<p>Yikes, Deja. Fingers crossed.</p>
<p>And good thoughts to all of you in the thick of the sandwich squeeze, especially those with parents or in-laws going into / coming out of surgery. </p>
<p>missypie, that’s pretty amazing about your friend’s mom. Don’t you wonder how she knew to make that choice?</p>
<p>Yes, good thoughts from me to all of you with parents or in-laws who are sick or who have had or who will have surgery. My dad had surgery 6-1/2 years ago, and had a heart attack 21 years ago. He’s frail, and has congestive heart failure, so I never know when I will get a call…Both of my parents are in their 80s, and have really slowed down. </p>
<p>Regarding S’s job. He just told me that he is the one who quit, not the other way around. He really couldn’t stand the telemarketing job, and I think that once he heard the Kohl’s job was imminent, he gave his telemarketing job notice that evening. He could have done both jobs. He should have done both jobs.</p>
<p>But Deja, you do have to admit that telemarketing is a terrible job. We all know that there are real people on the other end of the call, but it’s still very difficult to not be rude to them.</p>
<p>Yes, telemarketing is a terrible job. There were three (or four?) others with him, and they were all women (two my age, supposedly, and two in their late 20s). I know that I personally find it harder to cut off women telemarketers. </p>
<p>He got his laptop for college – a MacBook Pro. He’s enjoyed learning how to use that. I always thought we would be a PC family, but his older brother got a MacBook Pro a few months ago, and now he’s convinced his brother that it’s the best, also.</p>
<p>So sorry to hear about the various family illnesses. Of the four grandparents my kids only have 1 left (my mom). Luckily she seems to continue to be in fairly good health.</p>
<p>Dellhell is indeed an interesting place to be. Received another lovely letter on Friday telling me for sure the laptop would ship this coming week and that the production backlogs (which were there Thursday) were all mysterious cleared up. I really must admit that it’s been a long time since I’ve dealt with customer service folks with so little credibility. I cheared up greatly though by watching a new youtube video about united airlines and how they broke this musicians guitar and then refused to fix it. You can find it by doing a search for youtube united guitar. Wish I had some similar manner to get satisfaction from Dell (have to think on that).</p>
<p>Tomorrow is wisdom teeth out for D. She’s looking forward to 4 days off in a row if nothing else.</p>
<p>Telemarking is truly an awful job although some folks seem to enjoy it (beats me as to why).</p>
<p>So sorry to hear of all the health issues of your parents. DS has no grandparents left (2 grandmas in the past 5 years), his favorite aunt (second mom really) died two years ago, and his dad passed away earlier this year, so the celebrating of his achievements have had to be done more loudly by fewer people. Life just throws stuff at us, and we can only hope to have enough grace to deal with everything.</p>
<p>S did so well on his senior AP’s (the best yet…go figure) that he’s made his freshman schedule easy to plan. He’s all set, no 8 am classes, but 9 am the other four days and he’s a world-renowned sleeper with no mommy to nag him to get up, so it makes me a little nervous, but he’ll figure it out. He has 15 credits first semester with a pretty tough schedule, but he’s really comfortable with it. </p>
<p>He was disappointed with the options he ended up with for college due to his grades, and I think he’s VERY determined to have the option of Harvard Law next go-round, so we’ll see. So far, summer has been easy easy easy for him - between last summer’s job and graduation cash, he has close to what he’ll need for spending money for all four years which is all we’re asking of him.</p>
<p>Okay - a very psychotic question - does anybody else kind of miss the stress/excitement/drama of last year?</p>
<p>
:eek: Can’t say I miss it… but a part of me wouldn’t mind a do-over. If I could do it over, I’d be a lot mellower – a refuge, a font of parental wisdom, a model of tranquility, instead of the basket-case freak-job mom always standing over his shoulder saying, "Shouldn’t you be working on that [application/essay/paper] instead of [sleeping/eating/playing video games/staring off into space/whatever] ??? </p>
<p>Really, I would.
Honest.
Why are you looking at me like that?
