Parents of the HS Class of 2011 - We're awesome!

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
4461

<p>Hi Peeps,</p>

<p>What a long week :eek: Finally home by a nice fire :slight_smile:
Well the power trucks are back in our neighborhood, it seems that everyone is almost back on the grid. This storm we were the lucky ones
;)</p>

<p>Ak~I was under the impression that you had power but your father did not :confused:
Wondering about pepper
I believe she is in NJ as well
;)</p>

<p>Yalemom~The Yale screw parties are famous
I remember an article last fall about one in a downstown club that was raided by the New Haven police, tell your student to be safe and smart :smiley: Please :D</p>

<p>Shaw~Yes they are learning to grow up and resolve issues all by their little selves
How lovely and encouraging :)</p>

<p>OWM~Loved the Anderson bit on the Zetas~Must have been a nice moment for y’all</p>

<p>Emilybee~Good Luck to your son this week-end 
Should be beautiful in Boston. Some friends went over for the big crew event end of October, they said it was lovely!!</p>

<p>EAO~Good luck with the painting!! I love to pick colors :slight_smile: Interestingly enough the colors in my previous house did not transplant well to the new one, light, exposure etc
just did not work. So this time around I went with an european farm house style, much more forgiving and fun. I found the perfect BM red, still looking for the perfect blueish grey for our bathroom, but over all making progress. I agree with EB, if you don’t love it stop!!
One of my dear friend hired a consultant for colors only, she said it opened her eyes ;)</p>

<p>Someone mentioned tiny prints way back during graduation, and I love them since then. Blue I would love to know which software you used
let me know please :wink: Now that I am a free bird I may give it a shot :)</p>

<p>Ohio~So sorry about the roomie situation, hopefully your son can address it with his RA.I am not sure which house he is in, but our S2 has mentioned that his Ra is very much on top of things in his!!</p>

<p>On the college front, S2 has had a long but good week.His schedule looks good for next semester.He said he was looking forward “a quiet week-end” :confused:</p>

<p>Wishing all a great Friday night :cool:</p>

4462

<p>^^^ EXACTLY Emilybee!. My D is a STEM major at an ivy and I am a second career math teacher. DD told me that she was thinking about volunteering at a local public school tutoring kids in math and science. I told her that it was a laudable idea but that I recommended that she volunteer in other ways. Although I recognize the incredible need for competent math/science teachers in the public schools, as a parent, it is the LAST thing that I would want my daughter to have to do. No way, do NOT become a teacher!</p>

4463

<p>A related article: [College</a> has been oversold ? Marginal Revolution](<a href=“http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/11/college-has-been-oversold.html]College”>College has been oversold - Marginal REVOLUTION) Although I feel they undervalue non-STEM degrees a bit too much, the graphic is striking – basically 100% of the increase in college students since 1985 has gone into non-STEM fields.</p>

4464

<p>coffee is on in Iowa, the central part of the country, convenient for all! Come for coffee, juice, bagels and donuts! Oh, and the conversation!</p>

4465

<p>**18 days (or less) to Thanksgiving break **</p>

<p>Only two (2) weekends to go. The turkeys are starting to get nervous!</p>

<p>(Based on kids touching down at home on the Wednesday before TG. Some kids may get the full week and will land at home sooner.)</p>

4466

<p>To clarify, I have power, my Dad does not. Hence my Dad and his boarder (my niece) are with me for the interim - niece went home actually yesterday and that relieves some of the “another emo teenager!?” syndrome that I suffer from. The frustration is that JCP&L which reign over this area are telling the news that everything is repaired when it is not. The frustration is you see noone working on these poles that are down, these limbs that cross the road, NOONE that you can find assessing the area. Usually after a storm you see cable, phone, power people all over, you see tree people being hired to clear trees crossing streets. This storm, you see nothing. And that is honestly not an exaggeration. I am frustrated that my Dad gets robo-calls daily telling him his power is up, we go over and it is not. I am my Dad’s advocate as many of you for your parents. It is great that I have power. Yes, I should be grateful. But I am frustrated.</p>

4467

<p>Oh Amanda, that sounds really frustrating. It sounds like you need something stronger than coffee this morning.</p>

