<p>@2016BarnardMom I’m so glad to hear that your recovery is going well…sounds like better than expected! Yay! And congratulations on being nicotine free!! Way to go!!</p>
<p>Get well soon @2016BarnardMom !</p>
<p>@2106BarnarndMom – very impressed by your handling of healing combined with nicotine withdrawal. I have never smoked but I can only imagine how difficult it must be to deal with both simultaneously!</p>
<p>@2106BarnarndMom - So happy your son is loving where he is - and even has a girl! She sounds sweet.</p>
<p>Finally catching up with time to write rather than just read. We had a wonderful parents weekend with DD last weekend. It was great to be able to spend some time with her and meet the new friends. Many were busy with rehearsals and performances, so we had DD for time alone for dinner and Water Fire Saturday night and took her and a friend out on Friday night. The weather was beautiful just to wander around campus and hang out too. DH and I were able to do our thing during the day while DD studied and then met her to see a show one of her friends was in and met that friends parents also so that was nice.</p>
<p>Didn’t see her roommate as her family was around but that was fine. The brother was staying with the girls and DD dubbed him anti-social - guess he didn’t even speak to her despite staying in their room! DD is doing the best with the situation and loves the other kids on her floor and in her dorm so it makes it tolerable. But the drinking roommate who bursts into song at 2 AM in the room when DD is sleeping is getting old. DD says she doesn’t seem to get social clues about not talking to her or being really loud when DD is asleep in the middle of the night! No wonder she seems tired when I talk with her. Luckily there are friends with rooms she can crash in if needed and their room seems to be a general hang out spot which she really likes. There were a few care boxes on the floor when I was there - two of which belonged to people who lived elsewhere! Guess they’re all in the room many times anyway so they figured they’d just leave the food there. And I resupplied the favorite requested food (Ritz crackers!) and brought fresh baked chocolate chip cookies too so she should be set for a while. </p>
<p>And I think I finally found a warmer rain coat and winter coat that will work for her! She’s spending one night a week out working with the homeless so needed something warmer and waterproof (and not bright pink!) Hopefully she’ll not be set for clothes for a while. Going from a school uniform to “regular” clothes is tough, especially with the outerwear she never really needed before as she wasn’t walking long distances outside in the past. Of course, it’s about 70 today but will turn much colder this weekend!</p>
<p>It’s spring registration time! I guess I got spoiled - when you spend a fortune and your child goes to an expensive private college registration is no biggie. Not so for my d who hardly got any needed classes for next semester. She called me today freaking out. She got one of the last registration times. I don’t know if going and begging the professor helps or not so she emailed her advisor - who did advising in a group, not one on one. Hopefully the advisor can give her tips. She didn’t get into the second writing class and you can’t move on to lit until you do that, and she also needs 2 semesters of lit. </p>
<p>Got a text from my son while my husband and I were out to dinner last night. He was thrilled that he got an A on his business class exam, so he should be able to earn an A in the class. He’d love to make the athletic conference honor roll his first semester, which would be amazing as he’s had a tough schedule that includes physics, calculus and computer science. If he has one of the top GPAs in the conference, he could earn all-conference honors – only seven students achieve that. His spring registration is set for early next week, and he already has all his classes mapped out. He should get the times and professors he wants since he registers on a priority level with the seniors.</p>
<p>Eyemamom: Your daughter should be able to get the classes she needs as registration rolls on. A lot of times, kids decide to switch around their classes, and that creates openings. This happened with my son. He needed a calculus class for this fall, and he was among the final group to register. He got online one afternoon, did a bit of research and moved a couple of classes around so he could get his calculus class. My older son was a master at scheduling. In fact, everyone always seemed to come to him and ask for help. He was juggling all kinds of classes to make things fit. So tell her to relax. It should get better.</p>
