<p>Its always 5:00 PM somewhere and since I amsomewhere where it now past 5, I am dropping in from onboard our ship to say that it is approximately 6 PM here in Kusadasi, Turkey and I am raising a glass with AvonMom in regards to kinderny’s upcoming graduation today from that beloved school of her D’s. Here’s a toast to her graduation and a new beginning with a new school in the fall! Congrats to your D!</p>
<p>And congrats to all that I have missed while offline during the past week and that I will miss next week.</p>
<p>Time is moving too quickly for me. S leaves on Monday for his camp counselor job, and will be home only one day between camp and freshman orientation! So he’s now frantically packing for both. And we still have to go out and buy him new sneakers and a few other things… yikes!</p>
<p>totally exhausted from working the APP, but the kids had loads of fun, so it was all worth it
Many of my d’s friends came up to me and told me how much they appreciate everything that I have done for them and the school over the years. So sweet! :)…now if only my D would tell me that! ha ha!!</p>
<p>holliesue: You know that your D appreciates what you have done. I think the difference for our kids is we have volunteered at schools since they first started to attend. They don’t know anything different. But their friends parents may never attend or help with a single thing. So they notice. I had the same experience at our after graduation party. Both sons say their friends wished their parents had been as involved at the school as we were. </p>
<p>What time is the graduation at that school that we all still hate? 2 p.m. ET? It’s almost time to raise a toast to freedome for kinderny and her DD.</p>
<p>Hi all-checking in to tell you we survived graduation-it was very nice and Pepperson hit it out of the park with his speech-I have people coming up to me that I barely know congratulating me and telling me how proud I must be-which I am! I need to thank all of you for getting me through this year, the last few upsets, and always being there for me!</p>
<p>I was very well behaved at graduation and have managed to be gracious in accepting these nice words without going off about how much I would like to take my frying pan to some people at the school. I do want to publicly thank emmybet for answering my plea for help with his speech-the English department head finally got back to him the day before with her corrections-she had been sitting on it for a week but interestingly enough had already worked with the other speaker. He finally was able to say-no thanks, I have already gotten help and I like my changes-here they are! Yeah! Not a student anymore-I loved it! Of course he did it in a nice way-he took a few parts of her advice but left the rest as is. I would have not been as nice but I am happy that he can seem to stand up for himself without being a hothead like I am-he really is so nice and sweet that I wonder how he’ll manage in the big world-it will be interesting to watch.</p>
<p>I have a lot of catching up to do here but I couldn’t let this day pass without posting and without checking to see if we need to go up and spring kinderny’s poor kid from that school! I love the FB suggestion!</p>
<p>I also have to say that when I posted prior to this senior year about all the amazing things my son was going to do with his newfound personality changes-mostly becoming accepted by the “popular” kids and having some leadership roles-well emmy posted something like-well having gone through it already it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be! I was a little taken aback EB which I have already shared with you when I told you about it and had to apologize because you were so right-so I am going to be looking to you and others who have gone through this with a very open mind-I realize now just how clueless I am about so many things!</p>
<p>YAY! I think kinderny is just about finally done with that school … yay!</p>
<p>Pepper, I think what happened actually WAS exactly what you hoped would happen: your son is a mature young man who is confident, ready to move forward, and respected. People have been - and always will be - weird, but he knows what’s important. You have a lot to be proud of.</p>
<p>I’m sorry that I’m sometimes kind of a bubble-burster … but I’ll stand by my opinion that senior year is surprising and deeply moving for most of us, parents and kids. The triumphs are meaningful - and they come in places we never expected. And the hurts teach all of us how rarefied and unimportant HS truly is. Everything - everything - teaches us more than we ever could have imagined. </p>
<p>I admire kids who graduate early, but I do think they miss a chance to experience what senior year really is: a long, meaningful look in the mirror, and a slow walk down a confusing, rewarding and sometimes joyful and sometimes treacherous path. </p>
<p>The first year of college can be many of these things, too - but what senior year lacks is the fun, fresh start; instead, it has the responsibility and the drudgery of being stuck in the same place with the requirement of finishing a job properly. There’s comfort in it, but also the feeling of a slow disentanglement - kind of like escaping from a mass of cobwebs, or maybe even thorns (right, kinderny?). Senior year also makes us all stop and see some beautiful things, some things missed when we were all on that “mission” to see these kids rise and excel: it’s a sentimental time, when they, and we, learn just what they are saying good-bye to as they move on. I personally think it is invaluable, for all of us … but I wouldn’t want any kid to have to go through it twice!</p>
