Parents of the HS Class of 2017 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
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QOTD: I obsessively check her portal for the EA where decisions came come at any time. Her ED school I don’t check because everything is submitted and received and the decision is a set date…but you can bet on that date I will be checking an hour or two before they say decisions are up! Also I check the schools thread to see if there’s any info from people. Like from her EA school people are talking about when they will start releasing decisions. Looks like it could be in a week or two.

She never checks the portals. I think because she knows I do and I will give her any info.

QOTD2: DD is extremely excited about going to college. She’s nervous she won’t get in anywhere but I know that’s just crazy talk.

senioritis has officially arrived

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@Agentninetynine - so sorry to hear about all that is going on - so sad and stressful and so many changes for you and your family.

QOTD: no portal logins for me - D is handling it all :-/ Of course when we sat down last week she was missing something for an honors app that she “thought” she submitted [-(

QOTD2: D is so excited to start the next chapter – makes HS work hard and makes me a little sad. She is excited to finish the fall drama (show is next week) and start her final show of HS. I am sad that she is at the end.

Like @jeepgirl 's D, she is excited for being on her own and for sorority rush. Has not even thought about clothes yet - which is good or she would never get that AP chem work finished!

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@thermom , your D sounds just like mine. That is a relief…I was thinking she was the only one. :slight_smile:

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@dfbdfb — I am with your D on this one…

“worrying most about getting through the coming winter without the lack of daylight affecting her too much”

…and I live in CT, where we enjoy fairly sunny winters and generally tolerable amounts of snow. The gray skies of Ithaca were quite depressing, so I can’t imagine the really short days of Alaska. I empathize.

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QOTD: Checked obsessively until it stated that the application was complete. So far so good with everything getting there in a timely fashion. Some portals are better than others. The WUSTL portal has a separate Finaid Portal. I logged into that portal and filled out their own version of the CSS to save $16. Now it says it has FAFSA, that and our 2015 tax return. I never uploaded a tax return. Those guys are good.

QOTD2: My D only gets excited about cheese and cats. I use to call her Daria because I’m convinced the makers traveled in the future and saw her to make the character. Now she also gets Raven from Teen Titans Go. The false excitement is exactly like her.

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@thermom and @kt1969 I am pretty sure my D feels the same anxiety/stress about college. And right now she is just about over HS. Frankly I think she is tired of the kids, teachers, and classes. I keep telling her to hang in there…that for the most part the things she dislikes the most about HS will be non-existent in college. But the fear of leaving home has her a little bit paralyzed right now. I try to remember what it was like to be a senior in HS but I did things so very differently (and wrong :slight_smile: )

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Gonzaga visit
I need to get this written before I forget everything. D and I visited Gonzaga last Friday, which was a special preview day. First off, we learned how to pronounce the name properly. We had been saying gon-zah-ga, but it’s actually like the zag in zig-zag.

Moving along, this was a bit of an odd pick for D. She had originally said “no religious schools,” but Gonzaga sounded like a perfect fit. Right size at about 7000. Nice combo of strong engineering and liberal arts. Reputation for good merit and D is a bit over their 75%. Most importantly to D, a very strong focus on sustainable energy. From their website explaining the electrical energy and power focus within EE: “Are you interested in green, sustainable energy generation? Worried about the relationship between energy, ecology, and the environment? Would like to build a smarter, more-efficient electric power grid?” Yes, yes, and yes.

On the “maybe not” side, Gonzaga is a Jesuit university, about 50% Catholic and D is an atheist. We were both hooked early on in the information session. This is one of two info sessions (the other was Smith) that we thought really gave us a feel for the school rather than slightly different versions of the same cliche’s. A lot of time was spent discussing the importance of critical thinking and ethics. One term the AO used to describe the kind of students Gonzaga wants was “contemplatives in action.” That really resonated with me.

For the tour they separated students from parents, which I hadn’t seen done before. The guide for my group was the assistant dean of admissions and she walked backward in high heels – wow! The tour was really good not surprisingly. She talked about the history of the school and I felt like she gave us a real sense of the atmosphere. The suite-style dorm was one of the nicest I’ve seen. The Cathedral was beautiful and some school events, like convocation, take place there. Sunday evening mass is well attended, but Sunday morning not so much! Our guide also mentioned that they have a Muslim prayer space and an LGBT resource center. I think they strive to be very inclusive. Of course the last stop was the basketball arena because they are a really big basketball school. It was interesting to hear about how students have rows of tents set up the night before to get tickets (which are free).

Next was an admissions/financial aid presentation for the parents (same old same old) and a student panel for the students – very good according to D, although she didn’t give me many details. Parents and students were re-united for an excellent lunch. I appreciate that they let us old folks get in the buffet line before releasing the hounds (er, kids) into the room. D told me later that her tour was really great. Several groups of students who passed the tour group yelled out things like “Come to Gonzaga – be a zag!” She thought that was pretty cool.

Our last session was a fairly small group for the engineering presentation. I can’t remember the faculty position of the professor who gave the presentation, but he was very good. One big positive is that they don’t have a graduate engineering program, so nothing is taught by TA’s and the research assistants are all UG’s. I think the prof mentioned about three times how thrilled he was to see the “young ladies” in the room because they really want to increase the percentage of women in their program (currently 22%) and in the field generally. Agreed! He talked about a survey sent out to alumni going back quite far (maybe 20 years, but I can’t remember for sure). There was the usual about being satisfied with their education, high employment rate in their field, etc. But one interesting question they asked was whether the alum had ever made changes to a project due to ethical considerations and 80% said “yes.” He also emphasized sustainability and the responsibility of engineers to make the world a better place. D and I were loving all this.