<p>Emilyb: I hope your son enjoys the regatta. We watched one on the Charles a few weeks ago. The river is really beautiful.</p>

<p>I never heard of screw parties before. It’s amazing what you can learn on CC.</p>

4468

<p>Hey AK- call your electric utility regulator to complain! They really do care/listen. They may try to fob you off re complications due to massive outages, but explain that the robo calls are misleading etc. You never know, the records could be mixed up and they may think power is up and it is not.
Here ends your public service announcement. ;)</p>

<p>PS you have our sympathy, as does anyone else still having issues from the storm.</p>

4469

<p>bajamm: Coffee on here in Missouri as well. Looking outside at beautiful colors.</p>

<p>Sent the link to the science major story to DS2. He said Mizzou created it Physics Seminar class for freshmen to show how much fun Physics can be and the many career options for Physics majors. Designed to keep students from changing majors.</p>

<p>And all the science departments sponsor Saturday Morning Science for campus and community. It’s a speakers’ series. From the website: Established in 2003, the vision of Saturday Morning Science is to create a culture in which engagement between scientists and the public is the norm. DS2 reports most of the attendees are high school students.</p>

4470

<p>The stories about STEM majors do make me sad and a little worried. And bewildered, since these are the areas that for years we’ve been told are the “best” majors - the most needed, the most jobs, etc.</p>

<p>It makes me proud of my science D, even though it seems Bio is considered “soft STEM”! She certainly worked hard to get through her “weed-out” Bio and Chem classes, and took some engineering as part of her Environmental Studies program as well. But I will say that what carried her through was a great love for the subject (and some excellent ability, I will admit). She was a Bio and Chem tutor starting sophomore year, and she was happy to help others get through the hard courses and learn how to succeed on those areas.</p>

<p>I guess I feel about D1’s STEM focus the same as I feel about D2’s arts focus: they both are doing hard, meaningful work, and they’ll get out what they put in - so they might as well be studying something they really love. I’m grateful that’s what they’ve been able to do.</p>

4471

<p>S1 is a junior majoring in chemical engineering at a Top 10 (non-ivy) school. Here’s the thing about these STEM majors: just like the article says they’re REALLY HARD, and they get harder as the years progress! </p>

<p>I think these days a lot of kids who are pretty good at math and science in high school think, STEM is the way to go for good jobs (which is very true, S1 has been actively courted this semester by companies who want to interview him for summer internships).</p>

<p>But a kid really has to LOVE this stuff to make it through, just doing it for future job security isn’t enough. Fortunately S1 emerged from the womb an engineer, for him there was never any doubt of his career path. Nonetheless, it’s really tough to see ones peers taking classes that don’t require the intense time commitment that STEM classes take. S1 refers to the undergrad liberal arts school at his U as “the School of Arts and Crafts” :D, haha</p>

<p>My best advice for these kids is to try and surround yourself with as many other students in the same boat, studying the same things, at least you have company in your misery, and remember that you will enjoy the last laugh at the end of 4 years.</p>

4472

<p>Interesting articles about STEM. ShawD has already succumbed in a sense. Her likely plan to switch to nursing came from realizing she’d have four dry, abstract years in biology, biochemistry and chemistry courses. She said, “I love science and I love people. But if I stay in biology, I’ll have no people for four years.” She’s bright enough (because of her LDs, I know her IQ scores which, while imperfect indicators, say she is plenty bright enough to handle this material) but she’s missing the people dimension. I found the Marginal Revolution article very interesting. The main thing I’d say is to look at careers that can’t easily be outsourced.</p>

<p>I am at ShawD’s older brother’s Parents Weekend at a very highly-rated LAC. Wonderfully heart-warming stuff for me. (I posted about this in the Parents of 2013 thread). But, one of the profs, who was talking to a very bright kid (attended middle school with ShawSon and went to ShawD’s HS). The kid is applying to all the top grad schools in the field. The prof said, “It’s getting very tough to get in to those PhD programs because there are so many kids applying from China and India.” And this is probably to one of their stronger students this year (although somewhat Asperger-like personality so doesn’t appear to have connected very well with his professors based upon my observation).</p>

