We are really back from vacation now. I am caught up on posts and laughing at all the packing advice that is only being taken from others because “mom knows nothing”. DH is the one that I am having that problem with now. He keeps making suggestions about things that DS and I addressed long ago. My fear is that he also is “behind” on managing the emotional side of all of this. He actually seems quite annoyed at me at times for having already thought about, discussed and resolved what he is just now thinking about. He does this with other things as well–like asking if we have our passports a mere 36 hours before we left on vacation. They had been in the house for over a week AND I had told him I was picking them up when I had to stop at the safe deposit box for other reasons. Our ride home from move in day could be quite unpleasant if he directs all that unresolved emotion at me. I need him to read the welcome week materials VU sent to get him better prepared for how the actual day will go. Not quite sure how to accomplish that. :-?
@Cheeringsection Ditto! I think that it’s a Y chromosome thing. ( no offense to all of the CC dads, clearly you don’t fall into this category ) We have quite a few friends who still scrambling to even begin preparing for move in ( one who is just now is realizing there is a over 15,000 dollar deficit and is scrambling for loans when move in is 2 weeks away) . Now that DH is seeing this , he finally realizes all the work I’ve been doing over the past year. I’m also dreading the ride home .
@Cheeringsection @carolinamom2boys My dad is like that too. It took a while for us(me, my mom, my sister) to convince him that move in is more than just dropping me off and that he’s stuck on campus until 4:15. Once I showed him the schedule, he finally got it.
@Cheeringsection - so true about the unresolved emotional side. The ride home is so hard. My H is in the same stage as yours, behind on what S and I have been doing and prepping for the move. He is also one for bringing up an important item long after if would have needed to be acquired.
S and his roommate talked again. I think they talked a month ago for a few minutes. As a result, we have now ordered a rug for the room. I closed my eyes and clicked, knowing that I could probably find something cheaper, but it will be in the room when we arrive so it’s one less thing to shop for and wedge into the car.
I can feel the tensions rising around here. S’s books arrived yesterday. I took them out and was looking them over (oh do I love books!) but S didn’t come near them. He doesn’t show much emotion so I’m wondering how he’s doing with the whole idea of moving away.
He did hang out super late with his friends last night. I’m sure that will increase as the move gets closer. I’m glad he has a nice group of friends, many from grade school, that he is close with. I got a glimpse of life with S gone last night- 2am and he was texting me cute emojis. Lol.
Not to alarm, but to consider: Hope all the DC16 freshmen know how to make new friends and meet new people (peers and adults). Students who come to college without that skill can go into a tailspin. This happens even (especially) to students with strong relationships with HS friends and family, But who have not ever faced the challenge of meeting new people. Where I live, many teens are from huge families and have known their friends, well, almost from when they were in utero. Good in a way. Can become very problematic once they need to meet new people in college.
As we speak, professional rug cleaners are doing a thorough deep cleaning of all the wall-to-wall carpet in our home. Things were getting unhealthy. Both S14 and S16 made heroic efforts to get everything off the floor of their rooms – and in the process much junk has gone out (or will soon go out) the door. I should have done this every couple of years and things would never have gotten so bad in there! Three weeks until S14 moves to his off campus apartment and 5 weeks until we drop S16 off for the first time.
I was not as emotional as I expected with S14 – maybe I knew I’d still be very involved in his day-to-day. He still needs support from me but has made major progress taking the reins of his own life. S16 has always been more independent and yet is still my baby. So I’m expecting our drive home to be rough. He’s already planning to go to NYC to watch the world chess championship during Thanksgiving week, for example.
@Cheeringsection @carolinamom2boys @readingclaygirl My H is the highly sentimental one, usually. He is very close to D16. But he and I both more or less left home for college and never really came back, even for summers.
That’s very cute, @psychmomma ! I’d be thrilled to get emojis from my boys.
