I’m not sure Six Sigma is really a realistic goal for a student, is it? I think it’s really focused on improving business processes, and as a student you really don’t know what a business process is :D. I think it’s meant for people already in industry. Did this change, too? Geez, I am so far behind the times. This would be so far off my radar…
@hadmeathello …good point! You may be right–I think it was just a “get the certifications while you can and if they are available” type of conversation. It totally may not be realistic.
@RightCoaster Lots of options in the Boston area for business. I tell my son there is really no reason to look outside the general area. Plenty of wonderful schools in New England. Only problem is cost! Hahaha. I sure wish he could handle the craziness of a UMass Amherst or ULowell. Sure would save me a ton over private schools. Gotta love the free tuition to a Mass state school based on MCAS scores. What a joke. No avoiding the killer fees.
@carachel2 Once your kid is out working for a high-falutin’ consulting company, let the company pay for the certification. They seem to be the only ones getting those…not people who really do the work. Just sayin’.
@MassDaD68 You named the main reason some look outside of New England yourself: Cost
I agree with @hadmeathello. Both my dh and ds are six sigma certified(black and green). I am pretty sure they had high $ projects involved in the process. Both of them had companies pay for the training.
QsOTD: D has 15 schools on her list. Already accepted to 1 Rolling and applied to 3 via CA - 1 that is 10/15 EA school. She has an 11/1 SCEA app due, 2 12/1 due dates to be considered for merit and then the rest are RD. I see one RD hanging by a thread at the moment after looking at all the work to apply for merit takes. I could see 2 more fall of if SCEA comes back positive.
D doesn’t talk to other people about college or anything. Basically she has her close friends she talks to but doesn’t speak to other people - it’s kind of a problem but has it’s side benefits. If anybody at school hears about her plans it’ll be from her close friends and not her. I talk to my parents and offer generalities when I run into friends/acquaintances.
D left on Amtrak this morning to a weekend visitation program. First time traveling all alone. She’s done other things in the summer but it’s always been in a group of classmates/friends.
@whataboutcollege wrote
Not as well as I’d like, and I’ve been on her about it since her schedule is not that tough at all. D18, on the other hand, is knocking it out of the park so far with all A’s. Which I’ve never seen her do before, so we’re thrilled.
@carachel2 wrote
One of my favorite things to do on FB is to block and unfriend crappy people :-q . As a result, my FB page is 125 Pollyanas :D. And me. The Head Pollyanna & Chief Dragon Defender of Not Sucking.
@WhereIsMyKindle wrote
I am so jealous of you! (in a good way). I LOVE F&W at Epcot, I miss getting to go so much (can’t because of school). Have Drunken Duck In Love for me (at the China pavilion if they’re doing that drink this year). I can’t drink my way around Epcot, but one of those is enough to keep me silly for hours…We’ll need a short trip report when you get back 
@dfbdfb mental health days and protestant work ethics…I’m the product of two New England Protestants (probably the most egregiously hard working of all), and my take on it is that I’ve learned that it’s not how hard you work, it’s how smart you work. I watched my dad work way too hard at stuff that had little to no payoff at the end, and it’s like they could never see the forest because they were so busy trying to cut down all the trees.
Because of that, and because of my husband’s family, which takes a more “big sky” approach like what can be ignored and what needs to be done and is vastly more successful in many areas of work-life balance, I think if you look at what the results are from taking the day off rather than following the letter of the rule (and I think school attendance rules are draconian to a fault, anyway), then it’s easy to say, yeah, take a day, or no, you need to go in.
@chillkitty wrote
D has a clear cut top choice lottery school, is admitted to her safety, and just did two of her three match schools apps. Has one more match to go and one or two reaches to do as of yet. So, gah, what 6 or 7 schools total. Down from 10 originally. We might add in some more RD if the EA decisions don’t roll her way like she’s hoping.
