Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm reading an interesting book, Meg Wolitzer's "The Female Persuasion".  I can identify with the young heroine and her aspirations, in the same way I did seeing "Lady Bird".  I'm many decades removed from teenagehood, but don't we all keep coming back to that time, when so much was possible, and so much was blocked from our consciousness?  I wanted to go East to college, but I dared not ask.  My working class father, who had risen in his company, but without college at all, felt the California college system was a dream come true.  Seventy dollars a semester for tuition.  He wanted me to take advantage of where we lived, and I dreamed of a woman's college.  I didn't know how to speak about what I wanted, and I didn't really know why I wanted it.  Now I see that I needed a small school with some individualized attention, after a high school of five thousand lost teenagers.  I never went to a small school.  Not for college or graduate school.  Luckily, my kids had the choices I did not have, and they all chose smaller and more intimate.  I certainly don't blame my parents, as they knew nothing about colleges.  It's just a path not taken.  And the novel is reminding me of how I thought and felt then, so many long years ago.