<p>Congratulations to all. Pepper03, sounds like a terrific outcome with learning both by your son and by you. Kinderny, I hope you will feel emancipated when you leave the venal dodos behind. </p>
<p>ShawD came back from Paris in time for a birthday bike ride with some of our friends. She and ShawSon came, although most of the friends drove and met us, at this wonderful local food restaurant out in the country – it shouts greasy spoon from the outside but has been upgraded dramatically. We use it as a destination for bike rides in lovely country. It was nice to have the family together for the birthday and for father’s day tomorrow. She’ll be going up to Canada in a week for the final one month of yoga teacher training – rigorous course, with the day beginning at 5:30 AM and lights out at 10 PM.</p>
<p>Proud Dad alert. ShawSon will be working for me this summer and I had him take a course last week that I taught at a high-end law school with a colleague. The participants were lawyers and business execs from all over the world (not as senior as courses I teach at business schools) but in their 30’s, 40’s and 50’s as well as a law professor from a well-known California law school, a business school prof from Australia, an important union official, and a leader of a political party in an OECD country. It was fun to watch ShawSon really running circles around these folks. My colleague was very impressed – said he couldn’t call on ShawSon at the beginning of class because he would lay out the whole analysis in one step, rather than letting the professor build up to it, and so would wait to call on him until the end, but also he and the other participants got to see ShawSon perform in quasi-competitive exercises (and outdo the others repeatedly). The latter was important because they could see practical skill as well as blazing intellect. They treated him like a peer (and a number went to him for advice/explanations) and he was completely confident in dealing with senior folks (Indeed, he said to me, “Can I take a course with more advanced people?”) Someone from Google asked him to send a resume (he said, “I’m not a computer person” and she said, “I don’t care”) and my colleague offered to write him a recommendation to a high-end business school with which he is affiliated. ShawSon just finished his sophomore year, so it is a little early. It was also the first time ShawSon really got a sense of what I do, and I think he was duly impressed. A touching week.</p>
<p>Emmybet, I think you’ve very well described what senior year is all about. Your description fits my S1’s and our experience exactly. One thing I never expected before having children is how much I would learn not just about them but also about myself, and life in general, through raising them. </p>
<p>I have a brother and SIL who chose not to have children, and sometimes I feel that we’re on such separate planes. Through this year, as they watched how much this process matter to my S and to me, they simply didn’t “get” it. They didn’t understand my worry and concern, or why I chose to help him at all; they didn’t understand his desires. The list could go on and on, and they are in general well-meaning, sensitive people. They simply didn’t understand how different the process is today from what it was in our generation, and they really don’t get how different parenting has become. They thought it was weird that I was on this forum, weird that I would help my S w/ his college list and read his essays. But what they missed is what growth my S experience, as well as my H and I, through this process.</p>
<p>Shawbridge, it sounds like both you and your son got to see each other in a new light thanks to that course/experience. Those moments are hard to come by; it sounds like your lives intersected at a different place. It’s so nice to read of what it meant to you. Congrats.</p>
<p>Pepper03: I’m thrilled that pepperson nailed his senior speech!!! It’s unfortunate that he didn’t get the support from his English teacher/school but Emmybet was probably the best go-to editor you could ask for. Emmy – expect an email from me in 3 yrs when S2 is in the midst of his college essays!!! Congrats on his graduation – he’s free!</p>
<p>Pepper: I’m so happy to hear that graduation went well and your son’s speech was a truimph. </p>
<p>Emmybet: I loved your description of senior year. Last summer, my daughter spent two weeks at BU and would have loved to just stay and start college. She and I talked recently about what a mistake that would have been. She had a very nice year, maturing, building confidence and cementing wonderful friendships.</p>
<p>Kinder: Congrats on your D’s graduation from that horrible school! I plan to raise a glass in your honor tonight at dinner.</p>
<p>Happy Fathers Day to ShawDad, AvonDad and any others out there. My D1 gave my husband a wonderful gift - she came home for the weekend.</p>
