<p>My DD turns 21 in Aug…happens to be the day we all will be going on vacation to DisneyWorld. Just the place you want to be …
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<p>D has finalized her summer plans and has accepted a job as a arts and crafts leader at a summer camp in Virginia. It is not as exciting as some of the internships some of your students will be doing, but it is what she wants to do. She has decided that since it is her last free summer before adulthood kicks in, that she is going to live it up and camp all summer. ;
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<p>She has also applied for a second semester abroad for next fall. It is for a small group of 10 students from Tulane to attend the University of Havana in Cuba. She will have an interview a week from Tuesday. The interview will be in Spanish, since she will be expected to speak Spanish the whole time she is in Cuba. I would hope that as a Spanish major she would be fluent enough to pass that part of the interview.</p>
<p>D will take a gap year before applying to med school. She hopes to work at a hospice center in Texas, near the Mexican border during the gap year.</p>
<p>I am busy working my regular job, along with working an additional 25-30 hours a week preparing tax returns. I hope to check in occasionally, though will be mostly quiet here for awhile.</p>
<p>S was supposed to fly home on Thursday afternoon and connect with us at the airport for a weekend 21st birthday trip to Las Vegas. As soon as the weather warning was posted yesterday he called and got switched to the last flight out of DC this evening. Tomorrows flight was cancelled a couple of hours later. Tonight’s flight was supposed to depart at 950 and he just texted me that they finally deiced and were on the runway. At least he will get here and we won’t trash the entire weekend. School is cancelled for tomorrow so he got a reprieve on several assignment due dates. He said about half of the commuter flights were cancelled so he had his fingers crossed all day. I will be happy to see him when he lands even though it will be about 130 AM!</p>
<p>Avon, I hope your son got home okay. He was smart to get an earlier flight. Have a great celebration.</p>
<p>Haven’t checked in for quite some time. S11 is doing really well. He has a great paid summer internship coming up with a large transportation company and should learn soon where he will be located for 10 weeks this summer… most likely in the north east. We live in California, so it will be a great experience for him to experience that part of the country. Last summer he was in the middle of Texas.</p>
<p>He surprised us by applying to be a Residential Adviser in university housing for his senior (and final) year. Well, he got the position! So paying for room and board is off the table for next year. S14 will start college, so that will sure help us financially. I hope S11 enjoys the challenges and fun of being an RA. It is not a job for everyone.</p>
<p>We are waiting for news of where S14 will be accepted to school next fall. The wait is getting old- just as it did for S11. </p>
<p>Both kids have milestone birthdays this spring- 21and 18. We are thinking about ways to make them special. Avon- hope the Vegas trip is a blast!</p>
<p>I wish I had something to contribute here! My son is turning 21 next week and I am glad he goes to a city school and no one has cars!</p>
<p>D1 is getting ready for her term abroad to Denmark. She leaves in a few weeks. We are trying to finalizing her plans for moving out of her apartment, because she will be gone when she will need to move to her new apartment, and most of the common furniture and kitchen supplies belong to her. It would have been so much easier to stay in the same place, with the same roommates, but, we will work through it. If worse comes to worse, we will move her things to our garage for a few weeks before she comes home for the summer.
She also heard that she has a summer internship at the same company that she worked for last summer, but a different group. She will be getting 30% more per hour than she did last summer!
I was looking at the 2014-15 school calendar to see when she started in the fall, and couldn’t help but notice the bold date of May 16, 2016- her graduation date. Didn’t she just start college?</p>
<p>S called and reported he had a voice message from his first choice internship requesting a time when they can contact him for a 30 minute phone interview and screening evaluation. Of course he has two mid-terms and a major paper due this week so time is at a premium. We advised him to review his schedule and find time for a break when he will be able to be relaxed and fresh for the interview. He has a standing offer to return to the law firm where he worked last summer but this internship is in his major field of economics and would be great for experience and his resume</p>
<p>AvonDad - that’s fabulous. He should try and find the time somehow…</p>
<p>D is busy at school. Classes, relay for life, mcat prep - all these are somehow crammed into her schedule. She was nominated for four different awards at school - and apparently, she needs to write essays for these 
Not sure if she’s going to find the time - it sure was a honor to be nominated anyway.</p>
<p>She’s still on the lookout for a summer job/research. She turned down one opportunity way back in early fall and now has applied to several places. Waiting to hear back - she is hoping she will know something by early March. In the meantime, got invited to a cousin’s wedding in late March - we are making plans to go for it - weekend in New Orleans right after her 21st birthday should be fun !!</p>
<p>My DS is in the thick of the summer internship hunt as well. He had an offer to return to last year’s firm, but was hoping to get something else so he could get experience in a different kind of company, to help him figure out where he wants to end up when he graduates. Unfortunately, they made the offer months ago and wanted an answer right away, before he’d heard from anyone else. He asked if he could let them know later, and they said they wouldn’t hold a spot for him, but if they still had spots open when he calls, they’d be happy to have him. Yesterday he got another offer, but it’s from a large company and they haven’t given him any details on what the job would be yet. He has a few more feelers out as well. But it looks like he’ll have something this summer in any case. </p>
