<p>Is anyone else’s school being invaded by germs? Ours are! Both my DD’s have had some type of virus over the past two weeks, with older DD having the added insult of a stomach bug mid-February. Of course, it’s the last week of the 3rd MP and my junior DD, who is the latest one sick, dragged herself into school yesterday am for a test prep session, then I took her to the dr. who was convinced it was the flu, but alas, it was not…just a virus. She can’t talk at all today, and feels miserable but she has a big end of MP Anatomy & Physiology exam today, plus she has to “correct” her pre-calc teacher on a missing assignment that is pulling her grade to a B.</p>
<p>Apparently, it’s pretty common for the junior class to implode with illnesses mid 2nd semester; there’s tons of my DD’s friends who are pretty sick, but they’re all dragging themselves to school because stuff is due and they have to get it done. Of course, that is just creating this cycle of illness :(</p>
<p>My other thought through all of this is: OMG! After Friday, she’ll only have 9 weeks left in her junior year.</p>
<p>No one sick here, yet. But, I can see how kids could get run down at this time of year, opening the door for bugs. D and friends are working very hard, plus keeping up with sports, volunteer clubs, etc. etc. etc. They are not getting near enough sleep…</p>
<p>RobD – lots of illness here, too. Is it mostly juniors that are sick at your school? I wonder why that would be. It would be great if we could look forward to a healthy year next year.<br>
S was diagnosed with influenza B about 10 days ago (and he had a flu vaccination this year!). He seems to be taking a long time to get better and is still dragging. Now I’m wondering if he has something else-- yesterday he took a nap after school, something he never does.</p>
<p>Ok… I have a question that I have been wanting to ask for a while. But being still somewhat of a newbie, I didn’t want to commit a faux pas by asking “the question one should never ask”.</p>
<p>Why, when many people mention a college they had an experience with, they don’t say the name of the school???
We all come to CC to learn as much as we can to help our kids through this process, and to glean information about schools that we might not be able to get anywhere else. I find it frustrating when someone mentions a terrible experience they had with an admissions office, or did not get a good feeling from a school, or had bad food in the dining hall, or toured small, dingy dorms… or had great experiences with staff or financial aid offices, or met great students… but then you have no idea what school they are referring to. Many times they will not even answer if someone asks them specifically which school it was.</p>
<p>Am I missing something here? Is is against CC etiquette to name a college? How can that help those of us who would like this information to add to our arsenal? </p>
<p>My house has been invaded by germs and we’ve been conquered. Hubby had bronchitis that lasted for over a month. Precious Baby King had bronchitis and missed a week of school, then two weeks later (while still coughing) he got a sinus and ear infection that knocked him out of school for two more days. This past Monday he stayed home again because he had been coughing all night and didn’t sleep. He cried all day because it was his beloved teacher’s first day back from maternity leave. Everyone else has been sick, too.</p>
<p>I am steaming mad at daughter’s college counsellor. We spoke on the phone last week and I politely explained that we wanted daughter’s applications out very early next year and were planning to get recommendations this year as a result. She said she was on board with that because she is able to give early students more attention outside of the rush and promised to give daughter the recommendation forms. Daughter went to get the rec forms and something else that was promised and the woman huffed at her that those were only for seniors, told her she didn’t recall any conversation with me and threw her out of the office. I’m not sure how to proceed. Obviously I can’t give into my instincts and rip her a new one, but it’s pretty clear that we’re going to have to do things our own way, which might mean doing our own recommendation forms and asking teachers to return them to daughter in sealed envelopes, signed across the flap and only leave transcripts and counselor recs for the college counselor. I can absolutely predict that we’ll send in the envelopes in the fall (after having applied by the Common App) and she’ll put them aside till she’s good and ready. Should I have a talk where I politely and respectfully tell her that she can either work with me or I will bulldoze her, or should I just do as much as possible myself and have my husband bring addressed, stamped (return receipt) envelopes to her in the fall to put transcripts and counselor recs in? Hubby is not a man to be ignored. Thoughts?</p>
