“How are your grades?” My father asked me, nearly 43 years ago, when I was home from college for the Thanksgiving holiday. In many ways, Thanksgiving is the first in-person report that many parents get from their college-student offspring. Thanksgiving is a check-in with headquarters, the first quarterly report to nervous (and close to broke) investors.

The truth was, my grades were not so great. My first semester at college was, um, distracting. The freedom to stay out all night, skip classes, bluff my way through seminars — it was all too intoxicating. After I found myself napping through my art history lecture class at 11:30 a.m., I decided that the smart thing was to just skip the class altogether and sleep in. A decision that led, unsurprisingly, to a failed midterm exam and a wo

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