Parents of the HS Class of 2009/College Class of 2013

[NorthMinnesota]

Everyone is gone. Book club was a success...always nervous when you recommend a book. Lots of talking points in this one...religion, health care, history, family responsibility. Seemed like everyone liked the food! Moda... you would be a great asset! I love to read and entertain. Wish I could get a job with this!

[shawbridge]

Me and XXX went to the store or pick some up for for XXX and I. Like Moda, I have, I think, beaten these expressions out of the kids by always saying "XXX and I" and waiting for them to complete the sentence or saying "for ... ." ShawD says she hears my voice in her head when she starts either construction and gets it right.

There is a terrific group called She & Him -- Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward. They sing really well and she is extraordinarily beautiful. He may be too for all I know but I don't focus on him.

I was in Boulder a few years ago when the fires were approaching the city. Some neighborhoods were evacuated, though not the one in which I was staying.

DTE, congrats on UVA. Tough choice.

[college_query]

Congrats on UVa, downtoearth. It's my alma mater, & we visited w/S last June. He applied but had to withdraw his app after the ED admit.

I think it's fabulous. H, not an alum, finds it a bit pretentious when he visits. D's bf's younger sister is there.

It is absolutely beautiful in the spring. Dogwoods and azaleas.

One concern might be transportation - how easy will it be to go back an forth to school?

NorthMinnesota, don't know if this could be a career, but a good friend's spouse is a "spirits" distributor. Some of his clients are restaurants. He does themed dinners at restaurants that center around various beverages. The menus are fabulous and they are well attended.
Maybe you could do themed dinners or lunches around a book or literary theme?

[shawbridge]

DTE, congrats on UVA. Tough choice but an interesting one. This is a quote from another site, that shall remain nameless, based upon conversations with UVA kids (I think). I'd heard it was somewhat like Vanderbilt. Girls in dresses and pearls. Don't know if that is true or not. Likely with a big school there are lots of kinds of kids but there is truth to the stereotypes as well.

"UVA students have a very refined look. Most really care about appearances, so you will certainly see a lot of dressing up for class, as well as a lot of students running around campus and working out at the gym. Some find this to be a cute and distinctive feature of UVA, while others find it obnoxious and superficial. Most students agree that the girls are way hotter than the guys. Personality-wise, however, there is some definite snobbiness that’s found more within the female population, which detracts from better looks. The guys are mainly fratty—many complete with shaggy hair, LaCoste polos, and beer guts. There are many stereotypes at UVA, but there is truly every type of person here. Although people sometimes feel overwhelmed by the "fratmosphere," it is key to remember that only a third of the campus is actually Greek.

It is sometimes remarkable how many similar-looking people one can find at UVA, but there is a fuller mix of people, passions, and styles that surface looks may betray. In general, people are very friendly and outgoing, with a wonderful laid-back sense of humor. The more you become involved in different activities and organizations, the more you’ll become exposed to different sorts of people—not just the ones who define UVA’s style from afar. There is definitely a great mixture of brains and beauty at UVA, and if you look hard enough, you will find both."

Seems like an interesting mix with a relatively heavy weighting toward traditional Southern-style frats/sororities. Would this suit your daughter?

c-q, did the other site capture UVA correctly?

[college_query]

shawbridge, it's spot-on for 29 years ago! Especially about the hot girls, since obviously I was one of them!

When we visited last summer, it seemed remarkably similar to my experience. Maybe because tradition is such an important part of the culture?

NorthMinnesota, came up with another career opportunity for you. My friend, the W of the spirits distributor, offered sessions at a local private school's summer day camp. She offered a camp based on the Harry Potter books and cooking. Some of it was edible, some of it was more science-based (Potions). She may have done other book-themed cooking camp weeks.

If kids aren't your thing, then maybe you could do something for adults through your parks and rec, library or community center?

For a fundraiser for ballet, we would do ballet-themed teas around the ballet we were presenting. Lots of moms or grandmothers would bring their little girls. They would get all dressed up and make an event out of it.

[kmcmom13]

^Yes, NM, you'd make an excellent event coordinator! I had my hand at that for a few years before I went back to school. You sound like a natural!

So, now I realize why I was so determined to pick up fresh pineapple last night...NM is casting her culinary spells on my subconscious!

Last night was rather humorous here. Mch's bday gift, an electronic giro telescope, arrived and he would not wait until today to open it. So Copernicus incarnate assemble the whopping thing and calibrated it and took it out to the back yard. You have to align it by zeroing in on three stars to activate the database of 40,000 celestial objects. Every time he almost had one, a cloud would go scuttling by and obscure it. I told him that was the universe's way of saying "wait for your birthday."
He did however, get a very nice, up close view of the moon. The detail was outstanding. It was fun to see him as excited as a little (geeky) kid

He seems quite serious about building a balcony/observatory platform from the second story of the poolhouse/barn. Works for me, so long as it's large enough to also be a "breakfast" balcony for guests. But we have a lot of other things that will have to come first around here, like some barn painting and swamp rehab!