<p>re post 3753- yes Keilexandra I meant you, I just didn’t take the time to look up the spelling of your name. We are happy to have you as part of our thread! :)</p>
<p>I am in catch-up mode totally here while work and other things continue to get in my way, but here are my remaining comments on the posts to this point…</p>
<p>YDS- I do feel for your son, they have to juggle all these things it is great that he took the initiative initially to do the test ahead of his absence, many kids won’t do that. And to remain on the coaches good side and commitment for the team. But the big thing I wanted to say was congrats on his Eagle Scout. not being familiar with the lingo, is the board of review before he does his project or the final signoff and then he is done? My D is working on her Girl Scout Gold Award right now, she is getting the signature of her advisor today and then will submit paperwork to the review board and wait around until they meet and review and eventually approve it and then will do her project hopefully this spring/summer.</p>
<p>No germs here now, lots of flu over the winter.</p>
<p>Thanks, all. I went back to sleep. Wish ds could do the same. And – yessss!, as Napoleon Dynamite would say – it’s started raining, though not very hard.</p>
<p>The Board of Review is the last step in the process. It’s where he gets “grilled” by troop leadership about his Scouting experience, his life goals, etc. When he leaves there, he will have a yea or a nay. I think the only sure way to get a nay is to say you’re an atheist. I’m a little worried about that one. Not because he is but because we aren’t church-goers and I just hope he doesn’t get tripped up on the whole religion thing. What’s good is he could pick a couple of people who have nothing to do with the troop to be on his board, and he picked the dad of a friend who is an Eagle himself and also not a church-goer. I’m hoping he will be totally in ds’s corner and will help him should it get at all contentious, but I don’t think it will. Can you tell this is Catholic mother’s guilt talking? Anyway, after he gets the thumbs-up, there is some prefunctory paper work involved, but he’s good as gold. And I start planning the party!</p>
<p>I can’t imagine he’ll do very well on the BC Cal test considering the way he’s having to take it – two sections during class today, one section at lunch and – if things go ideally – two sections today after school. If he doesn’t get out of practice, he’ll have to do a section before school tomorrow and maybe one before school and the tournament on Friday.</p>
<p>Heck if I know. This is our one and only BofR. No, I don’t think they do. I’m just worried because I never had him baptized and we don’t take him to church and he’s very open-minded like his mother on all things religious and, like both his parents, doesn’t have a lot of use for organized religion and — aacck! It’s just stressing ME out. I’m sure it’ll be a breeze. Everyone loves him, and I’m sure he’ll sail though. I didn’t mean to malign the whole process. I’m just sleep-deprived, too, and nervous on his behalf.</p>
<p>zm, if it were me, I would do both. I would try one more time, in person, to ask her for the forms - perhaps in early May, after the college admissions frenzy has died down for the seniors. If that doesn’t work, you and D go ahead and do as much as you can yourselves, and then in the fall you can sic hubby on her. :)</p>
<p>Re: posting college names, I think some people are reluctant because they a) fear they might be criticized for bragging if the school is very good or b) fear they might antagonize an admissions rep who reads CC, who will spend hours figuring out who they are by reviewing all their posts and then make sure not to admit their child. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>YDS, good luck to your S with both the Scouts and the Calc - he sounds like a very accomplished young man!</p>
<p>I have stopped talking to D’s GC completely. At this point H is writing her emails, each and every one of which gets CC’d to the vice principal. Things are going much better and she stopped trying to browbeat D as well.</p>
<p>I don’t post college names because if it’s negative, well, I don’t want to call a school out on here. Though I did once write a scathing college visit report.</p>
<p>On the postives, well, I guess I’m just trying to not to reveal too many identifying things.</p>
<p>Ds tries to get me to engage with the counselors on his behalf, but I am totally backing off. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to let the counselors get through the senior season, but if she promised and now has reneged, that’s not cool.</p>
<p>I’d send the GC a polite email saying that your D had come by to pick up XXX forms, as the two of you had previously discussed on XXXX date, and that there must have been some confusion because she was unable to get them. Then ask the GC for a specific date/time for D to drop by and get the materials.</p>
<p>After that, I’d quit playing the good cop and let DH be the bad cop.</p>
