<p>Congrats!!! There are 10 or 11 book awards at my school awarded to inky juniors each year. I got the Gettysburg college one. There wasn’t a smith one (I would’ve wanted that :))</p>
<p>Do you know what kind of book it is?</p>
<p>Thanks, I don’t know what kind of book it is yet.</p>
<p>I don’t know if your son’s school does it, but when they hand out the awards there’s a little description to go with it. </p>
<p>Some of my friends got a collection of Robert frost poems, a book about the proper way to right (Strom in White? It’s a good book, I forget the name), a dictionary, and mine was a book about Lincoln (how ironic of gettysburg.)</p>
<p>Congrats to your son again :)</p>
<p>^^^ Strunk and White, The Elements of Style. A classic!</p>
<p>Thank you!
I’m planning on getting it for English class next year. </p>
<p>Did your D apply to that summer program?</p>
<p>CPU - would any award help you once the application season is over?</p>
<p>I suspect you are probably better off writing essays for scholarship money rather than measly book awards…</p>
<p>There are no essays for book awards (or any of the other awards presented by my school.) I’m not sure how other schools do it. </p>
<p>You are nominated by faculty for book/character/volunteer/etc awards, and every year for every class (ie geometry honors, level one, level two, etc) one person gets an award for having the highest grade out of all the other people who take the same class and level (ie I got two for AP Calc and stats because I had the highest grade out of everyone taking AP Calc and AP stats, we aren’t matched up with people who aren’t in our level.)</p>
<p>EDIT: as for after application season is over, I have a binder that I keep all awards in since kindergarten. It’s not for anything (I don’t devote my time to getting awards like some of my classmates do) but it’s a record of my accomplishments. Although I doubt my future employer will care that I got a book award.</p>
<p>CPU is right, no essay or application for book awards – at least the two at our school. It was a surprise to my son, he didn’t even know it existed.</p>
<p>College book awards are typically given to juniors by the local alumni clubs as a way of identifying prospective students. I identify the students who receive them for my high school. My principal gave me the job because it is a book award and I am the head librarian - LOL- We give one for Swarthmore and Smith but we no longer give a Harvard one because we’ve lost touch with our local alumni chapter. Usually the awards are based on GPA and rank as well as service, character values etc.</p>
<p>D2 got the Bryn Mawr award, which was the English award. It was the only book award D2’s school gave out. It was a surprise to us also. D2 didn’t want us to go to the award ceremony when we were notified about an award for D2.</p>
<p>Congratulations to CPU and mimk6’s son. What’s the Harvard award - which subject?</p>
<p>D got the Wellesley book award–for “Excellence in Liberal Arts and Leadership”. It’s a specially bound Norton Lives of Women-- kind of a wonderful choice! Not a big deal for college but it’s a lovely vote of confidence from the school.</p>
<p>CPU: My D didn’t end up applying for the Berkeley program – it didn’t fit, schedule-wise with the other things she wants to do this summer:
- National Cello Institute
- NJCL Latin convention
- an internship as assistant camp director at the local environmental nature center
- online Econ course (to clear it out of her senior year schedule and make room for Orchestra)</p>
<p>And somewhere in there she needs to fit in college visits & apps, too!</p>
<p>PN: Start with David Attenborough’s Life On Earth series. You can watch it free on youtube, etc.</p>
<p>Oldfort, it’s not for a particular subject. According to the Harvard Alum site, “The Prize Book is awarded to outstanding students in the next to the graduating class who demonstrate excellence in scholarship and achievement in other non-academic areas.” I think schools have some leeway in how they approach the selection process. Our college counselor told me that at our school they look for academic excellence and character.</p>
<p>^^^ Strunk and White, The Elements of Style. A classic! </p>
<p>Can’t live wothout it.</p>
<p>Drama at our house today. I got into a screaming fest with D, and there were tears too -not her but me. This is her life lately -come home from school,take a nap, sit at her desk with facebook on the computer and her cell phone in her hand texting. It goes like this for hours.She tries to hide it by having books on her desk! We have a “family” calendar where all our appts. etc get recorded and both my girls have significant summer homework for ap/honors courses. We need to be organized or there will be chaos. Today was the last day of school and as I sat downstairs organizing our calendar for the summer, writing myriad appointments, cheer/dance practices and HER due dates for assignments (syllabus/papers were thrown/strewn on the kitchen table), I just lost it! I thought. “why the heck am I writing down her assignments, am I crazy?” D2 did a whole chapter of her summer spanish yesterday and is all organized and ready to go. I understand my girls are vastly different but I think D1 is shirking her responsibilities and I somehow have begun to rescue her. </p>
<p>It wasn’t always like this. Just these last few months…I think I have created a monster.</p>
<p>Well, as I sat with that damn calendar in front of me, I just had enough and went upstairs to talk to her and there she sat, on facebook, cell phone in hand. And her room is a MESS. She does share it with exchange student until June 27th so I understand two girls with massive amounts of clothes/makeup/perfume might get messy but this is dirty messy. There was decaying remnants of lettuce with hardened french dressing in a bowl on her desk. Numerous glasses of water from different days. The end of the school year has been so stressful and the last thing anyone has been thinking about is cleaning but I think the fact that these last few weeks were so anxiety provoking just unleashed a minor breakdown in my brain.
