Two weeks ago, I got a set of emails from my parents. The basic theme was "I know you are busy but you really need to call home. We haven't heard from you since you drove back from break."

My dad also threw an extra line in his email "You can just call us from work if you have to. You can talk on the phone and still get work done on your computer."

Now you would think that those two emails would trigger me to immediately pick up the phone and call my parents. But of course that wasn't the case. Between interviewing student government tickets and digging through the everyday hassles at The Observer, I had every intention of calling home but for some reason it just never happened.

Every night I would come into the office at 7 p.m., planning on calling around 8 and end up looking up from editing pages to realize it was midnight and my parents were in bed already.

So finally three days after I got the "Are you dead emails?" I finally managed to call home. It wasn't until I called home that I realized how much had happened to me in the month since I'd driven back to South Bend.

My parents had to read about my re-election as editor in chief in the newspaper. They had no idea if I was moving off campus and who I was going to live with next year. I had made all sorts of decisions both big and small in the first month back to school.

It wasn't that my parents wanted to approve or disapprove of my decisions. I think they have basically recognized that I am going to make most of the important choices in my life for better or worse on my own. They just wanted to know what was going on.

As I talked to them and told them all I had done, I suddenly realized that it was incredibly selfish of me not to call home for an entire month. As I was asserting my independence and making my own decisions, I was forgetting about the people who taught me how to make good decisions.

My parents didn't want to approve my decisions or tell me what to do. They just wanted to share the joy of my choices with me. These were the people who taught me how to make decisions.

When I was younger they taught me about accepting responsibility for my actions and thinking things through. Every time I heard "You have to take responsibility for your actions" from my mom after I really screwed up, I learned how to make wiser decisions.

So this weekend, my parents come into town for Junior Parents Weekend. It's a chance for my parents to see the results of all the choices I have made in my 2.5 years at college.

And that's what I think JPW is all about. Sharing the choices and decisions that will affect your life with the people who gave you the confidence and wisdom to make those decisions.

• Choices, Good and Bad