My H has a very limited range for his radar, too. Issues and decisiond upon which I’ve worked for years, even keeping him updated and consulted, he doesn’t seem willing to attend to until it’s the 11th hour. Then he wants to add his concerns and opinion…on matters that had already been decided and acted upon. Too little, too late, babe.
^ I am absolutely nervous for S making new friends. He is very reserved and even said something like “what do I need friends for? I’ll be studying all the time!” Older S went door to door meeting people on his floor. I expect this S will not use that approach. I’m trying not to borrow trouble and add to my worry list, but this one has crossed my mind on several occasions.
Group Me is one of the best tools for making friends, especially for introverts. In D15’s dorm they quickly started a group me and there were lots of “I’m headed to the dining hall anyone want to come”, “who wants to play ping pong” “anyone want to go get ice cream” type texts that she can pick and choose companionship almost anytime she wants.
We have moved 4 times since D16 started kindergarten. Last time in the middle of 9th grade. (We are convinced the movies Inside Out was written about her feelings, lol) so she thoroughly understands and is able to make friends.
She is also able to recognize the stages of grieving the loss, feeling homesick and moving on when a move happens. She has commented a lot on the differences amongst her friends and how they are handling the transition. Those who have experience moving definitely handle to transition differently. Two friends(who have never moved) and are staying fairly local like within 2 or 3 hours of home have completely dropped out of the picture since around May. There is a time frame shortly after finding out a move is going to happen or when it becomes a reality that kids shut down emotionally and begin to distance themselves from those who are staying, eventually they open back up again, but those 2 friends that have disappeared couldn’t comprehend the transition and didn’t want to wait it out. Several experienced mover friends waited it out, understand that their relationships are changing and are working on how to make the friendship sustainable long distance. It will be interesting to see if D16 remembers the homesick feeling passes but sometime it can take 6plus months for that to happen.
DS has had lots of practice with new people: new teams each school season, select teams far outside our neighborhood, camps and training with different groups of kids, etc. He tends to prefer a few close friends over a large group but is quite comfortable finding his place in a new group. He mentioned to me that he chose his roommate because “he seemed to want to meet people”. He may have some homesick moments but I am confident that he will make friends–at his own pace. I am encouraging him to play on at least one team and join at least 1 club first semester. Common interests are a great way to meet new friends.
I am reading a book called “There is Life After College…What Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow” by Jeffrey J. Selingo (and highly recommended by Frank Bruni. The book, in particular the 1st chapter entitled “The Sprinters, Wanderers and Stragglers”, is an excellent read regarding the need for students to be able to step outside of their comfort zone by building strong/mature connections with, not only new friends, but professors and advisors.
I was one of those kids who did not make friends easily. In real life I am quite shy, and being hard of hearing-completely deaf in one ear-never helped matters. People would talk to me and I’d not hear and fail to respond, so they’d decide I was a stuck-up jerk and forget about me. And loud rooms make it almost impossible for me. Plus, when I went to college, most of my closest friends were really part of my much more gregarious sister’s friend group, so a year behind me. I was afraid I’d be alone all through college.
But somewhere along the line, I’d heard really great advice-if something you need to do intimidates you, PRETEND you’re not nervous and people will be none the wiser. So I forced myself to talk to people-at first, girls on my floor, then others in the dorm, then people in my classes. I built up a small group a friends-never a huge number, like my D has-but enough. I think even introverts don’t want to be completely alone-and so I was propelled out of my room from time to time.
I don’t think D will be alone at all-she already has plans to go to dinner with her roommate and others as soon as they are settled in, and plans to go church-shopping with others. She’s already looking at school groups to join (a requirement of her scholarship) and so on. Plus at home she has friends from all walks of life and has advisors and mentors from several different places. And of course all the technology and apps out there make it so much easier to keep in touch with life-long friends and relatives in far-flung places.
@sseamom Definitely having hearing loss doesn’t make it easy to make friends. You quickly learn who is worth it based on if they will speak up or repeat themselves.
@sseamom That is some excellent advice!
One of the things I loved about my sweet girls IB program was the required CAS (creativity/activity/service) component.
