LadyArwyn I am sorry to hear that. She learned the hard way that it is always wise to have somebody to walk with at night. My D just told me about a sexual assault in one of the dorms.
Actually, that was the easy way. The hard way would have been if he had actually attacked her.
Today we learned that one of My daughter’s high school classmates just had his dreams completely destroyed.
They were in the NJROTC unit together for four years, and he was the “golden boy.” He had the grades, the promotions, the leadership skills, popularity, and was given unit command. He was the instructor’s “favorite.” He was a nice guy, too. He applied for and got a full-ride NROTC scholarship to an Arizona university (far from our Washington state home). All he wanted in life was to become a career Navy officer.
Today I learned that he not only lost his dream, but his scholarship, and had to drop-out mid-semester, since his family doesn’t have the money to cover tuition. And it wasn’t even really his fault.
He has eczema - a military-disqualifying medical condition that he was trying to get waived. They were working on the waiver when the date came up by which he had to have all of his vaccinations (the military grants ZERO waivers on vaccinations - including many not offered to most civilians). Apparently, if you have eczema, you can’t get a smallpox vaccination. With no smallpox vaccination, he can’t join any service, ever, either as officer or enlisted. He was dropped from the unit that day, and his scholarship yanked.
Then, to add insult to injury, while he was packing to leave his dorm and go home, he was hit by a kidney stone. So he couldn’t drive due to the pain. His mother has to fly to Arizona, then drive him back.
That is heartbreaking @LadyArwyn. Hopefully he can find another good alternative for a college when he is ready.
@LadyArwyn That’s horrifying, I can’t even imagine… that poor young man.
LadyArwyn, that’s terrible! And there’s no cure for it, it’s an autoimmune disease.
Oh, no…so sad 
.
That is so sad. I feel horribly for that young man and his family.
That is a hard situation. I feel bad for him. Hope things get better.
FYI, it varies by school but if one does not have sufficient hours to transfer, then one could possibly apply as a freshman. May have to go thru an appeal process to be considered. My understanding is there is more $ available for freshman scholarships than for transfer scholarships.
Poor thing, hope he can turn this into a learning experience. I have an older co-worker who had eczema and got out of serving (from his point of view; Vietnam era). I’d be more worried about the kidney stone in the short term.
As for "Um… I don’t quite get the brother joke, sorry. I don’t have any brothers. ", you said your friend was like a brother. The joke is that someone who is a friend might be more than a friend later, don’t discount anyone. You certainly seemed to enjoy your time with your friend.
One of my friends who is now near 50 has had many friends of the female persuasion who thought of him as a brother. He never had the gumption to “promote” any of those relationships to dating. Kind of the movie troph of the male best friend to several women, and watching them get married and never even consider him
@rhandco He has a steady girlfriend who he’s been with for a couple years. There’s nothing boring or unattractive about him, it’s not like he’s the sort of guy that girls automatically throw in the brother/friend category. I’ve honestly only been around him for a little over 3 weeks, spread over 3 years. We know each other from that glider encampment thing - he is from Texas, it’s not like we saw each other outside of the encampment. (Actually we did once at an aerospace event, but besides that, nothing.) We’ve never been interested in each other as more than friends, I know that for certain. It’s not like he’d be afraid to ask me if he was.
That is a very strange story , ladyarwen. There must be more to it. Smallpox vaccination isn’t given anymore (perhaps to a tiny number of lab workers in a military lab), and would not be given to an ROTC student by any stretch. Was it perhaps chickenpox vaccine? I’m not aware of it being contraindicated in eczema, but that would at least be one that would get boosted for a college freshman.
@LadyArwyn so sorry for your daughter’s high school classmate. If he wants to pursue a career with a naval connection he could look at Webb Institute, an all-scholarship college of Naval Engineering: http://www.webb.edu/
That’s odd. My son got the smallpox vax in bootcamp in 2009. Has the scar to prove it. That’s where I got mine, too, in 1987.
From a military vaccine FAQ written in 2014
“From 1983 through 2002, most service members did not get vaccinated against smallpox.
Those vaccinated before 1983 do not have much immunity left from vaccine given years
ago. Until the late 1970s, many billions of people around the globe received smallpox
vaccine. Smallpox vaccine is still used routinely to protect a small number of people who
work in labs with the smallpox vaccine virus (vaccinia) or similar viruses. Between
December 2002 and May 2014, more than 2.4 million service members received smallpox
vaccinations.”
So, it seems to be for a “small number of people who work in labs” plus military members who still get the vaccine.
So… update on me… I got 100 on my latest chem test! Whoohoo! Combined with my previous 94 and extra credit I picked up on a few quizzes, I now have a 98 average in the class.
I also got an 88 on the first attempt of my second Calc III test. 2 down, 5 to go…
If only adults saw things through the eyes of children… I volunteered at this event on campus yesterday; an organization had a bunch of STEM activities for over 200 middle school girls - sort of a thing to get young girls interested in STEM fields and all that. Anyways, at the end of the event, we were handing out surveys about it. One of the girls asked me what a couple of the questions meant - one was on extracurricular activities, and the other one was one on ethnicity - like select from the typical list. She honestly didn’t know what it meant. I answered the question about the activities, but I didn’t know what to say about the other one. Luckily (being impatient), she didn’t inquire much about the ethnicity question more than to mainly note that she didn’t understand it and decided to skip it before I had to come up with an answer to it. It’s just that I didn’t want to tell her how to answer the question - I would have guessed that she was white just from looking at her, but I didn’t want to tell her she was something when I could be completely wrong.
How appropriate is it to ask a child their ethnicity without their parents’ consent?
I would be pretty upset if my daughter had to fill out such a form; we don’t talk about ethnicity very much. She knows she is multiracial as are her parents and siblings, but we’ve never sat down with her and said “check these boxes if you can check more than one, check whichever you want if you can check only one”.
http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/talking_to_our_children/
The question is on virtually every survey nowadays from what I’ve seen. I’m pretty sure it’s on all the standardized tests as well. It was just surprising that someone wouldn’t understand what it was asking. It was uncomfortable for me, but to be honest, it was sort of nice to imagine how things would be if everyone didn’t know the difference between white and African American and Hispanic, etc.
@rhandco - I am confused - your daughter has never had to check a box on a form at school?