<p>Does every kid have so much work? My daughter got home at 2:20 and is still working. She took a short break to run, but has been working for 5 hours and shows no sign of stopping. She says she may not go to the college fair tomorrow because she has to finish a physics " web assign" due at midnight, needs to study for US and math tests ( Thursday and Friday), and needs to re-write and study her English and Spanish notes. She refuses to go to sleep until she types each classes notes and studies them- this is in addition to hw and tests. The problem is that every night she works for 7 or more hours when it really is not necessary. She wanted to drive to the college fair, but now she is telling me that it depends on her work load. The good news is that she is in a great mood, but this all seems a bit obsessive.</p>
<p>She is telling me that I can go without her. Really? I can pass for a 16 year old girl introducing myself to these admissions counselors? There are 6 schools that would be nice to visit, but only 2 that are important because they track interest big time. </p>
<p>She got two tests back and was very pleased. Yippee!! Good luck for those of you waiting for SATs on Thursday. They say ginger or peppermint is good for nausea Lol. There is always wine!</p>
<p>twogirls, it sounds like your D is really working a lot. Honestly, my D is more on the opposite side. She has kicked it more into gear lately, but she does not spend that much time on homework. I think that all kids are just different, with different drivers. Laughing about her saying you could go to the college fair without her. Yeah, no thank you!</p>
<p>D’s 1st quarter final grades are trickling in (I think they aren’t officially due until Friday) but I’m finding the early results interesting. It looks like her highest grades will be in pre-AP French (no surprise) and AP Stats (big surprise). I told her maybe she should look into a career doing stats for the Tour de France. ;)</p>
<p>I doubt we will make it to the college fair, but we will see. The two schools that really track interest we have already visited and plan to go back again in the spring or summer, so it’s fine. The other 2-3 schools we have not yet seen but are planning to go in the spring. A few schools that she is interested in won’t even be there and we are visiting them in February. I really just wanted her to say hi, but if she can’t go, she can’t go. No big deal. Another reason I wanted her to go is to see if there are any schools that are new to us that may interest her, but I have the list of schools so she can research them on her own ( yeah right). Her two safety schools ( financial safety schools- very impt ) will be there- she already saw them once but we really have to re-visit to show them the interest. I don’t want them deferring her to regular decision because they think she is using them as a safety. </p>
<p>My daughter is a perfectionist- that’s the problem. In 8th grade her notes were so organized and detailed that her teacher wanted them to use for her class the following year. She also does work now that others save for tomorrow, or the day after, or the weekend. Some of her friends are just like her, while others procrastinate and then complain. Mine complains anyway Lol. </p>
<p>Our marking period ends mid November, so we still have another 3 weeks. I really hate to wish away time, but it will be nice to have one marking period over with. She has some kind of peer club that meets today ( freshmen mentor) during AP physics ( ugh) so she is not going to the club. There is no way she is missing physics. She commented that she is going to ask him if he is teaching today ( really? What does that mean?) and if he says no ( really?) then maybe she will go ( I have no idea what she meant). It is some kind of special day for freshmen so maybe that has something to do with the " are you teaching today" thing. ??</p>
<p>She is already discussing next years classes: AP bio, AP calc ( not sure which), IB English year 2, Spanish through one of the colleges, and some kind of SS but not sure which because next year there is one required semester class and then the next semester is a SS elective. Not sure what else she is planning.</p>
<p>twogirls, I would skip the college fair. It sounds like you’ve already done a lot to show interest. We went by D’s first choice school at the mega college fair and it was manned by a recent grad (his name tag had 2013 after his name and I asked). I don’t know if it helped D or not in showing interest. He scanned D’s registration but one other Adcom said most kids just have their registration scanned and move on. College visits seem to be a better way to show interest at this point and you’ve done that.</p>
<p>D has more work than last year but she doesn’t have a killer schedule so her homework load is manageable. Some friends have a ridiculous amount of homework. They come home at 3, do homework until dinner, eat and then go back to homework until some late hour whereupon they go to bed. One mom described it as an unending stream of homework; you never finish it, you just stop for the day and more homework is assigned the next day.</p>
<p>D seems to be the opposite. Sometimes when I ask if she has homework she says she’s finished it (it’s not even dark out!). Then I ask about projects. Under control. Tests? Nope. ACT? SAT? That’s when she gets mad.</p>
<p>S was scheduled to partake in a humanity trip but due to security issues it was canceled. S came home from BS instead. He is swamped with a lot of homework, papers to write. I’m just wondering how he would have completed all this work in Africa. I’m impressed how motivated he is to maintain top grades. His midterm grades were sent home and he’s doing great so far.
