Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to all! :x
Merry Christmas to all of you and your Ds and Ss!
Happy Christmas to all!
We are in Williamsburg for the holiday since our families are fliwn to the four winds and being home with just us three felt depressinh. We managed a walk through of William and Mary. Kiddo liked the feel of the place, even without students around. He likes looking at bulletin boards and seeing what is being advertised. The bulletin board we passed had flyers for two plays he loves, a bad movie watching party, a band looking for a bass player, and a lecture series he thought sounded cool. W&M isnāt likely without financial aid, but the aid dollars are vaguely possible so itās a solid addition to the list.
The rest of the trip has been fun. Lots to do around here.
Funny, you parents have to text your kids to get them to check email. (Iām class of 2019 kid) I have to email my mom to get her to check texts! I donāt have a real phone (just a flip phone) so I check email whenever Iām at my computer, which is really frequently because almost all of my homework is on my computer. Iāve regularly checked email (multiple times daily; now I just have Mail open all day) since I was 13. Merry Christmas to yāall!
Merry Christmas! S19 caught a bug and was up all night sick. In fact, my husband and I were up all night as well taking care of him. It was awful. He woke up to open presents and went back to bed. At least he hasnāt been sick now for five hours so I think the worst part is over. He will have to stay home while the rest of us go to Grandmaās house a few blocks away. I donāt want him getting all of the cousins sick. 
@ninakatarina thanks for the quick review of W&M. We are visiting in March!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all. Weāre having a blissfully relaxing day. D15 is home from her ādomestic exchangeā semester at Swat and goes back to Pomona on Jan. 14 for spring semester. She doesnāt have her spring housing assignment from Pomona yet. Pomona said there were 77 students leaving for spring 2018 and 102 returning so itās taking a while for housing to get sorted.
D19 is enjoying her break. She ended the semester with 3 Aās (AP Calc AB, AP Lang/Comp, Criminology) and 3 Bās (AP Studio Art where she is chronically behind in assignments, US History and Anatomy/Physiology Honors). Sheās been pretty consistent in having a 3.5 UW GPA.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everybody! Hope we can all enjoy the winter break a bit. D19 is finished w/ the semester and can try to get some SAT studying in this week. Next week we are going to Los Angeles. We are going to see USC while we are there. Iām hoping this gets D excited and motivated to keep studying for the March SAT. Got her Answer sheet(?) from College Board and see where she can improve, sort of. I see several āmediumā difficulty answers she got wrong, but got plenty of hard difficulty answers correct. I think if she just keeps practicing questions and practice SATs she can get those medium difficulty answers mostly correct and raise up her score. GPA is decent enough, just need to get the SAT up to make it all look good.
Hi parents! Iām a kid in the HS class of 2019. Iāve struggled a bit with weight and although Iām a healthy weight now from eating healthier and exercising, Iād like to be fitter (not really skinnier). Most teen girls I know are at healthy weights and donāt exercise, play sports, or pay attention to what they eatā¦ is this typical for your kids? Especially to those parents with kids who do not play sports, do your kids exercise, and if so, what do they do? Even when I eat healthy, I have to work out like 4x/week to maintain! I just turned 17, btw.
Hi @CharlotteLetter. Glad you are interested in your health. No, I think many non-active girls, at least where we live, if they donāt pay attention to what they eat, will show it. My D19 used to play volleyball, and didnāt have to worry about what she ate. Now that she doesnāt play sports, she works out at home 3-4 times a week to feel healthy. She did notice a difference once she stopped playing. You donāt have to work out for hours, I told my D 30 mins a day 3 times a week is a great goal. If you can do more, thatās great. I myself work out 5 mornings a week, but Iām a mom and donāt have to worry about going to high school. Some cardio and some body weight exercises will make you feel amazing. Look on Instagram, Pinterest, etc. for fitness people to follow for inspiration. Good luck!
I was allergic to exercise when I was in high school, ate big, and never showed itā¦ until I turned 29 and it seemed like all of those pounds had been waiting in the aether to pile onto me all at once. You see it in a lot of people - they get used to eating one way when they have the sort of metabolism that will let them eat a lot, then they hit mid-20s and bam!