I’m sure I’ll post on FB where D17 ends up choosing to go, but not the schools she got into-I don’t see the point in that. Hey, here’s where my kid isn’t going! :-/ . The agreement is I can tag the girls on FB with stuff, but not on Instagram. Also on here. If she doesn’t get into MIT (and she doesn’t and we don’t think she will because statistically, ugh), I’ll have no problem saying it because it is what it is-it won’t be a tragedy, it’ll just be the path not taken (for undergrad, at least). All of our kids on here are going someplace where they’ll get a good education, I have no doubt about that, and I for one am super happy about the fact that there are so many good places to get an education nowadays.
It’s all good :D.
D says nobody is talking about college in her year at all, if she has questions she goes to her senior friends who are now at college. I talk about it with my closest IRL friend who has a kid the same age as D18 (junior this year), but we think the same about a lot of things.
@itsgettingreal17 wrote
Dude.
D17 to escape from the stress of it all a little bit has a “College Wish List” on amazon where she puts things on it that she thinks she’d like for her dorm. It’s pretty funny, because if she got all that stuff, she’d have no room to sleep, lol. But it’s a good diversion for her, she says.
Sharing: If asked, I’ll share as S doesn’t really care. Most haven’t heard of the majority of his schools. If he is asked he is really vague though. We have no front runner really so that’s an easy response which seems to surprise people more than schools they have never heard of. I’ll share acceptances within a couple of closed friends groups (and here) but not blast on social media unless he does first. Or until he committs somewhere.
How many applications: Seven. All EA. 2 Safeties and 5 Matches.
Spring decision stress: I really do not know if there will be stress or not. So much will come down to money that it may well be a very simple decision. I hope there are multiple offers that really make it possible to choose but I am not sure it will stress S out. In an odd way it almost helps that he has not visited all, as he is not going into this with a front runner. At all.
Grades: There is a reason we ar e heavy participants in the 2017 3.0-3.4 thread lol. S is living up to that threads name at the moment. We’ve had an entirely new gradebook system, grade viewing and assignment submission system AND a brand new school wide late assignment policy has really messed up a lot of kids, including my S. It was really bad a week ago and now has moved into the “only two” bad classes. The good news is we still have a full month before quarter report cards. A huge challenge for S is that given our late start (after labor day), they have to move through the AP curriculums very quickly to get through all the material by the test day (and then sit around for 4-6 weeks!). It always levels out and we’ve been through this before but AP Calc AB and APES didn’t start off well. They seem to be moving in the right direction and his stress level is going down so all of that is good.
GC/naviance mini vent/psa: After a few emails I finally have a copy of S’s transcript and YAY, no errors. However it is glaringly obvious the new GC has absolutely zero experience. With anything. Very sweet though. She is committed to S17’s dates, allegedly he is at the “top” of her list to get done but I can’t imagine she will write anything of substance. I asked if they planned to complete the “expected level of difficulty as estimated by your counselor” section in Naviance and she had NO idea what I was talking about. Though
A couple of PSA for Naviance For us it took about 4 days for the LOR that was uploaded into Naviance (which changed it to processing or pending, I can’t recall) to turn into submitted and now shows in the CA.
3 of S17’s schools added EA just this year. When we moved them to “apply” the EA date didn’t populate. GC and CC had no clue how to change it/add it and pushed it back at the colleges or naviance. I went in today and the dates were still blank. I tried to change the dates to RD, date shows up, changed back to EA and sure enough the dates now show! So…know that if dates aren’t there and the school has updated Naviance…it will not auto update.
**Essay:**Thanks all for feedback on the English teacher essay feedback. I am definitely aware that English teachers can be very much the wrong person for essay review. It was for a grade however he is not required to edit it for further assignment. However…he wants to.
S17 and I talked about it quite a bit last night. He’s actually fine and happy with the feedback to be honest so I can’t really say a whole lot. He feels like the essay guy steered him in the wrong direction and while I could argue the point, I know my kid and that would not be in either of our best interests lol. What he really said to S was that it was ok, but in his opinion kind of “meh”. So he could submit it now and maybe be ok, or he could make it a lot stronger.