:o</p>
<p>I don’t want the lunacy back but I’d sure love another year with S1!</p>
<p>
Absolutely not!!! I will miss S when he goes away, though.</p>
<p>Now I have to try to wean myself from CC!</p>
<p>I think I wish I could do it over knowing what I know now. But maybe I don’t …</p>
<p>cpeltz–just come on over to the 2010 thread come fall if you want some drama. We’ll see if we can dish some up. My D spent the day absorbed with her watercolors–it was her last free day for at least a couple of weeks. I love seeing her have the time to paint (and I said so), but I also asked her if she could read at least a chapter of the Bauld book on college essays. She will have NO free time in the fall due to ballet rehearsals and performances. Boy, it’s going to be stressful if she hasn’t gotten a good chunk of her essays done.</p>
<p>No do-over here - I think it went very well the first time, although Son’s ultimate choice was a bit of a surprise.</p>
<p>By the way, it is very difficult to leave CC!</p>
<p>I’m trying to slowly wean myself from CC. I do know there is a thread for 2012ers though. I’m just not ready to be that intense yet though for DS, and he’s definitely not up for that 
I was thinking the other day that I might have him do a practice SAT since he’ll do the PSAT this fall. I reminded myself he’s only going to be a sophomore. I need to save up my requests for when it matters. </p>
<p>Part of me wishes we could do it over, but DD is going to be happy and that’s what counts. Most of my do over wishes involve wishing we had saved more money. </p>
<p>HarrietW–I whole heartedly agree with you wishing I could have DD around for another year.</p>
<p>No need for a do-over. If we had to do it again, ShawbridgeSon might have applied to fewer schools. But, given his needs, I think he is going to one of the best schools he could have attended even if he’d been admitted to every school in the country. </p>
<p>I don’t think I was that anxious then (at least in external behavior), but my son was quite cooperative and efficient about doing what needed to be done. My only complaint was that he didn’t have rolling admissions schools and applied to everything toward the deadline. </p>
<p>I’m actually more anxious now as he will have to master the life/work of a college freshman at a pretty intensely academic school, which will require coping with his learning disabilities and his sleep disorder [his prior sleep apnea caused him to be exhausted most of the time; post-surgery, he has trouble falling to sleep on about 1/3 of the days because he is not used to not being truly exhausted]. </p>
<p>ShawbridgeDaughter is a rising junior so we’ll get to do it all over again. Very bright kid and creative, but not as ambitious or big picture as her brother. Fabulous with people, reads situations well. At a prestigious private high school and not at the top of her class, though doing reasonably well. Learning to cope with ADD. She and I are going to do a Eastern and Western US tours (she is interested in Colorado College) and Eastern Canada (McGill, Mount Allison, U of Toronto) and western Canada tours (UBC, others?). She doesn’t want to stay in the Boston area because she is afraid her mother would move in with her or find some excuse to teach at the school she’s attending (the fear is partially legitimate as ShawbridgeMom did arrange to teach at sleep-away camps our daughter attended).</p>
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<p>Been through the wringer twice–and that’s plenty for me!</p>
<p>There is no escape from CC…now that you know the rules, you can share them with others! </p>
<p>This past year was my “gap year” between kids applying to college…you can tell from my post count I didn’t exactly go travel the world… ;)</p>
<p>I have an 8th grader S, so I plan to be around CC for awhile. What is strange for me (besides the thought of having D go away) is that we will have no one in high school this year at my house.
In a word - no. And our admissions drama only lasted until mid-December as D was ED. The excitement after that point was vicarious (hearing about friends). I didn’t even know about CC until after D’s admission was a done deal. I wish I had been on sooner,though.
On the other hand, with S at home, we have enough drama anyway. He is one of those people who seem to make a major deal about all of the little things…never a dull or quiet moment.</p>
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</p>
<p>I actually laughed out loud (while sitting on the porch watching the lake float by). </p>
<p>Much like Fallgirl, I didn’t stumble upon CC until just before ED’s were released. Of course, son was unceremoniously rejected, but I felt I was prepared for the disappointment because of reading all the stats of those applying at the time!! After that however I became increasingly stressed because beyond the ED school, son applied to no rolling admissions and we were all on pins and needles until the very end. But in the end, he got into a lot of great schools and so… yes, maybe I would have encouraged him to apply to something rolling and yes, maybe I would have encouraged him to have made more headway on other applications instead of it consuming Christmas break to get them all in before the Jan 1 deadline. but I did learn that this really had to be his process because when it came down to choosing where to go he had a good handle on all of the schools.</p>
<p>Daughter is a rising sophomore and I have not even touched that 2012 thread. Like her brother, she goes to a very good school and they really handle most of the browbeating so parents don’t have to. She is not the same kind of student s is and is not going to be heavy with the AP and accelerated classes as he was. So, her choices will definitely be different. I will say, however, that because she is relatively close in age to her brother she is definitely thinking about schools a lot sooner than he would have been.</p>
<p>On the drive up here we had a lot of really great conversations and he was offering her some great advice on what to think about. The list of where everyone was going to school (final choice taking into account weight list movement etc) was put on the school’s website. Lots of Colorado College (I think 4 or 5), which was a little surprising considering their very unique curriculum. Only 1 going to Boston College, which again was surprising because that number has typically been higher. </p>
<p>It’s been fun being here and finding out where all of Son’s friends from here are going to school. It’s like April all over again!</p>
<p>Weather is absolutely beautiful… no humidity and blue skies. Wish you were all here on my porch. Pitchers of Margarita’s (maybe screwdrivers or mimosa’s this early) are waiting and no need for any kind of hair color!! Heck, you barely need a comb!!</p>
<p>Greetings from the land of many consececutive days over 100 degrees … Those days when the flowers stop blooming and your goal is just to keep the landscaping alive for the next six weeks or so.</p>
<p>Son and I shopped for laptops yesterday, just to get an idea of what he wants. It came out that he really likes having the number pad at the right of the keyboard. That sort of narrows down the choices. Got in and out of Best Buy without getting hostile at the know it all kids who work there. </p>
<p>I’m was pretty sure of what he needs, but then I read some more reviews and I don’t know about “movie watching” capabiliies. When reviews talk about that, I assume they are talking about the ability to download/stream movies, as opposed to watching a DVD. Right? What does one add to have that capability?</p>
<p>Back from wisdom teeth removal. D is lying on couch holding ice packs to her mouth. She woke from the anesthesia in a great mood actually almost giddy.</p>
<p>Hopefully progress will be made in the next 4 days on packing and shopping lists.</p>