<p>I do think things have changed … but I think they’re the same, too. I would have LOVED to graduate early from HS. My father very kindly told me that I had a responsibility to the family to stay, to make use of college courses, APs, and all of the other resources there, and go to college with advanced credit and as much readiness as I could. I appreciated his honesty and took up the challenge to make my senior year as rewarding as I could.</p>
<p>And I learned, myself, what it meant to look in the mirror of your life as a HS senior and ask yourself just what it is that you want. I learned how it’s time to stop worrying about what people are supposed to do FOR you and being angry at what people are doing TO you. I had my own big disappointments in the admissions process - and I lucked into finding just the right college after a hugely false start (the best thing that ever happened to me was an ED deferral).</p>
<p>I also learned that people were more than I thought they were - some very disappointingly, but others surprisingly positively. I learned that I was probably going to be disappointed if I thought something was going to matter “the most” to me - and that the disappointment would lead me to something different, and probably better.</p>
<p>I went to college a much better, kinder, and more thoughtful person after that senior year than I ever would have been a year earlier, no matter how intellectually mature I was.</p>
<p>But somehow I forgot all about that for 30 years. Now that I’ve parented 2 seniors of my own, I’ve still been fooled both times, never imagining how much each daughter would change and be changed. It’s a truly astonishing, beautifully mysterious and heart-wrenching process, in all ways possible.</p>
<p>shawbridge - what a beautiful story. Your son has had his own complex and very personal journey, and I am very moved at your descriptions of how he feels not only about himself but about his place in the world. I love hearing about how his horizons expand, and expand. I wish that for all of these kids, and stories like yours help us see that it really does happen.</p>
<p>emmy: you put into words what so many of us (by which I mean me) experienced but could not articulate. I will add that I have found that parenting each of my “three” has been unique. Lessons I learned from the first did not always apply to the second, and I suspect that the trials and lessons of this past year will be different from what will be with my third.
It turns out that I am changed each time in new and different ways.</p>
<p>Emmy - thanks for sharing those personal thoughts. I remember very little about HS, but the past two years with my son have been wonderful. We’ve learned so much about each other. I wouldn’t trade a minute of it even the three days of non-stop tears (by me) and sharing his heartbreak over Olin’s initial denial. It makes the eventual acceptance so much sweeter. I’d like to think that fifty years from now he will continue to hold in his heart as a treasured memory.</p>
<p>college4three and FlMM, i completely agree and empathize with your descriptions and opinions about this whole year/process. </p>
<p>I think it will be very different for me the next go-around w/ S2 because he’s such a different kid from S1 – with different strengths and weaknesses. In fact, their educational and social experiences are already very different; the oldest chose a private school to which he commuted 30 minutes each way, the youngest opted for our local public HS five minutes from our home. </p>
<p>It seems that not only should the schools they choose fit them, but also our counseling and interaction through the college process should be adjusted from child to child to personally suit them. I imagine it’s tough to do, to get it right. I’m just beginning to see this as my youngest is one week shy of finishing his freshman year. As a parent, it’s also hard to adjust my expectations as this second child is not quite the student his older brother is. My oldest has strengths across the sciences and the humanities, whereas the youngest is a humanities kid who struggles with math and doesn’t have his brother’s discipline. Bio has been fine for him bc he has a good memory but I think he’ll find chemistry and physics very hard. Emmybet, I remember reading much earlier during this year that you too experienced very different types of students in your two daughters – one primarily a science kid, the other a creative type. That’s what I have here.</p>
<p>FlMM, i completely understand your heartbreak about the initial Olin denial. I felt heartsick for my S when he was originally deferred, but in the end it happened for the best; he and I both agree on that. At his pre-prom party last week some parents were speaking w/ us about their sons who had gotten into their first-choice schools w/out incident. Each set of parents told their kids that they should savor this moment bc it may never happen again, either for grad school or anything beyond, like job opportunities, residences, etc. My S immediately said that he deeply appreciated getting accepted during RD, and was in a state of shock for about a month, because he recognized how easily it could have gone the other way. After this experience, he doesn’t at all take for granted that it will happen again. He just feels terribly lucky and grateful. It was a good lesson to learn this early in his life. </p>