Anyway I’m so happy to have him home. I’m going to pull him away from his desk today and let him drive the car. He’s driving test is schedule during winter break.</p>
<p>My kid wants to take her driving test during the December break, but she knows it won’t happen unless I am 100% sure she is ready. Slacker- I suppose hw is kind of like laundry!!
Muf- Africa? Wow- I would love to go there!!! With two kids in college something tells me it won’t be happening LOL. </p>
<p>I agree that missing the college fair is not a big deal. She got a 96 on her AP Spanish test, after stressing out about the listening sections and deciding that now she has to start watching the news in Spanish.</p>
<p>I would love to know how many people go to a college fair twice (with their second kid). I found the one that we went to with d13 totally useless and will not go back with s15. Way too many people and you really can’t have a meaningful conversation. </p>
<p>My s15 is an above average student but not a great student so it is a different experience than with d13. S15 is also an athlete so we get to relearn how to do a college search with athletics mixed in!</p>
<p>No - I’ve never found college fairs all that useful. The first one I took my oldest to turned him off of Colleges That Change Lives forever! He didn’t like their anti-ivy speech.</p>
<p>I’ve been down with another migraine the last couple days. They’ve really hit hard this last couple times :-(. So, catching up again…</p>
<p>
I am also a bit intrigued by that, but wonder how coming in with AP/IB credits affects that experience,where on the main campus students may have more class options if they already have credit for some of the core classes.</p>
<p>Has anyone else dealt with scoliosis? We discovered it in D back in late elementary school, and were put on ‘watching it’ status, then a couple years ago, went for a follow up to the orthopedic surgeon and he said she was fine, to consider it a non-issue, etc. So I have tried to do that…mostly had, but just recently I was noticing it on her again, just the way she was standing made it more apparent, so my mom worry kicked in again. I don’t know that’s it’s worse or anything, and I don’t know what we can really do about it anyway. There doesn’t seem to be much if you aren’t ‘bad’ enough to get surgery (which we do not want). My husband is having a hard time with his back recently and went to a chiropractor and found that he has scoliosis, but never knew it. His is different in shape and scope than D’s.
D is trying to just be a normal teen and deal with her ongoing anxiety, and starting new rounds of Dr visits would not help that. Do many of you just seem to always feel guilty that you aren’t doing enough, are doing too much…all at the same time?<br>
Ok, going back to read the last couple days of posts now…</p>
<p>shoebom, I know what you mean about never knowing if you are doing enough or too much. Neither D has scoliosis, but my D2 has flat feet - really flat feet. I finally took her to see an orthopod last year, and he said there really was nothing to be done but to bring her back again this year. Of course I haven’t followed up with that. Same issue with eye exams. I think they both might need glasses for seeing the board from far away, yet I STILL haven’t managed to get those scheduled. <em>sigh</em></p>
<p>Hope you get a long break from the migraines.</p>
<p>OHmom, thank you for posting that conversion chart.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m a little confused, D’s score, if I am reading the chart correctly, came out the same (on the same row) on the PLAN and the PSAT. I just would have thought the PSAT score would align more with the SAT without writing, but it seems to fall in line with the scores for the SAT with writing?</p>
<p>BHM, Thank you for that link to Rugg’s Recommendations. I had never heard of it! Hard to believe you can hang around on CC for months and still find new resources!</p>
<p>RE: the amount of homework. D is definitely spending less time, so far, this year, on home work than last year. Last year (soph), it seemed that school commitments and LOTS of HW were her life, and her perfectionist tendencies made it worse. The stress of it all really affected her and now she is taking it much easier. It does seem like she is getting assigned less, but she also cut back on other commitments so she has more time, and she is now willing to just do enough, and not have it be perfect. Her first qtr report card will be out in a couple days and she happily said she has all A’s and B’s. Last year she would not have been happy with those B’s! I am still getting used to this, and I think overall it’s a good thing, but do worry about how it might affect her college options.<br>