[kmcmom13]

Ps, Missy, that whole fewer/less thing drives me absolutely crazy. It is unbelievable where you'll hear it from too -- commercials, ads, politicians, executives. Mind-blowing.

On the "good" front, with mcson, I always said "yes, but did you do WELL?" I now hear him say it to other people, which is kind of funny, particularly when they don't understand why he's saying it.

I was exposed at university to a lot of "philosophy of language" material because I studied semiotics. I fell into the "language is alive" camp, and understand that so long as we have symbolic agreement on meaning, language is doing it's job. However, it seems that slope is so slippery and fragmented now that there is a widening chasm between rules of use and informal use. If that gap continues to widen at this rate, I wonder if the rules of use will even survive. If they don't, meaning-agreement and capacity to reason will suffer the impact (but no, it will not IMPACT it

I guess what I'm saying is effective speech is like everything else -- you have to use it or lose it! I'm not sure those who develop language curriculae get this!

[FallGirl]

Congrats on UVA, dte! That's a great school. I was down there a few weeks ago with S (he had a school competition there) and I was with another mom who is a good friend of mine. She was there at the same time as you, c_q.

D's housing deposit is down. I know that staying in the city for the summer is the best thing for her, I'll miss her though. Sabaray, I will PM you later (don't have time now) and let you know where I am in NoVA. I would LOVE to have a meet up here with as many of you as possible.

NM- I want to join your book club.

[missypie]

I guess there will a point where the people doing the hiring are of the "ignore the grammatical rules" generation. But at present, our kinds need to learn how to "talk right", at least when they need to make a good impression on the older generation.

NM, I wish I liked to entertain and I wish someone would ask me to join a book club. The only time I've ever been asked is when the kids were tiny and I had little time to read. Maybe I should start one.

A friend who is just starting the college visit process with her current junior made a good point. There are schools and parts of the country where the student body is mostly "like them" and places where the students are different. There is no right or wrong, but a student who is choosing a school where the student body is different (i.e. more or less diverse, more or less preppy, etc.) needs to be making a conscious choice for different. Older D did that and enjoys being the token Texan. But if she had wanted to meet other southern drill team girls to be her sorority sisters forever, her school choice would have been all wrong for her.

[shawbridge]

missypie, well said. That is what I was raising with respect to UVA. I had a friend/roommate in grad school who was a UofT sorority girl. She could turn her accent on and off and was always the token Texan (there was another, from TCU or Texas Tech or someplace). She was/is great. I introduced her to her husband, although they parted ways after many years. I think I recounted my culture shock when I went to her wedding. I was single and she assigned (I think) a sorority sister to make sure I had a good time for that weekend. Said sister had social skills my poor academic Northeastern brain didn't know existed.

Back to health care/health insurance. The mandate is for insurance, but interestingly, one of the key constitutional arguments may come down to whether the market in question is health insurance or health care. The Republican argument is that the Commerce Clause allows the Congress to regulate commerce but not to compel it and to force people to enter a market they don't want to be in. So, if the market in question is health insurance, they may win. This has been rejected (by two highly regarded conservative judges appointed by Republicans) who say that the market is health care and virtually everyone is in that market so all Congress is doing is regulating the way people enter into that market.

[h00ray]

DTE - congratulations to your daughter! I'm a current third-year at the University, and I must say (even as someone deeply involved in the Greek system) that there is so, so much more to U.Va. than "fratmosphere" or a bunch of Good Ol' Boys looking for their trophy wives. I've noticed that, in my time here, students are becoming more and more involved in social causes and bettering the University and greater communities. While approximately 30% of undergraduates belong to a sorority or fraternity, I've found that sites like the one mentioned elsewhere in this thread overemphasize Greek life because the students writing those articles have put the blinders on to so many of the other amazing things happening around them.

The University has service organizations (Relay for Life, Habitat for Humanity, APO, Pancakes for Parkinson's - one of UVA's most popular events), professional organizations (IEEE, AIChE, Themis, etc.), literary and debating organizations (the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society - includes such members as Woodrow Wilson and Edgar Allan Poe and has been around since 1825, the Washington Literary Society and Debating Union, an APDA team), more cultural organizations than you could shake a stick at, and, even better, a student body with passion and drive that loves to get involved.

I am very involved with my sorority and with the ISC, and I will say that if you meet someone who seems shallow or one-dimensional - look harder. Everyone at UVA is driven, passionate, and brilliant, and many people find that they occupy multiple niches. Best of luck to your daughter, and I would encourage her to visit and talk to some current students if the school is still in the running.

