Hi @Anxious711 sorry to hear your D has hit a bit of a rough patch. Those are 2 hard classes. Hopefully with some tutoring and teacher’s help she can work through the math stuff and get a solid understanding of it.
She’ll just have to muscle through APUSH, I’ve heard that class is a lot of work. My son decided not to pursue it.
With regards to the SAT/ACT, don’t worry. She can take the tests on multiple occasions. My older son ended up doing his best on a test he took in the Fall of senior year.
Junior year is a grind. The classes seem hard and there are a lot events happening. I don’t think a sub par grade is going to ruin anything for your D. There are lots of kids that have done worse, including me!! I turned out OK
Hope you can work with her to regain some confidence, and to teach her there are always obstacles and challenges n life to overcome. This is one of them.
@RightCoaster S19 doing MIT Launch with a group of friends and is trying to get his act together to enter a few art competitions. The MIT thing has been a pain. He joined a group of friends and the friends are totally unresponsive. Their project was going well in the fall but it’s hit a standstill. Not sure what’s going to happen with that. He’s having a hard time finding time to get back in the saddle on that one and motivate the group.
Also, I’d like to put in a complaint about our new GC. She stinks. S19 wanted some advice on whether to take Multivariable Calc or AP Stats and she had nothing. I mean absolutely no guidance. At all. He had to go to the math chair to get the plusses and minuses of the choices. He was also waiting on finding out if he got into the Honors Writing Seminar or if he would have to pick AP Lit for English. She didn’t know that either. So, he emailed his AP Lang teacher (from the GC’s office!) and HE knew the results. How can a GC not know if a kid got into a class or not? He did get in…so he’s glad about that. And an essay he wrote was just sent to some Illinois English Teachers competition. The AP Lang teachers each chose five essays from their class (so there were 20 semifinalists at the school) and then all of the students had to read the 20 essays and vote on them as part of an assignment. They also had to write a paragraph about why they chose the essay they did. S19 got the most votes.
But I’m hating on that GC. And she was even worse with our D21 but that’s a story for another board…
@RightCoaster S19 is on stage crew. He just found out that’s he’s going to play a small role this time around because they need a crew member to tackle something on stage that can’t be done while the lights are down. He is completely ecstatic. And currently really happy that we already did most of the college visits so he can enjoy his band and theater pursuits. Yes, he actually said that.
I choked back a “SEE, THAT’S WHY I MADE YOU DO THE VISITS WHEN I DID.”
@InfiniteWaves I’m also glad that we’ve done some visits. Time is running out to see schools. I know people say it’s not necessarily important to visit before applying but, for S19, I think it’s fairly important. We will need to prioritize when it comes to fall visits because of XC but I’ve already warned S19 that he might miss a few practices and those coaches are just going to have to deal with it.
He has five schools that suggest interviewing. Most can be done locally if we can make the timing work with when a rep will be here. One does Skype interviews. I’m hesitant to have him do any of these interviews until fall. He’d be ok doing them now but I think he would be even better prepared come fall.
@Anxious711 I’m sorry to hear about your D’s struggles. It’s tough when schools take away the honors level for juniors and seniors! Our school did it for one year and the parents revolted.
It sounds like you are doing everything you can to support her but I had a similar experience with my older kid and it was stressful. Some kids in our school are able to drop APUSH when the going gets rough, but if that’s not an option, hang in there.
@Rightcoaster I think my kid is supposed to be building a catapult for AP Physics with a group (his teacher didn’t want to deal with science fair and made them all do this instead). I have no idea when this is happening and I suspect that S19 doesn’t know either - hopefully it’s not happening at my house! He has an all-state audition coming up and is playing in the pit orchestra for the school musical which will be a lot of practice time in addition to all the practicing and rehearsals he already has. Oh, and he just missed five days of school and will come home jetlagged on Saturday. Also, H thinks S should look for a job next week even though he got his lowest grade ever this past quarter and needs to fit in behind the wheel this spring. Should be fun!
@homerdog. Our GCs have 250+ (maybe even 350) students to keep track of and I wouldn’t expect ours to be able to pick my son out of a lineup, much less make reasonable course suggestions for him. Low expectations are key, haha.
@eh1234 well. Our GC only has 30 kids per grade. That’s not that many. She’s new. Our awesome GC retired last year. He knew everything. He would get back to me or the kids right away (within one hour of sending an email!). I guess I was just spoiled with him.
Yeah our GC’s at our school have about 450 kids per GC. So I don’t see them knowing each student very well. That’s also why when I saw on a CC thread about getting a rec letter from your GC I thought, well that would be useless. My D19’s graduating class is slated to be around 496 students, that would be about 124 kids per GC at our school (although I’m sure they aren’t spread evenly because they are assigned a GC alphabetically)
D currently has theatre rehearsals for UIL One Act Play, ISM project, AP Physics will be starting their Roller Coaster builds soon, a tech theatre project, rehearsal for drill teams upcoming competition season and then there’s the dreaded APUSH homework which is literally a project in and of itself.