Metabolisms are weird things. Some of the girls youāre jealous of now wonāt be so skinny in a few years, and they wonāt have the knowledge or habits to be able to do anything when their weight creeps up. And itās even more true for guys.
So last night I was talking about William and Mary with DS, looking at the website. He thinks he will apply there in the RD round when (as likely) the SCEA round doesnāt pan out. I was happy to get another school that we all like on the list. I talked about the sequence of applying - early/rolling admits first, then the SCEA, then work on the RD apps and have them ready to go the moment SCEA comes out.
Temple had been our financial/admissions safety school, and I had thought he was happy with that. Until last night, when he told me that if he got rejected everywhere but Temple he would feel like a failure, and he said he wanted to take it off of the list. āHoney, you need a safety school,ā I said. āWell, Gettysburg is a safety school, right?ā.
Oh, honey. Honey, honey, honey. If he wants to treat Gettysburg as a safety school, heād better get cracking on that ACT practice and heād better get a stellar score. And financially itās a likely match, but if they zero us out on financial aid then heās not going there.
So we need to have the financial talk again, because apparently it didnāt stick the last time. Iām getting together charts and graphs and printing scattergrams out for this round.
@ninakatarina S19 having a mini crisis as well. I think juniors many times arenāt sure of their paths and, while thatās ok, they donāt want to make a wrong move. S19 has said for a while now he doesnāt want engineering. Then, last night he said āhow do I know I donāt want to be an engineer? I donāt really know what it is.ā Ugh. I had him look at the curriculum for engineers. Itās all math and science. He said he really wants to be able to take all types of classes so engineering is out. He still seemed a little sad, though, because he thought some of the engineering degrees looked really interesting but heās not willing to give up other āwantsā.
Then, he brought up Northwestern again. Double ugh. Iāve told him so many times why NU is not a fit. Somehow, we got on the tangent of Medill this time (their impossible-to-get-into undergrad journalism school) and he said that sounded awesome. What? I know he likes to write but heās not a reporter. Doesnāt do anything with the school newspaper. He likes the idea of research and writing and, together with his interest in politics and even science, he said he could see himself being some sort of investigative reporter who writes those long pieces. So, now Iām thinking I may suggest some sort of journalism pre-college camp for summer. I do wonder if journalism is really necessary as an undergrad and if going to school where writing is a focus (Carleton, Kenyon) would do him just as well if he ends up wanting to do something like write for the New Yorker. (Come on, I mean who writes for the New Yorker? How do you get that gig?)
Now, watch, he will wake up this morning and say he wants to be an astronaut.
THIS is why I tell him he has to go to an LAC. He can explore. But, as the parents footing the bill, we also donāt want to make a mistake.
Journalism major here. I never did anything with my HS newspaper. I enjoyed my English classes, scored 5 on the AP English, but I arrived at my LAC knowing I wanted journalism. I did work on my college newspaper and worked professionally until I got married. While Iām not in reporting now, I still use the editing and proofreading skills in daily life.
Hope this helps!
I made an appointment for me and D19 to meet with her GC on Jan. 9. I have a lot of things that Iād like to sort out with the GCās āguidance.ā On my list:
(1) when/how to take the required PE class ā summer school or senior year, online or traditional. Most people take it as a freshman but D19 has kept postponing it.
(2) whether to take the SAT w/essay in May or w/o essay (right now no schools on list with essay and D19 takes the test with accommodations so the test already takes 2 days to administer).
(3) whether/when to take a 3rd year of online Latin --the in state universities only require 2 years; she has some dyslexia and struggles with foreign languages but we found a retired Latin teacher to tutor her last summer.
(4) whether to take a math class senior year and if so which one. At the end of junior year, D19 will have completed 4 including AP Calculus AB.
