With dorm essentials purchased, roommates chosen and schedules finalized, the Class of 2028, along with their supporters, have joined the Cal Poly community. The worries and anxieties of every parent are met with the reassurance of Traci Holmes Libby, administrator of the unofficial Cal Poly Mustang Parent Facebook page.
The Facebook page was started by Cal Poly Parent and Family Programs, but was later transferred to Holmes Libby when the program decided to pass it onto an organizer unaffiliated with Cal Poly. Holmes Libby has now been running the unofficial Cal Poly Mustang Parent Facebook page for eight years with five other administrators. It is the busiest time of the year for the page administrator, answering the flood of questions around living situations, move-in procedures and orientation.
As the parent of a Cal Poly alum herself, Holmes Libby knows the feeling of saying goodbye to a child going off to college.
“Your child is part of your family and as exciting and as nervous as it is for a student moving away, for a parent it kind of feels like one of your limbs is being ripped off,” Holmes Libby said. “You go through a lot — you set the dinner table and you expect to set places for four and now you’re only having three.”
Over the years, the Facebook page has grown from 1,000 to now 32,900 members. Holmes Libby provides advice and information about Cal Poly and answers questions that other parents post on the page. To Holmes Libby, the best thing about the page is its community.
“It’s certainly not [just] me, it’s me and 30,000 of my closest friends,” Holmes Libby said.
Holmes Libby helps concerned parents find the answers they need in an experienced Cal Poly parent or connects them with an office or program at Cal Poly.
“This is kind of a whole new world that people are coming into,” Holmes Libby said.
A common piece of advice Holmes Libby offers to supporters is to adjust expectations for their student’s academic success. She explained the 3.5 GPA requirement to make the Dean’s List is there for a reason, and it is hard to get.
“Reassure your student that you’re going to be in their corner no matter what their grades are,” Holmes Libby said.
Holmes Libby also iterates that the transition from high school to college for supporters is a tricky one, as is the relationship with the school. She said that as a parent, if anything ever went sideways, she could simply walk into her student’s high school’s office and fix the issue.
“It’s a big transition for a parent to realize [that] when your student goes to college, the relationship of the college is with your student, not with you as a parent,” Holmes Libby said.
Before going off to Cal Poly, Holmes Libby advised her daughter to seek out help and resources as soon as she felt herself struggling in classes or anything else. Holmes Libby stresses that it is often difficult to look for and accept help.
“[Asking for help is] hard if you’ve always been somebody who’s at the top of your class and you’ve been the one helping others,” Holmes Libby said. “To realize, ‘oh my gosh, I’m kind of drowning here and I need to reach out to tutoring or to office hours,’ it takes a lot — you’ve got to swallow your pride a little bit in order to do that and that’s a real sign of maturity.”
Once freshmen are moved into the dorms, the first few phone calls can be “a relief.” However, not every phone call is happy. She emphasized that on these calls, absorbing the worries your student is going through will be a weight off their shoulders.
“Just [understand] that sometimes your student will unload to you because you’re a safe place to do that, especially if your student doesn’t have their own social circle yet,” Libby Holmes said. “They don’t have their friends at school yet that they can relate that intimate information too. Be willing to roll with that.”
Traci’s Five Tips for incoming freshmen:
- The quarters will have ups and downs and that is normal
- Celebrate all academic successes, including barely passing a tough class
- Don’t procrastinate – the quarter system will teach you a lesson if you do
- Even in the first few months, you will grow and learn more than you can imagine
- College is the time to try out new things, “sample the buffet” and try everything!