Our school required students participate in activities in the school and local community which forced them to step outside their comfort zone and participate in activities which focused on doing for others over doing for themselves. They also participated in excellent summer/academic programs and report back at the beginning of the school year (with a report about the students participation from a representative of that activity and the students reflections) which was awesome because it kept the kids engaged throughout the summer (these programs were only a few weeks long so the students still had plenty of time to enjoy/travel/relax). She knows she is blessed to have had these experience.
Ok. I’m down to the dregs of the Dorm Mountain shopping list and to-dos. Halp!
- Technology for school:
A. Is there some kind of external hard drive needed for a MacBook Air? Or can everything be stored on the cloud?
B. Is there some kind of portable auxilary power supply/charger (not a plug) to run a phone (LG G3) when it’s battery is dying for the day? Or, run a laptop (MacBook Air) with little juice left? This is for cases where there is no plug around.
C. If campus wifi is reportedly spotty in the dorm, how can the student connect their laptop to wifi reliably? I hear the term “Ethernet” and “wifi booster.” Not sure if those are even relevant. What might a student take to help with wifi access in a dorm?
Signed, the Oldz
P.S.
2. Buy dorm insurance
3. Set up all the legal docs
4. Banking: order checks, get credit card for D16 on birthday
5. Pay college bill once the outside scholarship is ironed out
6. Book D16’s dental, doc appts for 16/17.
- This depends on the types of files your kid uses. If the internal hard drive gets full an external drive may be needed. The most important thing is that the kid develops a plan to regularly back up the internal drive and then uses that plan. You can use an external drive for this, or a cloud based service like Crashplan.
- Yes there are external charging batteries available. We found one for phones at Target on clearance for $5 and used it recently on a trip to Disneyland. It was not a high end model but worked fine to keep the phone going all day in a high use situation. I think they are available for laptops too but a macbook air battery will last 10 hours or more and it shouldn’t be necessary.
- If wifi is spotty, an ethernet cable is probably the next best thing, and is probably faster than wifi as well. I sent my oldest to college with an ethernet cable. She eventually told me the dorm didn’t have ethernet (??) and brought the cable home on her next visit. Just recently–two years into her college experience) she discovered there is ethernet, it does work, and she had just mixed up the ethernet port with the phone jack. I guess I should have showed her how and where to plug it in before she left for college. We filed that in the “things we failed to teach” folder, right next to “how to buy stamps.”
@dyiu13, we bought one of the Anker lipstick size external batteries off Amazon a few years back with some 4 inch cables for D’s iphone and our androids. It’s come in handy on many occasions.
Does it say anything on your school’s technology page about internet access and what to bring/not to bring? While my D’s school has wifi in most areas, they also point out a wired connection will have superior service. They provide free ethernet cables to the students. I did pick up this ethernet adapter for D’s new MacBook Air http://www.bestbuy.com/site/apple-thunderbolt-to-gigabit-ethernet-adapter-white/5855333.p?id=1218696453658&skuId=5855333 I am not an Apple/Mac expert at all, so perhaps it won’t be necessary, but I figured better safe than sorry and we could always return it.
In terms of making friends, my S is pretty quiet with a small group of friends he’s had for years, but he’s played on several sports teams and seems to get along well with everyone and have a fun time, even if there isn’t a close connection. He’s made some friends at his new school initially online and then at the different admitted student days and orientation. But, I worry that he will fall back into his quiet ways and miss the long-term friendships. If that happens, I can see him spending a lot of time on online games on his laptop in his dorm room. I’m hoping that having a roommate will reduce some of that, but I guess we’ll see what happens. He is very eager to go to school, but I can’t tell if he’s stressed about connecting with other students. It’s hard to know that he’ll be facing things like this alone for the first time :(, especially when he’s the type who doesn’t like to share much about how he’s doing/feeling.
My D used that for her MacBook Air, @LexieAnn. Sometimes the dorm wifi didn’t work well.