All those making summer travels, please check out Autoslash for car rentals as recommended here few pages back . My initial rate in HI was lower than Costco and today I got an email saying that it went down lower. I hope airlines will do same 
@eandesmom Political science? There’s lots of politics I’d love to talk about. Oh wait, we can’t do that here…
We got an email from S’s GC that she was able to switch him from fall AP Microecon / spring AP US Gov’t to fall AP US Gov’t / spring AP Macro. So, that’s better on two fronts: AP US Gov’t during a presidential election and he prefers Macro to Micro just based on his interests.
@dcplanner Too bad the baking class couldn’t be “art”. DS took a couple Wilton cake decorating classes, and likes making the little roses and other frosting art.
QOTD: Less common majors With physics and CS being pretty common, not really a question for us. But, I’m interested to hear others’ answers.
@disshar - I think summer programs can really help someone get an idea of the campus. DS19 did a camp at Emory. He really liked the campus. DS13 did one at Michigan Tech and it ended up #3 on his list. He felt he would have fit in there however it was so far away and more money. DS17 did one at Fordham. He really like New York City. However that’s not an option.
My Dd did not like Ole Miss. She didn’t like the dominating presence of the Greek houses as you enter campus and didn’t think the campus was as nice as others she had visited. Neither of us liked the location of Oxford. Though, I am sure she would have overlooked all of that if their Russian dept hadn’t been so dismissive. She loved the Croft program and the French dept.
But in comparing the actual campuses of Ole Miss and Bama, Bama has a way nicer campus and Tuscaloosa is by far a nicer town.
Today’s camp report from D: They are really selling UT hard and she doesn’t like it because it’s working. She is going to keep reminding herself that she doesn’t want to stay in Texas. :))
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Interesting take on Ole Miss and one I haven’t heard. Thanks.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Thanks for sharing your opinion about Ole Miss verses Bama.
@dfbdfb I adore your story about the infinitigon. When my kids were little, we once ended up talking about estimating the area of a curvy shape by slicing it into tinier and tinier rectangles but I don’t remember what precipitated that discussion. What I do know is that my kids didn’t understand it as well as your DD, because to this day they bring it up under the heading of “Things Mom Once Told Us That Made No Sense At The Time.”
** Unusual Majors ** Not sure if DD’14’s linguistics major counts as unusual, but I think it may have stemmed from a book my mother gave her when she was about 10 about the origins of the English alphabet. She started reading up on different languages and then got scholarships from CTY to study Ancient Greek and Mandarin in middle school. She has always enjoyed trying to figure out the puzzles of different grammars. But now she seems to be getting higher grades in CS than in her 4000 level linguistics classes, so that may have all been the brain of a coder trying to make itself known in a school that doesn’t teach coding .
@Mom2aphysicsgeek - Thanks for the review. I am wondering about Oxford now since when we went to UA a couple of weeks ago Waze got me all turned around and I had to go though Tuscaloosa… I thought it was very busy and built up. I know that sounds strange since DS13 goes to GT but I like college towns versus Cities… although DS17 doesn’t care.
However DS17 isn’t planning going Greek so if Ole Miss is mostly Greek there maybe a problem…
Also DH has decided that he would like DS to decide which college he is going to by the end of September…unless he somehow gets in to UGA then he can change his mind if he wants. lol.
Part of the parental agenda for agreeing to Ds language trip to Germany was so she could have a “picky eater boot camp” so to speak ie be forced to eat foods she wasn’t used to eating.
D just sent me a Snapchat: her host family bought her Fruit Loops!
Oops I owe an Ole Miss (plus Croft and Arabic) trip report from a few weeks back
I’ll post that in a few hours
Hmmm. Tuscaloosa doesn’t seem like a city to me. Cities to me are Charlotte, Atlanta as large cities or Richmond, VA as a smaller city. Tuscaloosa only has a population of 90,000. That is a nice size town with lots of good amenities. Oxford, otoh, has a population of 20,000 and feels like it is dropped into the middle of nowhere. (That is how we felt about UIUC, too. But Oxford felt smaller than U-C.).
It was pouring rain the day we visited Ole Miss. That didn’t help the impression. (But conversely, it was pouring when we visited U of SC and she loved it.)
@WhereIsMyKindle’s Dd is there right now and she shared with me via PM that they both liked the small college town feel of Oxford. So it really is preference.
@itsgettingreal17 My DS didn’t want to stay in TX until we toured UT. I think it must be the different feel from the rest of TX that makes them re-think the “getting out of TX mentality”.
@carachel2 DS is an extremely picky eater. He always finds a way around eating the regular meals at summer camps. I’ve found many empty single size Cheerios and Fruit Loops boxes, protein bars, and jars of peanut butter when we would go pick him up. Where do you find Fruit Loops in Germany? I bet she is having a blast!
unusual majors I have no idea why Dd loves languages so much. She studied Latin and French for yrs (from elementary school). She begged me to let her take Russian in 8th grade. We were in the middle of moving across the country, so I said no. I let her in 9th. In 10th she begged me to let her add German or Arabic. At that point she was seriously into Latin 4, French 4/5, and Russian 2. Half of her school day was nothing but languages, so again I told her no. I told her she needed to drop Latin in 11th bc we needed to fit in courses like art history and she really wanted to take a linguistics course. Her problem is that there just aren’t enough hours in a day to dig as deeply pay as she wants to do.
Even this summer she is till working on language projects.
Honestly, it is easier to guide kids that want STEM majors.
QOTD
I am not sure if it counts as unusual or not though it has been surprisingly hard to find the right kinds of programs that seem to “fit” what S17 is looking for, which is alternative/renewable/sustainable energy science that may or may not be pure engineering and also have (possibly) the policy piece. In his case it seems more of an extension of his personality, which is overflowing with social justice and conservation, strong stem interests especially in alternative systems, systems design but the desire to argue for the sake of arguing.
@itsgettingreal17 that’s hysterical that it’s working. I am looking forward to S having an on campus experience.
@Ynotgo welcome to my dinner table. LOL! With S17 around it gets pretty interesting to be sure in the political debate arena at our house. I was pleased that he consulted with me on what he should, or should not, discuss with my FIL who is here over the weekend for fathers day. At least he can read the audience.
Speaking of politics, has anyone seen the video of 8th grader imitating presidential candidates @ middle school graduation on Facebook? It’s hilarious (esp President and Senator Sanders). Kid’s aim is to be on SNL and he has talent for that
We are heading out this week for a short trip to Boston - seeing Tufts & Northeastern - will report back. Thanks to all for sharing so much. School this year should be officially over for DS in about 1 hour - just needs to submit a project. congrats to all finishing up their junior year.
@eandesmom That’s great that your son wants to turn his passions into a career. 2 of D’s passions are social justice and conservation as well. But on the academic side, she loves math and she feels that working in a math involved field will be more lucrative, so that is the direction in which she is heading. Studying languages on the side for the social justice aspects and possibly will integrate that into her career.
@CA1543 – will be interested to hear your report. We added Tufts at the last-minute during our April trip and son was pleasantly surprised. It probably helped that I was able to connect him with a friend’s son who is studying CS and works as a TA for a CS class there.
@itsgettingreal17 working in a math related field will definitely be more lucrative! Although, if he does go the energy engineering route, versus his other options, he should be fine.