[TheAnalyst]

hOOray, interesting comment on the Greek scene not being important, but I have to wonder if you can truly have a non-Greek perspective since you are a member of a sorority and therefore are inside the system. I will weigh-in on my impressions of UVA since that is where S1 graduated. S made the decision to attend based on the school’s reputation and he would make the same decision again. It provided him with a good education, was a good cost-benefit for us in-state, and was conveniently located less than an hour from home. However, I personally would not recommend UVA to a student who doesn’t see themselves in a fraternity or sorority. The comment about only one-third of the campus being Greek is misleading, in my opinion, in terms of their influence on the campus culture. Rush is not allowed until spring freshman year, so that also deflates the number.

S1 likes to party hard but takes academics seriously and was competitive about his grades. He likes to wear nice clothes, comes from an upper middle class family, is good-looking, was popular in high school, is a skilled athlete, and loves big name college sports, all of which are common attributes for many UVA students. He is also frugal and likes to mix with edgy urban types, which were perhaps less common, but accepted. He was able to float amongst multiple groups in his social life on an acquaintance level, but the deep friendships at least for people with his personality and interests seemed to always be formed inside the fraternity/sorority structure rather than outside of it. This highly social kid with dozens of close friends from high school and numerous close friends made post-college graduation did not make a single new friend in four years of college. I suspect his lack of fraternity affiliation also prevented him from making the club soccer team. While other sports activities served as a weak substitute, the inability to participate in his true passion was like cutting off one of his limbs for four years. He had enough skill to play on a state level team in high school and plays now on a competitive team in Brazil, but somehow wasn’t good enough to make the club team at UVA? Something is wrong with that picture, in my opinion.

One of my fears when he chose UVA was that he would join a fraternity and become a person I didn’t like any more. I admit to having had a negative stereotype of participants in the Greek system. I failed to appreciate, however, the socially alienating impact on his college experience of not joining. In my view, a student at UVA would do well to remember the adage, “When in Rome, … “ S1 has long since moved on and credits UVA with much of his current success. It’s a great school, but it was like pushing a boulder uphill for him to try to navigate the social scene from outside of the Greek system.

[NorthMinnesota]

Thanks for the job suggestions! I do have lots of friends who ask me to help with party planning or ask me to host events. I am currently toying with starting a chapter of Potluck For A Cause. You invite friends/family to come over for a potluck and have a speaker or short video concerning a specific issue/charity you would like to support. Guests would donate the amount they would have spent for a night out having dinner and drinks with friends. Seems to combine my love to entertain and philanthropy. What do you think? Would you support something like this?

[kmcmom13]

Totally off topic, but this Herman Trend Report just showed up in my mailbox, and I remember a couple of of you discussing the prospects and educational approaches of nursing, so I'm sharing it because I can't remember who to pm it to

Herman Trend Alert: Enrollment Surge Responds to Need for More Educated Nurses March 28, 2012

As more nurses answered the call to advance their education, enrollment in nursing programs increased last year. According to new data recently released by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), enrollment in undergraduate nursing programs increased by 5.1 percent in 2011. At the same time, enrollment in PhD nursing programs increased by 7.9 percent over the previous year.

Though it is good news that nursing schools have been able to expand their student capacity, the latest data show that 75,587 qualified applicants to professional nursing programs were still turned away last year. The top reasons reported by nursing schools for not accepting all qualified students into entry-level programs, include insufficient clinical teaching sites (65.2 percent), a lack of faculty (62.5 percent), limited classroom space (46.1 percent), insufficient preceptors* (29.4 percent), and budget cuts (24.8 percent).

After the release of the Institute of Medicine's (IOM), titled the "Future of Nursing", conversations about raising the educational level of the nursing workforce increased. Last year's growth in enrollment across all nursing programs clearly reflects a strong interest among students in advancing their education.

IOM's report called for at least 80 percent of the nursing workforce to hold a baccalaureate degree by 2020 and a doubling of the number of nurses with doctorates. AACN believes that implementing the IOM recommendations will drive the nursing profession forward; moreover, high levels of education will better position nurses to become full partners in reforming healthcare delivery systems.

On the global scene, according to the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), between 2000 and 2009, Chile, Brazil, and China led the world in increases in the numbers of enrolled nurses with surges of 12.1, 10.7, and 8.8 percent, respectively.

In February 2012, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) identified Registered Nursing as one of the leading occupations for job growth through 2020. Within the next eight years, BLS projects the need for 1.2 million additional nurses to fill new positions and replace those who are retiring. The aging Baby Boomers will add to the need for nurses at all levels, including those that serve patients in place of physicians.

* Preceptors are special nurse coach-mentors.

[woody]

I think the IOM/Robert Wood Johnson report should be mandatory reading for all professional nurses.
And as a nursing instructor, I agree that finding adequate clinical sites for my students is a HUGE challenge.