When interviewing Mom Miller, what she had to say about college is a lot like how we all feel about it now, college goes by fast. We don’t realize how much we change throughout these four years and how much we really do grow as individuals. She told me all about her past. How she got to Iowa State and how she started as a house mom. What I found the most rewarding was to hear not necessarily what brought her to Ames, but what made her stay.
She talked about how college students are full of life and energy. How every year there are new girls coming into the house who are generally all happy people. They are the girls who are “going places.” Mom Miller sees us girls as nothing like some stereotypes might make sorority girls out to be. She looks at us all as her “Kappa Kids.” What made her stay a house mom for as long as she has (30 years) is the joy found within the ‘best four years of your life.’
She loves to see the lifelong friendships that form and the bridesmaids that are found within the walls of the house. She loves the support girls give one another from the start of their freshman year to the big interview they land to their graduation day. She loves seeing girls succeed and network to find the job of their dreams or fall in love with the boy that flipped their world upside down.
All house moms want is for their “kids” to grow up to be the women they know they can be. During our conversation, Mom Miller said that in a way house moms are “displaced persons” that one thing in life lead to another to bring them to the house they live in now.
But in reality we’re all displaced persons. We all go through things that make us who we are and cause us to end up in the place we are in and be with the people we are with. What makes a house so functional is that it is full of displaced persons with different personalities and different backgrounds all learning from one another.
So what makes college life everything it’s made up to be is not only the papers we write and the exams we take and the 400 person lecture halls we learn in, but it’s the support we find from friends that help us celebrate our wins and losses along the way.