So I lost it. I did. I told her that if she thought she was going to sleep until noon (or later!) everyday then get on facebook, text, go to bonfires, run around with friends, beg for gas money and the debit card and TEXT, that she was extremely mistaken. I told her that if she chose this lifestyle and didn’t want to be more motivated and get her stuff organized and make a study plan that she could get a summer job and drop her ap classes, forget about taking the act again and just plan on going to community college next year.</p>
<p>So of course she lost it and we both were screaming and I was so irate I started hyperventilating, then of course the tears came. Husband came out of his office and D2 and her friend (that I forgot was at our house) ran into D2’s bedroom to hide from the vocal massacre. </p>
<p>Her dad, as always, was the voice of reason and took D into his office to talk while I went down to the living room and sat on the couch and cried. I gathered myself together after a few minutes and joined them in the office. Husband was discussing solutions with D - like letting her create a study plan, cleaning her room, and putting limits on damn facebook and not procrastinating with her summer homework as she is probably going to have the busiest summer of her entire life. I apologized for screaming and she did too and acknowledged she does have a problem with organization and procrastination. A little bit of progresss I guess. </p>
<p>But, just a few hours after that family discussion and what I thought was a good plan we all agreed upon, she comes charging downstairs yelling “where is my tap costume?” “K has been sitting in the driveway waiting for me, why didn’t you tell me?” (K takes D to dance on Wed. then D takes K on Thurs.) I felt my temper start to flare and asked her “didn’t she text you?” and her response - “I was sleeping.” Well I told her I was in the living room and had no idea anyone was in the driveway and it was HER responsibility to be ready for dance. She then asked “where is my dance bag!!!” I knew where it was but I told her to find it herself…well she did as it was hanging on the shelf in the kitchen. So she storms out and goes to dance. I didn’t cry but I wanted to.</p>
<p>When she came home hours later, she was calm and rational again. I didn’t push it or bring anything up. I decided the afternoon tempest was enough.</p>
<p>So, everything is better FOR NOW. She even came downstairs later and gathered up her Buckeye Girls state packet and did her online orientation - with no pushing/reminder from me. That gave me some relief. I don’t know why I am sharing all this but I just had to get it out. Sometimes I feel like I have no idea about being a good parent. I am only 18 years older than my own daughter and her dad is only 17 years older. We try so hard - maybe over compensate because we were so young and didn’t want her to live up to statistical expectations of kids born to kids.</p>
<p>I am going to try and back off for a little while and see how she does with organization and homework. She has a pretty huge project she is doing for AP english and she chose Madame Bovary. The book list was a mile long but it was narrowed down immediately (for $ reasons) to what we had available in the house - about 20 ap approved books. My worst nightmare is staying up with her the night before she has to email the teacher the project and desperately trying to remember Madame Bovary. </p>
<p>Sigh. Wish me luck and if anyone survived this long post and has advice, I would appreciate it.</p>
<p>oh, and glido - have elements of style and loved it while in all my lit. classes in college
I have no idea what everyone is talking about re: book awards. I am such a hick. lol</p>
<p>I haven’t been here for a while. Congratulations, mimk6, on your son’s book award. Usually the book is a nice-looking volume of noted works - a nice keepsake. My S won the Yale Book Award, which is the Yale Shakespeare Complete Works. A hefty 4000+ pages!</p>
<p>PCP - your daughter must be incredibly talented to come so far in such a short time. One thing to consider, if she submits an art portfolio, it will be sent to the art department and not viewed by admissions. If she puts a few pieces (good quality photos) in with the application (she can give the photos to her HS GC to include in the school envelope), then the ad coms will see her work. This may be a good thing to do if she wants her art to be considered only as an EC. Many have told me that ad coms love to look at artwork while reading all those applications.</p>
<p>mspearl - we’ve all been there, age has nothing to do with it! As a matter of fact I keep thinking that if I had my kids earlier I wouldn’t be such a grump right now. It’s teenagers not their parents!</p>