<p>Registration is in the next week or so for DS also. I know he has a meeting with his advisor next week as a regular part of that process but he also wants to discuss double majoring in aerospace and mechanical engineering. The two fields are very closely related and the double major would only add three additional classes. Since he has so many AP credits he should be able to do both and still only carry 4 classes a semester, particularly important in the fall when he is in season. </p>
<p>So far so good with academics this semester, and he says the workload is actually easier to manage than high school. He’s only taking 4 classes (Calc III, physics, chemistry, and a writing class), has no commute, and has less busy work. He says he’s getting much more sleep now than he ever did in high school despite daily 3 hour sports practices and travel. He breezed through midterms and hopefully can make Dean’s list this semester. He thanks his high school for demanding a lot out of its students and preparing him well.</p>
<p>The only bummer is he is now injured and probably out for the remainder of the season. He’s had a nagging leg injury and will have to get an MRI to figure things out.</p>
<p>My D has called a few times this week both sick and homesick. She misses her kitty a lot ( and hopefully her family at least a little!). The weather is changing & she’s experiencing a real bite in the air for the first time, that we just don’t get here in San Diego. Otherwise, she sounds happy and very busy. </p>
<p>She got to experience the wonder of Priority Registration for Honors students for the first time last week. They register first before anyone, including seniors. It sounded like a bit of a party, with all the students up uncharacteristically early, ready to hit “submit” on the stroke of 7:00. Overall, we are really pleased with her experience at Temple so far!</p>
<p>Registration is the week after next, and I don’t think d got the best of times, either. I told her to have back ups! I kind of hope her one elective pick fills up so that she has to look at some more gen eds. I keep telling the kid that she doesn’t want to spend her senior year taking the courses she should have taken as a freshman! </p>
<p>@eyemamom tell your d to get herself on as many waitlists as she can for the courses she really wants. Schedules will change a lot between now and the end of this semester. </p>
<p>@ordinarylives - thanks for the tip. I just looked on her schools website and there seems to be plenty of room on the waitlists. Now she just has to figure out how to do it. </p>
<p>Wow, registration for next semester already? Before we know it, our kids will be finishing their freshmen year of college. Time goes very fast indeed! My daughter’s pre-registration is second week of November.</p>
<p>I agree - so hard to believe that it’s time for registration already! Especially since it still seems to be mid-terms! DD says she has 10 classes in her shopping cart! The one class she knows she wants to take is a large class so that shouldn’t be a problem. But a few small theatre class options could be so hopefully she can get into one of those. But with the shopping period when the semester starts, even what she signs up for may change!</p>
<p>And I can’t believe DS’11 is going to be scheduling his final classes! He’s majoring in math with a statistics track but keeps talking maybe looking into actuarial jobs. He has one required math class left for statistics and if he takes one additional class he would fulfill both the statistics and actuarial tracks plus one class remaining for his econ minor. He’s not sure how a double track major would work but is meeting his adviser next week. </p>
<p>I’m just hoping that DD’s final exam schedule will allow her to be able to see DS’11 graduate. It’s going to be a really close call about that depending upon which classes she ends up with and when their exams are. Not something I really thought about but it could be a real problem - ugh!</p>
<p>@2016BarnardMom - So good to hear you sounding so well! So impressed with you deciding to give up smoking while in the hospital!</p>
<p>@eymamom, I think begging professors can help – my DS was able to get into a class he wanted (but didn’t even need) this semester by emailing the prof after trying to register and finding it full. It’s worth a try anyhow, especially for the writing class that is a pre-requisite to moving on. Sometimes the prof can give the students a code to allow them to bypass the “full” status or something like that. </p>
<p>I don’t know exactly when registration is for my DS but he said he is required to meet with his advisor before he can register, and has an appointment for that, I think. I tried to suggest that he might want to have an elective picked out before going in to meet with the advisor, but he told me that he did NOT need two advisors (i.e., butt out) so I dropped it. He’s in engineering, so there’s not much mystery about what he will be signing up for in any case.</p>