Of course his idea of stronger was maybe considering using the topic for a different prompt. SIgh. To be fair, I’ve known what the topic was for some time and depending on how he shaped it up, a number of the prompts would work. S17 isn’t remotely stressed about it and doesn’t think it’s a big deal. Given that and his clear desire to change it based on the input I am not going to try otherwise.
I (of course) on the other hand feel the timeline has been derailed and it will be 11/1 that we are hitting submit! The bummer is that I’d hoped to firm up the activities list this weekend and am 100% sure now it won’t get looked at, at all. All he has is Sunday as it’s homecoming weekend. Assuming of course we don’t lose power, huge storm last night through sunday so it could be interesting.On the positive side, the first LOR is showing up for all schools in the common app and I know the transcript is same day/almost instant so my only concern is confirming test scores have arrived.
@dfbdfb I am all for mental health days too. College visits are excused and this qualifies in my book. That said I had planned to take S to a college fair during band so it didn’t cut into weekend homework/essay time and he very strongly did not want to miss class for it.
@WhereIsMyKindle have fun at F&W and report back on the must eat/drink. I’ll be there next month for the Wine and Dine races.
@MotherOfDragons we have the same agreement with FB versus instagram. I am allowed to follow him on instagram but not tag.
Senior year grades- so far holding strong. My daughter has 4 AP’s and 3 college classes this year plus 20 hrs+ EC’s, she can afford one B and still graduate with honors. She decided to go for that and chose her schedule accordingly. I’m trying to keep her from having a nervous breakdown. So far she has straight A’s, one class was accelerated and ends tomorrow, thank God. She’s got to hold through December and then she can relax the rest of senior year.
@carachel2 EXACTLY! That and people talking about the merit. We really have only told family about her Presidential, but parents and kids talk. It would be her #1 with out the money.
QOTD: we’re sharing. S tells everyone who asks where he’s apply. He doesn’t care. The big “Why there?” So for OU. No one understands why he would even consider Oklahoma.
D has 3 acceptances so far.
No stress expected in the spring. In true Jerry McGuire fashion, whoever shows her the $$ is accepted. 
I’m not sure total applications. I think 10? She is thinking about adding NM.
@MotherOfDragons I believe the correct name for that beverage is Tipsy Ducks in Love It’s on my to-try list this trip!
@eandesmom Do you do many Run Disney races? I keep thinking about doing a half.
Re: Senior Grades.
Mostly good- A’s, a B+ in AP Stats right now. He is stinking it up in Pre- Calc right now with a C. It is the hardest class at our school with the hardest teacher, that’s what she told us. And guess what, she was right! First C for son ever. I doubt he’ll get it up to a B for the term. So, crud. What are you going to do though right? He applied early action to a bunch of schools and most don’t even ask for a first term report card, but one does. He’s trying, he went in for extra help a few times and says he gets it now, but it may be too late to pull off a B for the term.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Were these 3 acceptances from rolling admissions? Seems early for Fall 2017.
Wait, are we winning in the acceptance race? We have 5. Booya!
@MassDaD68 Yes. I am guessing she will have 2 more acceptances soon.she isn’t applying to competitive schools. The scholarships, otoh, we won’t know for months.
Y, I can’t keep up with this thread and FB group. Since I initiated FB group, I am paying more attention to FB group =))
@WhereIsMyKindle “many” is relative. Some folks are nuts (and have way more disposable income than I do for bibs!). I only started running about 3 years ago and decided if I was going to run (always said I never would) that a Disney half would be a goal to keep me motivated. My first half was a Disney Half (DL 2014) and I’ve now done a total of 10 1/2’s…4 of them with Disney (2 in CA and 2 in FL). Never say never. This will be #5 with Disney, 11th half overall but the first time I’m doing one of the challenges (10k on Sat/Half on Sun). I am NOT remotely trained for it at the level I would like. Could be painful. Ok maybe not painful but likely slow.
Disney races are the BEST girls trip ever. It is likely at some point to be a couples trip with H running the 10k (he’s BTDT on halfs) and/or a half with S19. That said this may be my last one for a bit given college costs which is a bummer. They are a blast and a half and a perfect first half.