<p>You’re right to back off and the truth is, you’ve created your kids from both nature and nurture angles and they are who they are right now and there is little you can do to change them, they need to change on their own. One daughter will always be more organized and on top of things, the other not so much and might need a little extra help from you. If you find she’s not plotting her calendar, ask her at a calm moment if she has another way she might prefer to keep track of all she has to do, if not, then can the two of you write up the calendar for her. You need to let her control a little bit more, and while you might have to pick up the pieces a bit in the beginning, she will learn in time to go it on her own, even if it means rushing in the end. Oh and why would you need to know about Madame Bovary? It’s her project and it’s highly unlikely that whatever project she hands in will create a huge difference in her grade for the year or make or break her admission to college. It’s taken me a long time to deal with my younger daughter like this but it’s been about 1 1/2 years that I’ve had a (mostly) hands off policy and she’s survived and thrived very well being responsible for all her own work. Is it my way, absolutely not, but it usually works for her and when it doesn’t there’s no one to blame (although that doesn’t mean she doesn’t try!)</p>
<p>It’s only going to get worse next year so learn to take deep breaths! Also, is there any chance you can afford a college counselor to prod her along with applications and review her essays? It would be a shame to spend her last year home fighting a lot which is very typical but vastly mitigated when there is a third party helping.</p>
<p>Congrats PCP and mimk6 on your kid’s achievements! Wonderful! </p>
<p>DS is pushing towards the end. I think he is counting on easy regents tests to increase his grades at the end. I’m hoping it works…otherwise his unweighted GPA will drop a bit and he’ll have at least 2 Bs on his report card. His weighted GPA will increase significantly b/c of the AP classes. However, I know that most colleges are looking at unweighted as most of their applicants take APs. At this point my fingers are crossed. I am not at all involved in his projects, assignments or test prep. His achievements and his failures are all his. I’m pretty proud of him! Although I always seem to see the areas “where he could have done better”. I’m trying to just be happy and supportive of his achievements. He really has done some stellar work this year. Now if hewould just get a summer job…</p>
<p>mspearl- I hope your goal of backing of from your DD works for both of you. I don’t think you being so heavily involved in each individual project is really helpful to her in the end. That has to be her Madame Bovary project, not yours. I understand that your kids have huge summer assignments, but they need to stress about them, not you. It’s June 2nd and you are heavily stressing over assignments due in 2 months. </p>
<p>I’d also add that kids do spend hours texting, on FB and listening to music. Instead of trying to manage their time spent doing things you don’t like, I’d flip it and just make sure they are doing the things you expect them to do. What are your expectations for them this summer? If they sleep till noon and clean the bathroom at 11 PM rather than 11am, does that really matter? No. As long as the bathroom gets clean. See what I mean? I don’t think you can limit their hours on FB/texting/whatever. I do think you can set expectations of things you want done (laundry, house cleaning, getting a job) and then what they do in their “free” time is really up to him. I guess we would all like our kids to read King Lear in their free time, but mostly they are going to go to the movies, go on FB and listen to music. I hope it all works out for you!</p>
<p>I think a certain amount of conflict between mothers and daughters is inevitable. It’s our job to “raise them right” and be the voice of reason. It’s their job to figure out who they are as individuals, and work for a life independent of us – which involves a fair amount of push-back. Knowing this doesn’t make it any easier, though!</p>
<p>Good luck with it. I think this may be a very long year.</p>
<p>mspearl,</p>
<p>I yelled at my D this morning about her disorganization too --the milk in the cereal bowl left on her desk for 3 days was curdling and there were about 8 empty water bottles, crinkled papers and dirty laundry strewn about the room. I usually ignore the mess but today it reached the unsanitary mark. I know she is busy --but there are some fixed expectations. </p>
<p>I don’t worry about the homework --it gets done (sometimes the morning it is due). It’s best if I don’t know what is due when (–so I can’t stress out about it!)</p>
<p>I second the notion that it will be a long year! I also hope that none of your children will become my daughter’s dorm-mate…you are all such good people.</p>