Slacker, I too try to remind her about studying for SAT/ACT and she is not at all excited about it.</p>
<p>Wright, I am sorry your son is going through this at school. It can be so hard to navigate. I’m glad he is talking to you about it and hope you can all find a way to work it out. Keep us posted.</p>
<p>I don’t see a difference in hw this year because my D works too hard on every bloody assignment she gets and always has. I apologize but I forget who warned me to make sure she wasn’t wasting too much time in APUSH by taking excessive notes on the book? Thank you for that warning! When I asked her about this I learned that she is taking notes and creating outlines on every reading they get (via a series of word docs). She proudly showed me the outlines she creates and told me that when they discuss things in class or she studies for a test and can’t remember something she can use spotlight (?) to find it in her notes. It’s hard for me to tell whether this is actually helpful to her or just a huge timesink. I suggested that she might want to scale back on the notes and outlines in favor of balance. (BTW, it seems to me that they are whizzing through American history. They’ve already wrapped up the Civil War.) </p>
<p>My sense is that she also loses the forest for the trees. She was annoyed that she received a 90 on her last bio exam because the teacher took off points “randomly.” D also complained that the teacher didn’t follow the school’s rubric for labs and that she lost points on the lab. Well ok except that she’s got a solid 95 in this class. I suggested that rather than fret about the points maybe it would be worth her while to think about what the teacher is correcting and even go so far as to ask her why she prefers her lab rubric to the school’s official one. In other words LEARN something instead of focus on points.</p>
<p>I paint an unflattering picture of D and I don’t mean to. She’s a very good kid who is generally sweet and loving and interesting…and driven. For someone like this grades are poison. I’ve never experienced this in one of my children before so I’m kind of at a loss and I need to vent somewhere!</p>
<p>Junior year at DD’s school is a bear. Last night was particulary bad - home from field hockey & done with dinner by 7:30 - she was up to 12:45 AM studying for her Physics test and something else; wife didn’t tell me what it was.</p>
<p>DD’s school has a parent lunch next week specifically for junior parents; so the parents have an idea of what to expect throughout the the & perhaps how to cope with their students stress level. Wife will attend this one; I get the Faculty Advisor Meeting in November just before Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>Softball girl was named as part of the " All Star County Team" and was also given an Academic recognition ( no idea what that means - she was the only player on the team to get this, maybe top GPA? )</p>
<p>Homework? I would say d2 spends about 3 hrs nightly and works ahead over weekends. Neither of mine have spent 7 hrs a night. No wonder your daughter has mini meltdowns. That’s a hard schedule to maintain for a prolonged period. Hope it eases up for her.</p>
<p>shoboemom- are you migraines triggered by change in weather? Turned the heat on this morning for the first time. It is a wee bit chilly this morning!</p>
<p>Shoboe, I am always feeling guilty about something I’ve neglected or that I’ve intruded too much. My D says my free floating anxiety makes her more anxious so yes, I know it’s counterproductive and harmful. (Just picture me hopping around her asking over and over whether she’s got a picture id, sharpened pencils, two working calculators, snacks, and water for the PSAT.) </p>
<p>We’ve dealt with scoliosis worries in the past and I share your feeling that there’s not much that can be done short of surgery. My mother had surgery when she was very young so we do watch carefully. D has started yoga this year and I’m hoping that this regular stretching and attention to posture might help–as long as it doesn’t worsen things, lol. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, I neglected to schedule a routine orthodontist appointment for her last June. I finally got it on the calendar for November. Talk about negligence.</p>