Such periods often involve long stretches of intense play. The play harkens back to the games of very young childhood. The games take place in the educational environment, where one's prowess as a student will be tested so there is always an atmosphere of lurking tension in the air. Moreover, because one is interacting with one's fellow students, there is a sense that one's future social skills and mettle is being tested as well, and one must reveal facts about one's self and future goals in conversation. But rather than immediately thrusting someone into classes and a hectic work and extracurricular schedule, freshman, high school and college age, as well as young children are encouraged to go to parties, play at noncompetitive games, and reveal facts about themselves in ice-breaking games and forums, so that the immediate associations of a potentially tension-packed environment are not as stressful as they might be otherwise. Some might argue that the separation rite of passage begins not at orientation, but when parents help students unpack their suitcases, and hover nervously while the student half hopes that they will leave, and half hopes they will stay. Such mixed disdain and longing for comfort is characteristic of most separation and transitional rites. Incorporation into the community comes once one's mother and father leave, but also once the period of transition in the form of orientation has ended as well....

One must be separate enough from one's parents to be able to engage in basic life tasks, from finding the bathroom in first grade, to finding out how to do one's laundry in college. During the transition process, one might find one reaching out, via the phone, or through comforting past rituals, such as noshing on pizza late at night, to decorating one's dorm room with Christmas lights, to reenact childhood memories out of comfort. But as one is governed by the daily routines of going to class, participating in the social environment of college, and meeting new people, one finds one's self for better or worse, incorporated into a new social climate that is both different from what one is used to, and improves upon the self that was built up by past experiences, positive and negative. And finally, at graduation, one might regard the entire process of schooling itself as a kind of liminal period, as a rite of passage of preparation for the even more arduous intellectual demands of the workplace, the responsibilities of keeping one's self to a budget, and of finding a loved one whom one owes emotional responsibilities to, and requires one to make the final separation from one's parents as a needy child.