<p>Are any of your kids already worrying about what they’re going to do when they graduate? My DS is feeling like he didn’t “love” either of his two prior internships, and wouldn’t want to work at either of those places “forever”, so he’s worried that if he doesn’t “love” this final internship, he still won’t know what he wants to do when he graduates, or what he’d like well enough. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to do grad school, but is worrying a lot about this final summer as his “last chance” to try things out on a short-term basis. </p>
<p>I probably haven’t posted in this group since d’11 was in high school (is this even the same thread), but @mathmomvt , your post really hit home.</p>
<p>D’11 is pretty sure she does not want to be what she is training for, but is too far in to quit. The problem is that she really isn’t sure what path to take next. Should she do the prereqs and make a run at med school? Should she find an area of nursing for advanced practice (so far, nothing has really incited much passion)? She shouldn’t just jump into grad school without knowing this. Besides, who wants an advanced practice nurse who never worked as a nurse? So, yeah, my kid is definitely worried about what she’ll be doing after graduation. I am, too.</p>
<p>She has a summer externship lined up in the cardiac unit of a large regional medical center. I’m glad. It really was time to move on from the city pool and start working with real adults.</p>
<p>@ordinarylives, hopefully the externship will help her narrow down what she wants to do!</p>
<p>In my case, <em>I</em> am not worried about him. He’s a CS major with varied experience, both from internships, class work and project teams. He’ll definitely be able to get something reasonable on graduation, and he can figure it out from there. I think in CS it kind of works to just “drift” through your career, taking up whatever cool sounding opportunity presents itself. So, I think he’ll be fine. (My only worry is that he’ll decide to try to do something independently or with a few friends, which he’d enjoy, but will make it hard to pay off the student loans. My advice to him, if he asks for it, would be to get a “day job” and work on a personal project in his “spare time”, at least until he’s confident it’s going somewhere that involves producing an income. He could even probably get a real job and drop down to part-time after a little while proving himself.)</p>
<p>@mathmomvt- D1 has a friend who works full time as software programmer and has a side hobby writing game apps with some friends. Definitely encoruage your S to get a real job, and if he hits it big on the side, he can quit.</p>
<p>That is good advice @mathmomvt and that’s also what he have told our writer-get something that pays the bills until you can pay the bills doing what you really love-which may have to wait until retirement. </p>
<p>I have the frying pan out as my boy has senioritis even though he is only a junior. One coop and he knows everything about what is really important in life and it isn’t sitting in classes that are worthless! </p>
<p>He is very involved with Student Government and it’s been a great experience for him but I asked him if I had to go into lecture mode as I haven’t had to do that in a long time-he said no but I don’t believe him. First things first buckle down and get through it and keep those grades from tanking or you’ll find out soon enough just how tough the “real world” is!</p>
<p>My D too is busy with Internship hunting. It is a little bit more challenging for her as she is an International student and also has to apply for OPT in order to accept a paid Internship. Also she needs to apply for Summer housing. Keeping our fingers crossed for her. She does have about 4 prior Internships to her credit, all with great advertising firms. Hopefully that should help her application. We shall see.</p>
<p>She would be going to Barcelona for 10 days during the Spring Break as part of her Stern curriculum’s International Studies Program. She is looking forward to that as well. And then the hectic period for this semester will begin. She would want to focus solely on academics. So I hope the Internship part gets confirmed by then. </p>
<p>Just to provide an update. DS did get nearly the last flight out of DC last week and we all made it to Las Vegas for the weekend birthday celebration. He agreed that you have to see it to believe it. He was blown away by the scale and vairety of the entire city and the strip but had a wonderful time. He interviews for his first choice internship this Tuesday. We will have our fingers crossed that it goes well for him.</p>
<p>Have a great weekend everyone and if you have warmer temps this weekend, enjoy them! I am busy over on the Class of 2014 parents thread getting ready for the SS Indecision sailing in about 5 weeks.</p>
<p>Good luck to all on internships. DS is going to be so busy this summer, I am wondering how he will get it all done. He has to get in his applications to medical school, go for 4 weeks of ROTC summer training and plans to do 4 weeks of research in Panama for his senior thesis. That is really more than one summer’s worth of work–hopefully the med school applications go smoothly, because he doesn’t have much wiggle room in his summer. He’s going to miss out of the family summer vacation too. Hopefully we can get a nice vacation in next summer before he starts medical school!</p>
<p>Welcome to March! Spring is hopefully somewhere around the corner.</p>
<p>Promises, promises! We had a snow on March 2/3. Still lots of snow mountains from the snow plows. I’m so ready for spring!</p>
<p>DS had another snow day on Monday and late start on Tuesday. He arrives home for spring break tomorrow. I don’t think he has had a full 5 day week of classes since this semester started because of all the weather and holidays. He didn’t get his first choice internship but is interviewing for another this Friday.</p>