<p>I suspect neither you or your H are the type of people that can be ignored for long by a GC or it will be at their peril. Frustrating as it is, I concur with other posters about giving the GC one more chance to rectify before elevating. How hard can it be to provide the forms?</p>
<p>This makes me shudder, as at the school board meeting, one of the items on the cut list was counselors which, if adopted, would change the ratio of about 400:1 students/counselor to approximately 600:1. The more I hear, the more I think I can’t get my S out of the situation fast enough!</p>
<p>Rob D:</p>
<p>There are all kinds of non-flu viruses floating around SoCal this season. Back in January, my S brought one home from one of his water polo teammates. Thankfully, he only missed three days of school (it would have been four but a staff development day was in the mix.) I had a head/chest cold that went on for three weeks, still with residual coughing. Ditto my husband and his almost turned into bronchitis since he has mild asthma as well. We can’t go to any public function without hearing coughing, sneezing, wheezing.</p>
<p>YDS:</p>
<p>Way to go on that pending Eagle Scout. He should do fine. As for the BC calc, if he’s lucky enough to have a teacher like our HS does, he’ll get what he needs to succeed. My S came back after the first day of BC calc and said all the kids in class were really jazzed about the teacher and not off put at all that this class was purported to be the toughest in the HS (AP Physics teacher may differ with that.)</p>
<p>Way behind in reading the posts! But I can see two recent topics of interest – whether to post names of schools your child is considering and dealing with unhelpful GCs. I will post names as we go along because I think that’s the best way to get feedback. We have a situation I’m sure many share. This is my second child and she watched her brother do this college process three years ago – only he applied to just one school, Yale, and was accepted early and didn’t apply anywhere else. Well, she’s a mortal like the rest of us and actually will be applying to a dozen schools – none of them Yale – and so it’s been important to raise reasonable expectations and not get caught up in rankings and name. So I’m hoping as she gets closer to get feedback on specific schools because I want her to have the best experience possible.</p>
<p>On the other hand, we do not have the bad GC problem. D’s counselor is phenomenal – each counselor has just 30 students to handle so each student gets individual attention. For those not so lucky, I would probably say do what you can yourself, but don’t ruffle feathers. Like CountingDown said, be polite and nonconfrontational. Pretend you’re just trying to help out the counselor, who has so much to do and so many students to work with, so if you can take some of the burden off them, etc., etc.</p>
<p>I just booked the air for the Chicago trip for the Jr visit day May 11. In my catching up on the last several pages of posts, I saw someone else interested in Chicago (and I’m sorry I am not going back to catch the name, I just remember it was a son) are you going to this visit day or the one in March or any other visits planned? Anyone else without AP conflicts going to this day, send me a PM and maybe we can wave to each other during the day’s events. </p>
<p>Originally I saw this flight at a good price, then we dawdled as a good friend of D’s is also attending and wanted to coordinate with other family. Other family is not giving feedback/commitment to choices, etc so the prices went up, gaaahhh. Last night when I checked again they were back down to the orig price so I jumped on it. I was also able to rebook a flight for my D2 to a summer program saving over $100 so I used that extra credit for the Chicago tickets. YAY ME Will take care of the hotel this weekend probably, hope the options are still decent. My goal is to get the whole trip for less than the cost of the intermediate higher air only price.</p>
<p>Will have to answer the GC stuff soon. It also occurred to me I should follow up with my cousin. I had a family wake/funeral the last few days and I talked with a cousin who wanted an update on my D’s searching, and I thought cousin was a teacher but afterwards I was thinking maybe she is a GC. She was interested and helpful so if she does have ideas to share with a different slant than those at our school that would be helpful.</p>
<p>ETA- I did have a chance to go back to page 249 and it was mathmom who listed Chicago as her S2’s dream school. No specific visit plans had been listed. I think I just snuck this edit in, is the timer 15 minutes?</p>
Wish ds could do the same. And – yessss!, as Napoleon Dynamite would say – it’s started raining, though not very hard.</p>
Will take care of the hotel this weekend probably, hope the options are still decent. My goal is to get the whole trip for less than the cost of the intermediate higher air only price.</p>