Go away to get better is an odd theory.

My youngest child dropped out of college about eight weeks ago. It was probably a good idea. The picture is them just a few years back as we prepped for a road trip together

After a year and a half of trying different kinds of classes, they were struggling to find anything that spoke to them. They were also going through the young adulthood ordeal of figuring out who they really were. They alternated A’s and B’s with drops for non-attendance, and I watched them try to evade my watchful, supportive I would say, eye. After leaving school, they got a job as a crisis advocate at a domestic violence shelter, moved into an apartment with a roommate, the kind of apartment you get when you drop out at 20 years old. They seem happy. Maybe even in the right place for now.

I could write an entire article about my frustration with the lack of outreach from their college during this up-and-down journey, but that isn’t the point today. What I keep coming back to instead is how much circumstances matter, and how deeply socioeconomics shapes the advice we give.

My child’s educational journey isn’t that different from my own. I’ve written before about my 12-year odyssey to a bachelor’s degree, so I won’t rehash it here. Suffice it to say, I needed time to find myself. That belief, maybe it’s just not the right time for school, is something I completely internalized, and it’s part of why I encouraged my own child to stop spinning their wheels and go experience the world of work.

Eventually, after multiple attempts, a few stays in my mother’s basement bedroom, and a fair amount of luck, I did find my footing. It’s a pretty good story. But stories like mine often lead to advice that ignores the role of poverty. We take a narrative shaped by safety nets and apply it to people who don’t have one.

Which brings me to my friend Sarah. That's us back when she was a student in my department.

When Sarah was working her way through college, she faced barrier after barrier. She had experienced homelessness before enrolling and returned to homelessness multiple times while pursuing her degree. Late in her six-year effort to earn a two-year credential, she was struggling to find stable housing, her mother had passed away, and life felt overwhelming.

Like many students in crisis, she went to meet with her advisor. The advisor, who was well-intentioned and compassionate, suggested she take a semester away to “do some healing.” I’m sure it felt reasonable in the moment. The advice was likely grounded in stories like mine: take time, resolve your trauma, grow up a bit, then come back stronger. It may even have reflected the advisor’s own nonlinear path through higher education.

But here’s the problem: Sarah didn’t have anywhere to go and heal.

She didn’t have a basement bedroom to land in, or family members who had navigated college and could help her get back on track. She was an adopted child raised in poverty and largely estranged from her family after her mother’s death. The college was the healthiest, most stable place in her life. She was struggling, yes, but sending her off to some imaginary place of healing wasn’t a solution. That semester away coincided with some of the darkest moments of her life.

This isn’t an indictment of the advisor or the college. It’s a reminder that circumstances matter. Being sent off to “find yourself” can be a reasonable option for students with resources, safety nets, and margin for error. I hope that’s true for my own child as they find their way.

But for the Sarahs of the world, being told to step away is the equivalent of being sent from home into the wilderness. And while we love stories about people who survive the wilderness, there are many more who never return. We know this empirically: fewer than one in four people who stop out of college ever come back. That’s the reality. So, telling someone to wait until the “right time” is a decision we should make very carefully.

I spent most of my career in adult education, serving students experiencing precarity who saw education as a lifeline. Early on, I held firm standards around attendance, decorum, and readiness; standards I believed were necessary for success. When students didn’t meet them (standards that, in hindsight, were insufficiently scaffolded and not nearly examined enough for bias), I would sometimes say, “Maybe it’s not the right time for school.”

They often listened. After all, I was someone in authority who appeared to care about them. I truly did. But for many of them, it was terrible advice.

I was projecting my own story onto someone else’s life. As I grew bolder and more direct in serving people in poverty, I began reminding my staff that there is no Ready-Bake Oven where people disappear and come back magically ready. Helping people progress by separating from them is an oxymoron. And especially for those living in poverty.

When we accept that circumstances matter, we are forced to take them seriously, not just empathize through our own lens. I hope my child’s decision to leave college leads them toward the life they want. And if it doesn’t, at least not right away, they have a tremendous safety net beneath them.

The students and people I care about professionally do not have that same margin for error. If being poverty-informed means designing for them first, then we need to retire “come back when you’re ready” narratives. Too often, what we’re really saying is: come back never.