at therapy, a reminder of the shouting matches and angst they thought they had buried from high school years.

And sometimes family dynamics switch up on students in a blink of an eye during their time at college. Once, after all the times my friend has blamed their family for their personality flaws, their family arrived, suddenly the sweetest people at the dinner table. My friend awkwardly noted afterward, “I swear they weren’t like this when I was growing up.”

For some, this weekend rekindles the grief for a lost parent. They’ve been through this rodeo before, every birthday, Mother or Father’s Day. For others, it’s a reminder of a parent battling cancer, a reminder to phone in the last few calls.

For those whose parents can’t make it, the weekend brings a quiet twinge of homesickness. I spoke with a friend who shared that their family couldn’t afford to visit during their four years on campus. When asked whether they were close with their family, they answered simply, “Yes.” When asked if they wished their family could have come, the response was the same: another soft, uncomplicated “yes.”

Cultural differences, social status and otherness are most pronounced during Family Weekend. Some students find themselves staring at the stylish family touring campus, wearing designer clothes and bags worth more than a quarter’s tuition.

Seeing all the loving parents can make some students believe that having complicated relationships with their family isn’t normal. After all, Stanford students are perfectionists. Our family is the one part of our image that is out of our control.

Privilege manifests in many forms and seeps out in disguises. After reflecting on just a sliver of the many possible Family Weekend experiences, I realize just how many aspects of my upbringing I take for granted.

Perhaps Family Weekend could provide a space for students whose relationships with their family are complicated, or for those who don’t have the chance to see them at all. A space during Family Weekend where students could gather, share a meal and feel a little less lonely. A place for those whose family couldn’t make it, for whatever reason.

For these students, this weekend is a moment to give ourselves some grace, to practice self-compassion and care for ourselves with the same gentleness a parent might show a child. A reminder not to be too hard on ourselves, and to learn to love ourselves unconditionally.

And maybe the weekend is also a gentle reminder. To call your family. To let go of pride or awkwardness for a moment and tell them you love them, that you appreciate them. They’re often the people who care about you most.

But if your relationship with your family is complicated, that’s okay too. You’re young, still figuring things out. Relationships are rarely simple, and it’s okay if yours doesn’t look like the picture-perfect family sitting at Coupa Cafe.

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