@4MyKidz Oy! Scary start to the day. I’m impressed that your son still goes to school after an alarming morning, and with a migraine too. He must be very stalwart. I know plenty of people who get migraines and for them, it means the day is spent in a dark, quiet room. 
@mom2twogirls I think the exemptions for final exams at my daughter’s school is for seniors in AP classes. Once they take the actual AP exam, they aren’t expected to take the final exam in the class later. It’s a good reward for continuing to strive to do well second half of the senior year (otherwise known as Senioritisville).
Thanks Everyone, he is feeling better and has been checking in throughout the day. But, yes it is scary to deal with as a parent. I cannot imagine how scary it is for my son and other children living with Type 1.
Sorry to hijack the thread…it is therapeutic sharing here. My kids go to a public h.s. that allows them to exempt the final if they have A’s in both quarters. They love being able to sleep in on those days!
@4MyKidz I’m so sorry about your son’s horrible low! Fellow Type 1 here for over 30 years, and my younger daughter (12) is also T1, so I know exactly how draining and scary it can be. Does your son have a Dexcom CGM??? (continuous glucose monitor) It’s an incredibly helpful tool, I can’t imagine getting through life without it. If you have any questions please feel free to ask me.
@SunnyFlorida22 Thank you for sharing about you and your daughter and Type1. We are definitely interested in the CGM. We are military and made the call to his diabetic educator, who will get that ball rolling. I do have a few questions that I will pm you later this evening. It helps to know that others’ have experience with living with Type1 and who are parents of a T1 kiddo! Thank you for all of your help & understanding!
Oh my, clicking lots of “Helpful” for HUGS today =((
Safety and health comes first! Hope @4MyKidz stays well.
No exempt from finals here. Some classes do final projects in leu of exams.
Trimester grade reports, but only semester grades recorded.
So I see 6 grade reports a year, but only 2 end of semester grades are permanent.
DS17’s 1st grade reports can be both scary and hilarious. Couple of Fs by being late turning in assignments or bombing first quiz. Sometimes it would be A, A, B, C, F, F (Our school does not give D.) I declare mandatory office hours and extra credit work, but DS17 whines, “I turned it in already but he/she is not updating the grades!” They do get slowly updated, and I have to wait the whole semester until grades get pulled up from F to C, B and A. Sigh.
I do feel the teachers have a leeway, fudging participation points, or something, to push grades up to A.
A few times I felt it was impossible for DS17 to get an A after couple terrible quizzes for which he refused to go to “grade grubbing.” The teachers made it happen somehow.
@4MyKidz and @SunnyFlorida22, our S19 is also T1D. He uses a pump and a CGM, both of which are enormously useful and helps him live a pretty normal life. Our philosophy has been the same as yours: we do not want diabetes to define him. Like your son, he is driven and precise and doesn’t emphasize his condition or use it as an excuse. He plays a sport and two instruments and maintains grades, etc. Many of his elementary school teachers forgot he had diabetes, which became a little dangerous in a few situations but overall was great. I know that when S plays his sport later in the day, he can go low at night. The CGM really helps monitor this and helps us sleep better too. Feel free to PM me too if you want to continue this discussion.
Thank you @EastGrad ! I can’t begin to tell you how appreciative I am that you and others are reaching out about T1. Without going too much into it here, I will just say that lots of support was offered when he was little. But it dwindled as he became a high schooler…probably because Teens are incredibly busy and are typically private/uncomfortable with what makes them different from their peers. It makes my heart happy to hear that T1 teens are doing well!
Hi folks:-) Are most everyone’s 2019s taking the PSAT this fall? DD2019 took it last year as a sophomore and did meh. She ended up doing well enough on the ACT (33) that she is declaring herself DONE with standardized testing so she can focus on doing well in her classes and handling her extracurriculars. But now with PSAT being given to all 11th graders at her school, I’m thinking since she has to take it anyway, should she prep for it? What do people think and if yes, any recommended prep out there? Maybe something she can do online? I have heard that National Merit is VERY competitive in California (where we live) so I’m not sure that she could prep enough to get to the point of being National Merit…anyways, thoughts? Thanks!
@JDCaliMom our S19 opted for the SAT in August and did pretty well. I figure he’s set to go for the PSAT since he spent all summer studying for the SAT. I think our guidance counselors are sending the kids home next week with a PSAT practice test to look over. They take the test Oct 11th. I’m sure I will have him do that practice test just so he’s fresh. I think you can get them online if you want your D to take a look.
Our counselor gave our kids booklets too. @JDCaliMom I don’t know that I would push it too much. Maybe have her try one and see if her score looks high, if so have her study a bit to see if it will go up but if the score is mediocre (since I’ve read many kids do better on ACT or SAT and she did so well on ACT that seems like her test) then I probably wouldn’t have her worry about studying for PSAT.
My D and H are at a preview day for West Chester University (state school near Philly) and it’s mobbed. It’s a gorgeous day, though, and she texted me, “I like it here and we haven’t even done anything yet. Even the strip malls are nice. It’s not isolated and we talked to one of the volunteers who’s majoring in political science and she said the whole atmosphere is really great and they’re all cheery here and also they gave us food.”
So for D, the important stuff is sorted. 
@Gatormama “they gave us food” :))
@JDCaliMom It looks like College Board has two practice PSAT tests that can be downloaded and printed if she’s he type who likes to do practice tests or will do them because you ask her to. (I don’t have one of those kids!) I’m not aware of any online PSAT prep, but Khan Academy would probably work.
If she’s happy with her ACT scores (she should be!) and hasn’t been thinking about aiming for NMSF, I would probably let it go with the test just two weeks away. If she did ACT prep fairly recently, it will carry over to the PSAT anyway. The score for making NMSF is so high! (We’re in a 222 state and I know some are even higher).
If anyone knows of online ACT prep that isn’t too expensive (or maybe a prep book that comes with an online code or CD, or even online tests) I’m open to suggestions. S19 has made it clear that prep books are not for him. I’m assuming that October SAT will be slightly underwhelming so it’s time to entertain the fantasy that he will do some prep for his December ACT.
See for me “They’re all cheery” would have been a turnoff. Food always works though
@Gatormama I’m sure good is going to be high up on my kid’s radar too. Luckily for colleges, we don’t have sophisticated palates in our house so thry are mostly just going to like anyplace that gives us free food and has lots of choices.
Thanks, folks! She took the ACT in Feb. We really wanted to get testing out of the way knowing how busy junior year can be.
Another question — I just learned about the site Parchment (from another thread here on CC.) How accurate do folks feel their college acceptance chances calculator is? For DD2019, the thing that would change is GPA/class ranking. Her GPA is high so far (3.9 UW and 4.2 W) and we’ll see if that changes with grades from this 11th grade year. Hopefully she’ll stay strong but you never know.
Parchment had 88% chance getting in to her #1 choice but the reason I’m asking about how accurate is it even had her at 23% chance getting into Columbia which I have been thinking wasn’t even within her grasp at all. Does CC have real life feedback of what Parchment predicted and what actually happened? Thanks!!
@eh1234 - try a site about crack…the…act… I don’t think I can be more specific than that (my first post got flagged for review)
It just has practice tests now, but at one point recently it had real tests (previously used).
I have no feedback but now I want to play around with it too!
@JDCaliMom, sites like Parchment are nearly completely based on self-reported data, and as such they’re rather unreliable. People tend to report stats when they get in but not when they don’t, some people don’t enter their actual stats, and it’s not a representative sample of the population.