Summer Shouldn’t Become Another Performance Season

By Dot Kowal | May 26, 2026
Stack of books including Untangled by Lisa Damour, Four Thousand Weeks, Braiding Sweetgrass, and Hope for Cynics beside a pink clock and reading glasses on a sage green desk

As summer approaches, it can be tempting to think of these months as something to optimize. Take the class. Find the internship. Add the activity. Build the résumé. But that is not how I hope students think about summer. Summer matters, yes — but not because it needs to be jam-packed with meaningful activities. It…

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A different way to think about high school

By Dot Kowal | April 22, 2026
College counselor Dot Kowal holding Never Enough by Jennifer Breheny Wallace while speaking with a parent about high school readiness

In middle school, close involvement is usually exactly what is needed. Parents are still managing a lot behind the scenes—keeping track of assignments, monitoring organization, helping interpret social dynamics, stepping in quickly, and providing a fairly active scaffolding for daily life. That’s not overparenting. For many kids, it’s simply appropriate parenting for the stage. But…

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