Summer vacation is still young, but reports from Northwestern University students who have returned home indicate that NU mothers are already taking advantage of the little opportunities to hurl condescension at their children.

“I tried to keep up the pressure during the school year, but it’s so much harder when Grace isn’t in the house,” said mother Sue Ann Collins of Kenosha, WI. “Now that she’s home for the summer, it’s a lot more convenient to remind her that at her age her brother was interning at Goldman Sachs and not Good Housekeeping.”

“Sneaking in passive-aggressive comments about dropping premed several times a day has become a bit a personal challenge for me,” said Marilyn Parnham of Albany, N.Y. “Mealtimes are a blessing. Totally captive audience—he just has to sit there and soak up the disappointment like a sad, inadequate sponge.”

Sarah Wu, MEAS ’19, said that she had hoped that her mother might be pleased with her third consecutive quarter on the Dean’s List, but reported that this was not the case. “That protected me for about a day,” Wu said. “Now she’s after me about my boyfriend. He’s a cellist, and I love dating someone who’s passionate about his art, but my mom keeps telling me that all musicians are secretly gay. Every time I see her. She even spelled it out in frosting on my birthday cake.”

Apart from increased opportunities for face-to-face maternal judgment, sudden discoveries of school-year secrets also contribute to July’s status as the golden days of parental condescension.

“So, my poetry major isn’t technically the same thing as econ,” said Frank Christofferson, WCAS ’19. “The line seemed much blurrier when I was at school ‘forgetting’ to call her. But I think telling me to ‘get a real major’ is uncalled for.”

“I wasn’t lying about the lip ring, per se,” Zoe Bennet, WCAS ’18, said. “It just didn’t really occur to me to tell my mother until she saw it herself. Now she sighs every time I enter the room.” Bennet’s suggestion to her mother that she should get a matching lip ring were reportedly poorly received.

Northwestern Students across the country have been staring longingly at the September 20th square on their mother’s fridge calendar.