Our GC has been reasonably helpful, but she’s the only one in the school (though admittedly there are only ~450 in the entire high school) and her husband just passed away after a relatively brief illness. I am not planning on D19 receiving much guidance in the next few months.
We’ve got a trip to Philadelphia lined up for the end of spring break (wife and D19 only), and I was fairly insistent that she schedule at least one interview now that she is in proper interview season. It is for a school she is, I would guess, only moderately interested in and probably only has a 40-50% chance of getting in at best. But it encourages interviews, on-campus if possible, so if she’s going to visit, she should interview. She was not particularly enthusiastic, but besides maximizing chances at the school (which, without being my daughter or having visited, I think is a good fit), it would be her first college interview. Those need to happen at some point, so the sooner she starts doing those, the better.
My kid has assorted events this spring (Model UN, statewide choral competition, and other typical high school stuff), but one of her strong desires has been to not overschedule herself. So she decided not to audition for either choral or strings regional competitions even though (or, by her logic perhaps, because) she had made both in past years. She is clearly someone for whom resume-building is not of tremendous interest to her, and who wants to have a decent work-life balance. Which will serve her well in life, though not, perhaps, in college applications. (Note: I strongly support her views in this regard! But she will need to work harder in her college applications to convey the broad range of her skills and interests.)
@homerdog Sorry to hear about the GC situation. My kids attend a small, Catholic school with only one GC. She deals with all of the students from grades 7-12. So I have never really considered her someone to fully rely on. That’s a lot of kids. She is super nice and used to be in admissions at a CTCL school. So knowledgeable.
Her college night for parents back in the fall was really informative. And she brought in the head of admissions from our local private college. But I had already learned everything here at CC. My son will basically go in for the college prep meetings next month all “here’s my list, I’ve already visited all the schools, anything you can add?”
What we need to know now is how the school handles counselor and teacher recommendations.
I went to a really big public high school. There were 650 in my class alone. Somehow, my guidance counselor managed to understand me better than I understood myself. She recommended a school that would never have been on my radar. It ended up being my first choice and where I attended. And met my husband. Apparently, that counselor was really good.
For us it’s speech season. And apparently vocal Jazz competition- just found out there are competitions Monday and next Saturday which is ACT day so she’ll be doing ACT. I just texted her so hopefully she won’t be too upset. She already REALLY doesn’t want to take ACT but she REALLY needs to The next ACT date is solo/ensemble music contest and I know she doesn’t want to miss that either. I want June to be available for a re-take, not a first time.
Group district speech contest was two weeks ago and State is this Saturday. DD is going in 2 events but her musical theater partner is not being cooperative so it’s a tossup whether he’ll perform well or sabotage it! Seriously… One Act should be fine. After that she needs to prepare for individual districts. She’s just doing one musical theater song, so with no one else involved it should be free of drama and easier on the schedule to work on at home.
This year has been non-stop theater- as soon as the Play was over, there was a Christmas one act for charity, then group speech, then individual speech. Cheerleading will be over in a couple of weeks, thankfully. After February she will have only soccer to worry about.
Doesn’t anyone else have a prom dress headache yet? I am not sure dd has any time in her schedule for interviews, visits, ec’s, robots, catapults, etc - it’s all about finding the perfect dress.
My S19 has shown some interest in Xavier (Ohio) University. I don’t know much about it other than it has a good reputation, great basketball, Catholic - seems like a good solid school and may be worth a visit in the spring. Anybody have any other information/experience? My D is at Villanova and from what I have read I think the campus vibe may be the same? Sense of community, service oriented, etc…
DD was easy this year for prom! We took a chance and bought one online. We were already looking online in November because we bought it around Black Friday. It fits! Shoes were $12 at Payless a couple of weeks ago. It’s almost a little anticlimactic being done but it’s not like we haven’t had plenty of prom and homecoming shopping between 2 girls. Actually my DD’17 is probably coming back to be someone’s date so we will have to figure out something for her yet. She may use her junior year dress. Last year both girls went to prom and we got both dresses from Facebook swap groups.
Our drama this year was finding the right date. She didn’t want a certain boy to ask her and was determined to find someone else early so she could just tell him she already had a date. After much deliberation and agonizing, she is going with a friend from church camp and it will be fun. We just hated to ask him to make the drive but he is okay with it.
Haven’t started prom dress shopping yet. Although we have glanced online to get some ideas. She wants to go to the stores and try them on, so ordering online is not really an option at this time. Although I did find some of her semi formal dresses on Amazon!
One Act should be fine. After that she needs to prepare for individual districts. She’s just doing one musical theater song, so with no one else involved it should be free of drama and easier on the schedule to work on at home.