The campus was nice, but nothing particularly outstanding. We didn’t get a chance to see Spokane since we had to rush off and drive across the state to Bellingham for our WWU visit.

So, overall very good. I do worry a bit about her fitting in at a religious school. I guess we’ll see what happens.

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@hadmeathello You reminded me to pick up my mug of cold coffee. I reheated it earlier. :smiley:

I think Dr MacGyver DH is attempting to fix our fridge. Just ordered defroster heater part. Looks promising. Wish us luck. He had tools out, soldering iron and heat gun and all. :smiley:

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@snoozn I know I’ve said this before but it really is minimal to nothing at the west coast Jesuit schools. Or I suppose as little or as much as you want. Very inclusive and non judgmental. We’ve known jewish kids, muslims and atheists that have attended. The vast majority of kids we know that attend are not Catholic. My father taught at a Jesuit college for years, and much of that time as an excommunicated Catholic. :))

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We have Monday off and seniors are doing ditch day on Tuesday. Hmm… hopefully some work gets done. [-(

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I am constantly checking college portal and Naviance because one teacher hasn’t submitted her recommendation yet The deadline is Nov. 1st. The funny thing is that the college portal says they received counselor’s recommendation, but Naviance says still “requested” for the counselor. Don’t understand.

Anyway, I’m not that stressed (just a bit stressed) because that’s the only thing missing and usually colleges are ok with school stuff being late a little (so I’ve heard).

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@eandesmom

That was the way it was with my daughter. S17 though didn’t even want me to look over the application, doesn’t want to take suggestions, wants to DO IT ALL HIMSELF. Which I’m mostly happy to do. I’m just going to get anxious because it can sometimes take days to tell me good news.

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** QQTD2 ** My son is so ready to be out of the house. We had a talk a while back that college was one of the easiest ways he could get out of the house, while mom & dad continue to foot most of the bills. (We did talk about gap year… but if he want’s us to help pay for it it better have a plan to present us.) He’s motivated to get accepted somewhere, and move out. HIS plan is to get a job at his camp as a counselor this summer, and if so he would be moving out by mid June. Maybe back for a week or two before term starts, depends on if a semester or quarter system.

He was starting to get anxious after submitting his first application. I had to go on Naviance and how him that the school really is a FIT school for him. That other kids from our school were accepted, and it’s a stat based public school so he has a good chance. This is why I wanted him to get some of his applications in early… so he could get at least one acceptance early and hopefully lower the stress.

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@snoozn We don’t look at religious schools except Jesuit ones. Except for having to take a few religious classes , the Jesuit school are really very very open. I wouldn’t get hung up on their being a religious school. I have relatives that attend Jesuit H.S’s and love it. Tried to get S17 to look at Santa Clara & Gonzaga but they were just too urban for what he wanted.

I haven’t been to Spokane in years, but a beloved aunt of mine used to live there and I have good memories of the place.

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Senior ditch day in October? We have it in May, here. Right now all of the seniors are huge balls of stress and freaking out about their grades.

QOTD: yes, D17 is excited to go to college, and get out and see the bright lights and big city. And not have her parents hollering at her to go to bed!

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@Ynotgo I don know… unless he is talking about his height or weight, growth would be immeasurable or unmeasurable how little or how large… abstract things can’t be measured. even uncountable in math sense

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@MotherOfDragons what did you do to get in trouble today? :))

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QOTD2- D is very excited to go to college. She’s most looking forward to the freedom to study only what she wants, no hs rules, and no mom nagging her.

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@HiToWaMom That’s kind of the funny part, her essay is not super serious so I found her friend’s drama almost as annoying and realized it certainly put a nail in the coffin of hope for any change.

@eandesmom @NerdMom88 @MotherOfDragons Thanks for the advice and reassurance that the crazy essay language is age appropriate. I will try to hold back…which will be harder than reading it. :wink:

D17 thinks she is ready to go far, far away but I pretty sure there will be some anxiety when the time comes. However, she is so over HS.

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I don’t check portals very often. No idea how often dd checks them. I think she checks until everything says complete and then just waits.

Voice: Dd’s writing voice is very mature. It comes from a combination of things–1-she reads a lot of classic literature and epic poetry and 2- you would never know from my posts bc I am always typing multitasking, but I am a writer and I have strong opinions on what qualifies as good writing. Since I have always been my kids’ writing teacher, nothing gets passed as a completed writing assignment until it passes my review (ask my 9th grader who has to rewrite her major essay that she turned in today and it was a no go.) I don’t control their voice, but I do insist on quality. They rewrite assignments until I know it is the best they are capable of producing. (No protection from red ink in our school. :wink: )

Excitement or not about going away to college: Dd has mixed emotions. She is excited to go away and have new experiences, can’t wait for study abroad, etc. Equally, she is sad about leaving her little sisters and niece and nephews. She is really close to all of the younger kids and she knows how much not being around them impacts relationships since she has seen older siblings leave and come back. I think leaving behind her 6 yr old sister will be the hardest thing she has to do.