The answers to Nos. 2-4 depend in part on whether sheās going to apply anywhere OOS. Right now she has a 3.5 uw GPA and a 1430 SAT. She has 3 ECās: an outside choir, speech team, and a local government youth council. The in state universities (Arizona) are safeties for her. The honors colleges at ASU and U of Arizona are reaches given her GPA.
My H and I are reluctant to send her out of state ā especially to an expensive private ā because of her issues of ADHD, anxiety, dyslexia, medication management, time management, etc. Whatās awkward is that we did send D15 to an expensive private. But D15 has always had very good time management skills. D15ās Christmas gift from her BF (picked out by her) was a planner! D19 on the other hand is a typical ADHD kid whose bedroom and backpack look like a tornado swept through. All of her Bās are the result of missing assignments. So there are certainly schools, especially CTCLās, that D19 could probably get into with her stats, but Iād rather she stay in state where itāll be easier to stay in touch with how sheās doing. At times I think she might do well to take a 1/2 to 3/4 course load and take longer to graduate, which also weighs in favor of staying in state.
Lots of great journalism schools that arenāt LACs. Maybe look at Mizzou and Univerisity of Arkansas.
@carolinamom2boys Yes. Understood.
I knew about Mizzou but not Arkansas. Thanks for that info. We arenāt switching paths right now. I talked to a few friends today who said one can gain all kinds of journalism experience at an LAC just getting involved with the school newspaper on campus and that a journalism degree is not a must-have. Many of the schools on list are big on writing within the disciplines meaning that writing is a priority no matter what you major. If he decides heās really interested in journalism, though, it will be very important for him to get the right internships during the summer. I plan on finding out more about how the LACs on his list help the kids find summer opportunities.
@Corinthian does she think sheād want to go far? Within what distance from home do you think would be best for her?
@mom2twogirls I donāt think sheās really focused on it that much yet. I took her to a CTCL event a few months ago and she collected flyers from various colleges such as St. Olaf, Juniata, Knox. But it was kind of random. Personally Iād be happy with any of the 3 Arizona public universities because one is in town and the other two are about 2 to 2.5 hours away. Or maybe something in SoCal. But Iād want her to demonstrate independence and time management skills during senior year before going out of state. Right now every morning is a crisis getting off to school, with things being constantly forgotten or lost and every class having missing assignments that never get turned in. I still hold out hope for greater maturity senior year!
Speaking of being ātoo far from home,ā I was talking to a guy with the exact opposite strategy. We were talking about how certain colleges were too far and how we were trying to limit the distance away from school.
He said that he wanted his kids to be free. He wanted them to be far from home and learn how to be independent. He wouldnāt encourage them to come back āhomeā to live after graduation and that they should pursue their careers/dreams. He lives in GA and sent his three kids to California, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania. Result: Not only are they all successful adults, they all live within 5 miles of him. So he gets to see his grandkids all the time.
Of course, I know another family whoās too stressed out from seeing their grandkids all the time and are moving away from them. So YMMV.
I always thought that I was handling āempty nest syndromeā better than most. Lots of parents say things like, āI canāt believe my kid is looking at collegeā etc. While my attitude is that itās a stage in her growth and one more checkbox to adulthood. Then she got a mailing from one of the colleges about starting college a year early, yet still graduating with her HS classmates. All of a sudden, I wasnāt so ready for her to leave home.
@gusmahler My husband and brother in law both studied near home but then took jobs overseas. My husband (boyfriend at the time!) lived abroad for five years and my brother in law for twelve. I lived in three different cities in my twenties, none close to home, and visited my husband regularly. We now all live two miles away from my in-laws. Thereās something to be said for spreading your wings and then appreciating home. Of course, thereās no guarantee that kids will eventually flock back to their childhood neighborhood but, once we all had kids, we felt it was time to be back.
We are very close to our kids. My husband works from home and I stay at home with them so we are very much a part of their lives on a daily basis. If Iām honest, I dread S19 leaving. My brain wonāt even go there. Thatās something I need to work on for my sake. For his sake, though, I want him to have the types of experiences we had in our twenties and early thirties. We can always visit him in France or South America or New Zealand, right?