<p>@2016BarnardMom congrats on quitting smoking, and hope you are feeling 100% soon!</p>
<p>D has been home for fall break (dorms close, so she has no choice!) since Weds night. I confess to going into advisor mode (I really do advise and register college freshmen as part of my job). I’m feeling a little guilty about it on the one hand. You know, let them fly. On the other, the kid wants to double major and single minor. Doable. Thanks to all the AP/DE credits, she has to fulfill the smaller gen Ed requirements of a transfer, BUT all the remaining majors/minor/gen ed requirements leave her with a whopping 2-3 pure elective spaces soph- senior. Just saying, maybe you want to get those gen eds done now if you’ve got the room and save the electives for the killer semesters to come. Poor kid can’t even roll her eyes and tell me I don,t know what I’m talking about.</p>
<p>Been a great visit. Going to hate to see it end tomorrow. </p>
<p>Ordinarylives: My son has a computer science gen ed requirement to meet, but he’s had some difficulty understanding the material in his first comp sci class. He text me the other night and said if he struggles in the second one, he fears that he may need to drop one of his majors and select another. My husband and I believe he is a little overtired from the demands of his first semester in college – from the academics (which have been tough, although he was quite prepared for them) to early morning cross country practices and road trips to adjusting to college life in general. And when we are overtired, sometimes we panic. I instructed him to e-mail his cousin, who has a comp sci degree, for some advice. My nephew is a wonderful kid who also had his struggles in college. Sometimes, knowing that someone else had some struggles is a help. You do not feel all alone. He also can visit with a couple of teacher friends we have who have comp sci backgrounds. An hour or two with them may make the difference, too, for the spring semester.</p>
<p>We will see our son in six days. We are journeying south to watch him run in his conference championships. My husband is especially excited. He has not seen the boy in four months – he was away on business when I dropped him off at college.</p>
<p>That happens a lot @momreads. The first semester can be rough on kids, especially athletes because the demands of college athletics, even at D3 or NAIA, were completely unimaginable to them as high school students. They thought they knew what it was like to train and compete. They had no idea. If he’s struggling and the comp sci is an integral part of the second major, I’d probably send him to his advisor as nobody wants or needs to struggle through a whole major. I know it’s first semester, but things tend to get tougher. If the comp sci is just a gen ed or checkbox type thing for the major, well, I’d encourage him to power through. Truth is, many students struggle with a class or two within a major or even with some piece of a job later on. Of course, new freshmen tend to think they’re the only ones who aren’t getting everything or who don’t find college to be high school, part II. Don’t be surprised if it takes a couple of conversations. Sometimes kids think you’re just trying to humor them with your own stories of near-failure. </p>
<p>
For fall break? How about spring break? How about international students and kids that are thousand miles away from home and can’t go home not just because of cost but because of time restriction? How about Thanksgiving? I was not aware that there are colleges like this.</p>
<p>Exceptions are made for students over a certain number of miles from home and in- season athletes. Number of miles for an exception increases with the length of the break. And honestly? As a product of smaller schools myself, I wasn’t aware there were schools whose dorms were always open! </p>
<p>Ordinarylives: Unfortunately, two computer science classes are required for the math major. So he will need to stomach the class to get the degree. That said, I spoke with his older brother, who has a minor in a computer science-related area. He said that he liked my idea of speaking with his kid brother and instructing him to register for 18 hours, not 15 for the spring. One class would be online and an elective that he probably would enjoy because it’s sports-related (I happened to see that the class is offered in the spring). If he thought the comp sci class was a little too much, he could drop it and still have the 15 hours. If I tell him that his older brother likes the idea, he probably will go for it. My older son was a master at registering for classes as an undergrad, and he always seemed to have a good schedule that did not stress him out too much. At least this is not struggling in a class and a time management thing. Because he has study hall as an athlete as well as with his fraternity, he gets his work done.</p>