<p>S1 just forwarded me some graduation info and they referred to the “specious” diploma he would be receiving at the ceremony and where to go to get the real thing. I guess it’s a better word than “fake” but it still seemed kind of harsh. The dictionary has the meaning as having deceptive attraction and a false look of genuineness.</p>
<p>Both my kids are slobs - so not looking forward to the mess that comes with them being home :)</p>
<p>D got a triple for her and her two friends for next year. Not the one they wanted but still was able to get into a triple which was their first choice. She received all the classes she wanted for the fall and got into the short term class she wanted for May. So all is well in her little world. Glad to see that something is working.</p>
<p>S found out that a friend of his (who happens to be a girl but not his girlfriend) is also going to Cornell for grad school in the fall - they are friends from middle/high school and they decided to go in together on an apartment. Trying for a furnished on campus one - waiting to see if they get it. Not sure when the decision is made. Would make life easier.</p>
<p>I’ll be driving to Maine in a few weeks to pick up D and one of her friends to come back here for the week and then drive them back after the week. Lots of driving but my goal is to bring some of her stuff back that she won’t need for the month that she is back for so that hopefully moving her out won’t be too bad. </p>
<p>Sooooo much to do — so little time.</p>
<p>I like the etymology of specious better. </p>
<p>Middle English, visually pleasing, from Latin *speciosus *beautiful, plausible, from species</p>
<p>Doesn’t sound quite as sinister!</p>
<p>D will finish up finals on a Thursday, I think; must be out of the dorm by Saturday. She is also leaving on Saturday to head to the beach for a week. Can’t move into her apartment until late June. Will be a fun week/month. Ha, ha.</p>
<p>“hopefully moving her out won’t be too bad.”
We drove D back to her school yesterday so we could pick up some winter things that she won’t be using in the next few weeks, ski equipment mostly! I was a little shocked to see her room…all the stuff I’ve sent her in those care packages takes up a lot of room.</p>
<p>Can you believe we’re talking about the end of their first year??</p>
<p>Rochestermom - Is the apartment in Collegetown? It’s the best location for the law school.
D showed us her sorority where she’ll be living next year. It’s a significant walk to her classes but I just oohed and aaaahhed about how beautiful the building was. I’m learning not to comment on EVERY negative I see and letting them figure it all out. She’s still bargaining for the car she shares with her bro to go to school with her but H is adamant. Too much $$$.</p>
<p>Cars and summer. Blech. We’ve avoided getting a third car, but I’m really not looking forward to week #2 of summer break when the kiddo suddenly gets that put upon look when the time I need MY car to go to something interferes with her plans. God forbid she’d need to use (shudder) public transportation. Some day I will understand how all of these kids who are so “green” and quick to explain why we should shut down all our coal plants and just add more wind farms are so reluctant to walk two blocks and take the bus.</p>
<p>Hi all. Just checkin in. Happy news on McSon front – on Friday the LD department granted him full compensation, including extra time on tests and exams. He is very relieved with exams coming up, and is feeling good overall. There also appears to be individual staff coaching available for specific ADD time management-exec functioning issues through the office at no charge. However, it was made abundantly clear that McSon has to initiate and follow through on all forms of contact or interaction with the office, as their policy is to only respond at the student’s request. (The reasoning includes privacy provisions as adults, and ethical considerations re: ld students taking full responsibility for their needs, apparently.)
They were up front with me: re: my requests being essentially moot, and I am glad McSon got to hear it and is clear he must pilot the plane on this one. We’ll see how that goes.
Meanwhile, McSon’s nutritional program and external organizational restructuring continue to appear to net him great gains. I was surprised by a number of proactive items I saw resolved during my short visit that normally would inspire procrastination in him. Keeping my fingers crossed. T-minus one month in his case ;)</p>
<p>That’s awesome. With the very limited experience I have, it’s impossible to know if most college disablities offices are helpful or unhelpful.</p>
<p>So the counseling appointment that the school insisted Son schedule? He did and the counseling office cancelled it at the last minute…now Son has to take the initiative to make yet another appointment.</p>
<p>Our kids will both be here and not. ShawD will do a service trip to Appalachia. We’d said yes to our house in the Laurentians, but they told best friend’s mother that they want to go to Montreal instead. Hmmm. One of our friends will put them up. Then a very advanced dance program (at her school) and a couple of weeks unscheduled and then a science program in Canada and then a couple of weeks of family vacation in the Laurentians. Solid time on ACT prep is supposed to happen between the Montreal trip and the science program. Unfortunately, it will be our job to ensure that this happens. Plus, possibly college essays (hope arrayed here against wisdom). Best friend, who is painfully disciplined, plans to have her wisdom teeth pulled and complete her college applications in the month of August. [Sounds like a fun month; not clear which is worse]. Would that more of this would rub off on ShawD.</p>
<p>ShawSon will now make plans for Europe. He’ll work on completing his novel mid-summer – he gets up at a reasonable hour when he is doing this and heads over to his co-author’s house but our food bill will double during the period he is at home – and then drive up to the Laurentians in early August with friends. We’ll arrive later for our family vacation. So, they’ll each be home for half of the summer.</p>
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<p>We know the student has diagnosed deficits in planning, organization and follow through. We will offer help for these issues, provided the student can plan, organize and follow through the scheduling of the help.</p>
<p>Um, thanks?</p>
<p>missypie, I can’t believe the lack of concern they seem to be showing.</p>
<p>kmc, that is terrific. One of things we heard was that colleges put all of the scheduling responsiblity on the LD kids and many of those, whose executive functioning is challenged on a good day, fail to follow through. One possible helicoptering approach would be to put calendar reminders into S’s calendar for him to go talk to the teacher – for ShawSon, there has to be a conversation at the beginning of the term with each relevant professor and prior to each exam to work out logistics. </p>
<p>Right now, ShawSon is really showing signs of fatigue. He said that he really needed another week of break and he is studying now for two tests and is feeling a bit sick and very tired. He’s got three courses that have reading to a fair bit of reading and a couple have writing. He’s discovering that three is too much. He is coming to understand that two math/statistics/comp sci/theoretical econ courses per semester plus one reading/writing course (could be psychology, political science, law/jurisprudence, philosophy) plus art is probably the right mix for him. Given his fatigue level, with regard to accommodations, his cousin said that she was going to send him an email inquiring as to whether he’s talked to each professor regarding the upcoming exams. So far, he’s done it all without our asking (I think), but at a high fatigue time, asking may help.</p>
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<p>Yup, pretty much what was going through my head as I bit my tongue 
So in front of LD director (and yes, it was the director who made this clear) I said “Let’s go have a discussion about how you will keep yourself sufficiently organized and externally motivated to initiate contact with these folks so you can learn how to be sufficiently organized and externally motivated ;).”
