Joie’s Newsletter #5
On Becoming
This weekend, my daughter became a bat mitzvah.
I found myself thinking about that phrase a lot. Not the party. Not the logistics. Not the dress or the seating chart or the fact that I did, in fact, cry in public. I mean the becoming.
A bat mitzvah is a rite of passage. It marked a shift that was both symbolic and real. Childhood did not end, exactly, but something changed. Responsibility arrived quietly. Belonging deepened. A young person was invited to see herself as part of a long story, not just the center of her own.
Rites of passage matter because they give shape to change. They tell us that transformation is not random or lonely. It is witnessed. It is named. It is held by community.
In modern life, we are oddly short on these moments. We stretch adolescence. We blur transitions. We rush milestones while pretending they are not that serious. And yet we feel the absence. We feel unmoored.
Watching my daughter prepare for this moment reminded me how powerful it is when a young person is allowed to move deliberately from one stage into another, with guidance and meaning attached.
Which brought me, perhaps unexpectedly, to college admissions.
It is easy to frame the college process almost exclusively as a transaction. A strategy. A competition. A prize to be won. It is easy to get lost in rankings and outcomes and forget what is actually happening underneath.
Applying to college is a rite of passage.
It is one of the first times we ask a young person to reflect seriously on who they are, what they care about, and how they want to step into the world. We ask them to articulate values, tell coherent stories about themselves, tolerate uncertainty, and advocate for their own future.
That is not small. That is formative.
When families are deeply invested in this process, it is not because they are obsessed with prestige. It is because, often unconsciously, they understand that this moment represents a crossing. From being known primarily as someone’s child to being known as oneself. From structure to self-direction. From accumulation to intention.
When the process goes wrong, it is usually because we forget this. We collapse the rite of passage into a scoreboard. We rush the journey in favor of the destination.
But when it goes right, something else happens. A student emerges more grounded. More self-aware. More capable of holding both ambition and humility. The outcome matters, of course. Rites of passage always have thresholds. But the journey is what does the work.
Because when we treat transitions with care, we do not just prepare our children for what comes next. We help them understand who they are becoming.
And that understanding lasts much longer than the celebration of an acceptance letter.
More soon,
Joie
Education expert, founder, author of “B+ Grades, A+ College Application.”