<p>My brother had a difficult time understanding how any parent could be deeply upset when their kid is deferred or denied at a school. He couldn’t accept how much we feel their pain, even if we know intellectually that they’d be fine anywhere they land. I tried to explain that it isn’t about the school, it’s about seeing your kid come to terms w/ bad news. As a parent, the connection to your kids runs so deep that their disappointments feel worst than your own. And FlMM, I do believe that your S will look back on this period as a time that he learned not only a great deal about himself, but also about you. Look, Emmybet clearly remembers her conversation w/ her dad and how it influenced her; and what she recalls about her dad was his straightforward honesty, which is really lovely.</p>
<p>RenMom - your S2 sounds like a great kid. Of course! </p>
<p>My father at the time was being infinitely practical. Fortunately a boy 2 years older than I had pioneered substituting college classes for HS ones, so I had a neat idea I could try. And it was a rewarding experience, including all of the other things I was doing in my life. Hard and strange, too. My father wouldn’t have thought about those kinds of subtle benefits of staying another year, but it was perfectly reasonable for him to want me to get credit for college.</p>
<p>The irony is that I didn’t actually get any college credits after all. My University doesn’t accept APs. Although I did place out of 2 years of language (and it was college language courses that I took in HS) I would have placed out anyway after the 5 years I’d already had. I didn’t graduate early from college, but I did take time off for the first part of my senior year and got some work experience doing internships. </p>
<p>I saved him some money in the long run, but I knew he was more about the challenge to myself. While I’m on the subject - its being Father’s Day and all - I’ll say that my father’s message to me all my life has been to keep options open. Sometimes I bristled at that: there come times when too many options can make life a mess - and he’s celebrated with me when I’ve been ready to pick one thing and commit. But I do believe that his general philosophy keeping many great choices at the ready and never getting yourself stuck has truly benefited me. I’ve thanked him for that countless times over the years.</p>
<p>Well, I am back kind of. I apologized for not being able to comment on all the news, my work computer has now everything blocked! :mad:</p>
<p>Well, S2 graduated with some woohas, scholar athlete, and academic achievements medallions. Overall a great four years!
The party was last week-end and it rained. But after a week of heat I was not about to complain we scattered everyone inside and it worked out beautifully!
Everyone came and stayed. Good wine, good food and wonderful conversation. It was kind of bittersweet, but so rewarding to see S2 and his friends so very happy.
This week he is off to Boys State as a counselor, he was a participant last year and wanted to give back to such a life changing program!
His internship is going well, he has a better understanding of the 8-6pm working life :p</p>
<p>S1 is enjoying his European adventures, his French is now spotless, picking some true slang, and making friends that will no doubt visit us. Life is good.</p>
<p>DH and I are enjoying this first week-end of just us with nothing in particular to do, I could get use to this :p</p>
<p>Pepper - Congratulations again! Glad you were able to leave the frying pan at home and enjoy the day, his speech and all the congrats from other parents!! </p>
<p>Shawbridge - Wow, shawson sounds like a chip off the ole block! </p>
<p>Emmybet - I hope that kind of awakening you describe comes to my dd1 - or by the time she gets to sr year, I will be all gray.</p>
<p>Wed. is the big night, potential rain in the forecast so for all you weather-influencers out there, pls can we just have a few hours in the stadium first? I would hate for this to end up in the stifling gym. 8th grade grad is Tues night, another big hoopla. Just a comment on the 8th gr dance (HS class of 2015), the only thing different than how people handle the prom in this town and this event, were the heels are higher for this and the dresses tighter and shorter - and I mean barely-covering-the-butt-short. If one were to predict where these fine girls end up in 4 yrs, it wouldn’t be HYP but a pole somewhere in Vegas. There were pre-parties, and after-parties. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were weekends at the Jersey shore too. Dd2 is not part of the “it” girls, so she wasn’t privy to all this, but Moms talk and boy do they gossip. Whew - glad we don’t have a beach house.</p>
I do want to publicly thank emmybet for answering my plea for help with his speech-the English department head finally got back to him the day before with her corrections-she had been sitting on it for a week but interestingly enough had already worked with the other speaker. He finally was able to say-no thanks, I have already gotten help and I like my changes-here they are! Yeah! Not a student anymore-I loved it! Of course he did it in a nice way-he took a few parts of her advice but left the rest as is. I would have not been as nice but I am happy that he can seem to stand up for himself without being a hothead like I am-he really is so nice and sweet that I wonder how he’ll manage in the big world-it will be interesting to watch.</p>