McSon, taking the question seriously, answered me once outside that his ‘plan’ involved maintaining the nutrition, environmental organization, and plotting out time to check in with them. To which, I thought to myself, would mean that he would be sufficiently organized and externally motivated NOT TO NEED the coaching…you see the cycle here.
Nonetheless, am grateful at least for the accommodations and optimistic about his alleged future use of same.</p>
<p>But as a safety, I think I’ll just set up an auto-responder email or text that says:
MCSON, it is day 157 of your postsecondary education journey. DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR COACH IS?</p>
<p>or MCSON, it is day 158. Did you locate your coach yet?</p>
<p>or MCSON, it is day 478 of your postsecondary education journey. Are we still on speaking terms, or have I relegated you to a home in a box by the river?
Love, pastpresentfuture mom </p>
<p>So Shaw, I am less worried about the helicopter label then I am that he is triggered to “get it done” so I will indeed find a clever and fun way to do so! We own our own servers that run multiple chron jobs for our clients (timed emails for the non geeks among us) so I am pretty sure we can do some really annoying stuff and harass mcson until he himself is an old man ;)</p>
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<p>Thanks for the chuckle. Well… my mail brought me some interesting/disappointing news. Apparently son and accomplice scaled some wall in order to break into the dining hall after hours and where they were summarily busted. I think he is being fined $35 for one but now he has this official reprimand. Not happy in the least. How bone-headed can you be. However, this might have happened around the same time he friended the security guy. Do we see a connection here? In any event, I think I am going to call the Dean (who issued this letter) and see how ticked I need to be. Does this mean, if he does another bone headed thing he’s gonna get booted? Or is this part of a larger three strikes rule and this is now an official strike one? Or has he already had a strike or two and so this is a third? You see where I am going; i really have no idea the depth of this infraction. I did mention receiving the letter and his response was not a “no big deal” but he did seem to think his never doing it again was sufficient. I am not convinced… yet.</p>
<p>Noticed the CC is having some issues but will assume it has to do with all the kid getting their acceptances and rejections, etc that is messing it up.</p>
<p>Tomorrow at 9am, California closets is coming over to bid out my master closet. It seems now will not be a good time to sell and we need to do some stuff regardless and so might as well dig in for the next two years until at least D16 graduates from high school. Figure we bought her a car so she can get there from here, wherever that might be.</p>
<p>Modadunn, i wouldn’t panic about your son. There are far worse things to be ‘busted’ for, and I suspect many of his friends have done similar things but haven’t been caught;-)</p>
<p>Morandi… No panic. Far bigger fish would have to burn for that. But… Let’s just say I know he’s been “busted” before, but don’t understand if that previous busting (was there just one?) has anything to do with this busting and therefore, getting an “official reprimand.” The question is… how big of a bone-head has he been? It’s already a given that he’ll be paying the fine, but I want to understand where in the continuum of bone-headedness he actually falls.</p>
<p>^Ah, well that is, indeed, a pretty big continuum;-) Let’s hope his place is at the lower end!</p>
<p>Moda, I like the idea of finding out more information about the implications for future infractions and how seriously the college views the incident. A $35 fine does not sound like they consider it to be a big deal, but it can’t hurt to check. As you know, I was pretty upset with our older son’s recent traffic citation, but in particular I was upset by the fact that he didn’t tell us about it. Finding out via letter from the school would bother me as much as the behavior itself. With that said, I wouldn’t do anything more that have a heart to heart discussion about “pranks” and how it is possible for some pretty innocent stuff to really backfire depending on how it is viewed.</p>
<p>The closets sound great.</p>
<p>Sadly, he actually DID mention having done it but buried it among other things he’d been up to but failed to mention the “busted” part of this particular equation. Lying by omission sort of. Something like… “…been spending a lot of time in the library and have been to the bookstore, one time I was starved so I broke into cafeteria, and oh I got my new ID and room draw is coming up. Gotta go!” It was probably something like that.</p>
<p>Ahhh. Very crafty. I can see where he is a handful to parent. Best of luck! Now, he can even come back and say, well you didn’t seem to think it was a big deal when I told you before so I don’t see how in all fairness you can get upset now. I could see S2 employing that kind of logic.</p>
<p>I get such a kick out of ModadunnS! I know, I know…totally inappropriate</p>
<p>Woody - I’m not sure if any of the choices that S put down are in Collegetown or not. I know that he needed to list 4 choices. the roommate is a bio-chem major so not sure who it all works out - as far as which they are close too. We’ll see what he ends up with. I’m thinking that it’s not close to the law school because he has mentioned that he needs a bike to get around campus. Yet something else to buy him…</p>