<p>At the math department open house that I attended, one of the profs (young-ish) said that while she is only motivated by the elegance of the theory, employers know that if you were a math major at a school like ShawSon’s, you are smart. They don’t really pay attention to a) whether you know much about what they do because they figure it out; and b) probably don’t worry about your GPA. There was recently an article about the woman who runs private banking at JP Morgan. [From <a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2011/08/24/the-1-trillion-woman/[/url]”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2011/08/24/the-1-trillion-woman/&lt;/a&gt;, “Erdoes was the only female math major in her class at Georgetown University, where she was afflicted by doubts about why she was spending hours in the library solving equations. “I can remember her saying, ‘Dad, my grade point average can suffer as I go through this,’” *recalls Patrick Callahan. “I said, ‘Mary, if you are a math major and you go to an interview no one will ever ask you your grade point average.’” She went on to get an M.B.A. at Harvard, where she met her husband, Philip Erdoes, a New York venture capitalist.”] I don’t know if that is still true.</p>

4473

<p>Morning all. Thanks for the coffee. I’ll be interested to read the STEM articles. Thanks for posting. I agree that many kids that are good in math and science get funneled into STEM when it may not be the right fit for them. Like your S1 yalemom15, Bluejr was born with a passion for engineering, it makes him tick. He breaks out in a cold sweat over humanities classes
he finds them terribly hard and just goes on auto-pilot when math/physics kicks in. His left brain works as long as it’s design related to engineering
I call it selective left brain. :slight_smile: He actually respects what the ‘other half’ does because it does not come easy to him. Different strokes
</p>

<p>My thoughts are with you Amanda as your patience has to really be stretched thin at this point. I’m really, really hoping power is restored to your father’s home very shortly!</p>

<p>Have a wonderful Saturday everyone! It is a beautiful, chilly, fall day here and I’m headed out to enjoy it. I hope everyone has a chance to do the same! :)</p>

4474

<p>^^^^ Not that it is an Ivy but: My H got his degree from Georgetown and he has said the same thing- no one has ever asked his gpa.</p>

4475

<p>No problems here from the storm but all my relatives around Hartford still have no power. One of my cousins finally found a generator but after 8 hours it ran out of gas. He said there are still so many trees down that there is no way power will be restored by tomorrow - which is what they have been told now. CP&L just keeps pushing back the restore date every day. </p>

<p>Kinder, DH and I are going to be in your neck of the woods tomorrow doing the winery thing. Any you can recommend we shouldn’t miss?</p>

4476

<p>STEM–I think the key is to love what you are studying. I think a lot of students pick a major based on perceived future jobs or amount of money to be earned. If it’s not an area they really enjoy, they will have a hard time. If you enjoy what your are studying, it will be worth the work and enjoyable to delve into.</p>

<p>I’ve always wondered how people know they want to be engineers when there really aren’t any classes in HS that give them a good feel for engineering (whether chemical, mechinal, etc). If you have outside interests that lead you in that direction I can see the desire. But I know many people that go into engineering because they are good at math. That doesn’t translate well. My brother started out in engineering because he liked to work on cars and thought he’d like to design them. He discovered quickly he didn’t like the engineering classes. He is now a physical therapist! :slight_smile: </p>

<p>So my approach with my DS is to encourage him to study what interests him. If he changes his mind after taking some college courses, then that’s fine. Unfortunately we all know kids who are pursuing fields that their parents are encouraging them to pursue. Sometimes that works, many times it doesn’t, which leads to lots of movement away from STEM.</p>

<p>Enough of my random thoughts on the subject! AK hope the power is on soon–that’s incredible that they aren’t even actively working on the problem, yet telling your father that the problem is solved.</p>

4477

<p>I would agree VAMom2015. Kids generally have to commit to engineering during the admissions process as hs srs, give it a go, then change if it doesn’t fit. This can cost them upward of a semester (or more) if they change their minds. Luckily Bluejr was exposed to STEM classes in hs. No guarentees, as parents we know there’s still a chance he may change his mind. If he does it’s our job to help him explore all options and be supportive. We had our turn, now it’s his.</p>

4478

<p>Power!!!</p>

4479

<p>That’s AWESOME Amanda! I’m so happy for you!!! :D</p>

4480

<p>Woo hoo Amanda! That was one crazy long wait!!</p>