I’ve spent the last few weeks trekking around various institutions of higher learning with my first-born in what my friend Jody half-jokingly calls “The College Death March.” It’s been quite the eye-opener, and not just from the sticker shock when you get to the “annual costs” part of the info sessions.

One thing I really can’t get over is the food. Gone are the days of “mystery meat” and “turkey tetrazzini” (or as we called it, “turkey tetrachloride”). Nope, it’s gotten to the point where I’m worried my son is going to choose where to spend the next four years solely based on the availability of sushi. Pretty much every college we went to offered not just vegetarian options, but vegan, gluten-free & kosher. And heaven forbid the little darlings should be without their lattes and macchiatos. Back in my day we had those big urns of coffee and teabags that you had to leave to steep for half an hour before they even turned the water brown. But since the annual tuition these days is what my parents and I paid for an entire four-year stint, I guess colleges have to provide a whole lotta lattes to provide a sense of value.

The technology is another thing that brings home just how long it’s been since my days in the ivory towers of academia. Forget the whole “looking books up in the card catalog” thing – I saw a quaint historical picture of that on a wall of one of the college libraries and wondered if they should frame me too. At one college you could look up online which washers and dryers were free and the machine would text you when your load was finished. When I was in college we went to this place called Suds, or “Wash and Slosh” as it was affectionately known, where you could do your laundry and drink beer at the same time.

Another college actually offered a laundry service. “OMG!” I exclaimed to another mom. “How spoiled can these kids be?” Then Jewish Mother brain kicks in: Well, at least that way I’d know he’d have clean socks and underwear. Sensible Mother Brain: The kid is gonna be 18. He’s going to COLLEGE. It’s about time he learns to do his own freaking laundry!

Lest we be concerned that all work and no play will make our Jack or Jill a dull kid (do parents actually worry about that when they’re paying so much in tuition?) kids have clubs we never dreamed of available. I’m fascinated by the proliferation of a cappella groups on college campuses. Every college tour emphasized the number of such groups as if it were a major selling point for the school. The Glee effect?

As big Harry Potter fans, after visiting a few schools we also started to ask the “Quidditch Team” question. Yes, dear Muggles, there’s now a rapidly growing International Quidditch Association complete with a Quidditch World Cup, which will held in New York this November 13-14. Call me a geek, but I am so there. Who knows, if they’d had a Quidditch Team when I was in high school, I might have ended up a jock. That’s if running up and down a field with a broomstick between your legs qualifies you for jockdom.

But the one that had me really bemused was “The Vagina Club”. As I tweeted along with a picture of it on the list of college clubs, “They definitely didn’t have this when I was in college.” I wondered what one did at such a club. Was it co-ed? The mind boggled. Further research revealed that the club had the noble purpose of educating about violence against women and “to work to reclaim the words that have been made taboo or insulting.”

After visiting nine schools, I still have so many questions. Do the tour guides have to take lessons in walking backwards? Am I ever going to get more feedback about our college visits from my son than a shoulder shrug and “I dunno”?

But most of all I wonder what happened to my little boy. And I ask myself if I’ve given my son the kind of upbringing so that he when