Happy New Year all!
Happy New Year everyone! I am truly grateful to be able to have my entire family with me this year. It’s become increasingly difficult to manage that and I do not take it for granted.
Happy New Year everyone and best wishes to you and your children.
Three weeks went by really fast!
I agree! D flys back Saturday and her winter tem begins Monday.
Way too behind to catch up on all things - so, here’s wishing you all happy, healthy new year!
How did we all get to sophomore year half over? This is going by way too fast!
D started back to class today. Good lunch to all of our kids in the next semester/quarter!
^ Tell that to my dining hall! :)) 
=))
Ha ha! I hate the 15 min edit. GOOD LUCK!!
My D is so happy to have a kitchen this year, she sends me pictures of yummy things she cooks for herself. Except when she is too busy to have time to cook.
This is her last pre-pharmacy semester.
Daughter worked hard on summer research internship applications over break, hoping for offer sometime around March.
Same here, @NorthernMom61. My fingers are crossed that something exciting comes through for both of them!! D went back to school Sunday and classes started yesterday. I think she would have preferred to return on Friday or Saturday, but I wasn’t willing to give up spending those days with her.
We still have another week with our D and are thoroughly enjoying it. Good luck to our kids and their parents for the coming semester!
D left a few days ago to spend the last week of her winter break with her boyfriend at his parent’s house. Her visit was way too short, but it was great to see her and how she’s grown. And it turns out her fears of failing her courses last semester were unfounded and she had an excellent GPA for the semester and is still ranked in top 6-7% at her school. But she agreed to take less credits next semester in order to relieve some of the pressure (apparently at her school if you’re taking less than 20 credits, you’re “slacking off” 
@NorthernMom61 I hope something comes through for your D that she likes and will be a great experience for her! My D’s school is doing a new program where the engineering students study during the summer semester and take the fall semester off for co-op, so she signed up for that and will be applying for a co-op. So we looked at some job postings together and made a list of ones that were interesting, and she’ll work on applications in the first part of the semester - she was a little too “burned out” to do it during the break.
(Maybe everyone knows this already but, indeed.com has a lot of postings from companies for co-op/intern jobs. There’s also an app called Handshake but the college has to be participating in it, and apparently hers isn’t.)
Wishing all of our kids a happy semester ahead!
Thanks for your kind wishes @jmek15 and @insanedreamer. My daughter wants a university research type of opportunity so hasn’t explored industry options yet. I think she is a great candidate, but I hope the application reviewers are able to see that.
Glad you had a chance to see your girl @insanedreamer. Each time mine leaves I know the times that we will get to see her will be gradually getting shorter and/or less frequent. I guess it is take what we can get.
@NorthernMom61 is she applying for research jobs through REU?
Yes @insanedreamer, several REUs.
Our visit with our daughter was way too quick. She is doing well and looking forward to her classes this upcoming semester. She still has to work on her cooking skills.
@insanedreamer I’m glad your daughter survived the semester. Unless she is working towards a double major or trying to graduate early, there is no good reason to overload, especially in engineering. I hope spring term is a little smoother for her.
Thanks for the well wishes, @VMT. D is not double majoring (her major [chemE] has too many requirements to make that feasible within 4 years and is not recommended by her college; even a minor is tough to fit in - she was originally going to do a minor in Psyc or CogSci but had to drop it as it was too hard to make the classes times match up and fulfill all the reqs, she still might do a minor in Chinese if she can swing it schedule-wise because she had AP credits she could apply to it. She’s also not trying to grad early. So honestly, I’m not sure why she was taking so many classes. But actually, the problem wasn’t really the number of credits but rather that a couple of classes were a lot harder than she expected (based on her freshman year experience), and one class in particular took a lot of extra work/study on her part to get a good grade in. She has more realistic expectations going into next semester, which will be good.