I totally agree! I think it may also be good experience in the disappointing experience of not being accepted into something. Not that I want her to be disappointed, but I think learning how to handle that is also a valuable skill that I’d like her to have a small amount of practice in before college notifications come in 12 months from now. And if she does make it in, then perhaps she won’t have to deal with too many rejections 12 months from now.
If she doesn’t make it into the programs, then, yep, it’s trying to find some sort of summer research work/volunteer position, plus some job work and application prep.
DD will have some leadership- she’s class president but honestly there’s not a lot involved with that. She and a couple of friends want to put on a theater day camp for elementary age this summer, so that would be good if they can figure out what all to do with the kids.
I overheard her tell her sister the merit she can get at her current favorite school if she can get up to a 30 ACT, so I’m hopeful she’s willing to do some studying this summer and give it another shot in September. Also last night she asked if her grandpa could take the ACT for her since he’s good at math :))
I did decide to plan a trip to her favorite, so we have plane tickets and a hotel booked!
Made it back from CO late last night after our 24 hour ordeal. Had to beg the flight attendants and pilot to let me off of our broken United plane so I could run back into the airport to switch to an American flight that was laving in 30 minutes. Lots of stress but it worked out and we got the last 3 seats on American which we bought while they were already boarding the plane - phew!!
D19’s school is having the kids take a free SAT tomorrow. D already took the SAT and ACT once each and did much better on the ACT. She wasn’t planning on taking the SAT again - should I have her do it just for extra practice? It has the essay which she has never done but she is a good writer so even though she owl rather skip it I am not worried about that part. She would rather stay home I am sure and I’m not sure if I should push her.
Son19 doesn’t think he wants to do another educational summer camp this summer. Last year he did a weeklong overnight engineering camp and he liked it, and I thought he’d want to attend the next level this summer. He seems like he just needs some downtime, and I think he knows he’d either like it at the school or not, so why waste the $$ and time again this summer. I can’t really argue, and I like not spending the cash again I guess.
He’s signed up for a 2 day track camp at Harvard, where a bunch of coaches show up. He also wants to go to a local 2 day soccer camp where couple of his favorite schools will be in attendance.
He’s going to have to find something to do with his time though. He’ll probably take some sort of coding class online, and has team soccer practice 2x per week.
They don’t get out of school until late June. Then it’s 4th of July weekend, and then it’s like summer is just flying by.
He usually has to be around 1 week prior to school start date for soccer tryouts and tournament. So he really has a short window of relaxation this summer, He will be busy working on college apps too.
Our schools get out in late June, too. S19 applied for a one-week program for his instrument at Oberlin, and will likely spend a lot of time practicing this summer, taking piano lessons, maybe visiting some schools within a reasonable drive, and hopefully working and thinking about his college list. I know summer visits aren’t always ideal, but it worked out fine with D16.
I was looking at next year’s school calendar and spring break is really late! If he wants to visit schools post-admission, he might be doing it awfully close to that May 1 deadline.
We haven’t done any structured summer camps or activities for either of our kids since they were old enough to stay home alone. S will spend the summer working, as he now has a job at a local supermarket, and playing basketball with friends.
S has finally started to show some real interest in college. He is scheduled to take the SAT next weekend, and actually studied and did practice exams on his own. Then he and older D, who is home for spring break, spent an entire evening going through his practice tests and reviewing all the answers he got wrong. His English teacher offered to review essays over the summer so S is planning to start working on that early too. Maybe the kid is finally starting to realize that this is important.
@momtogkc Sorry to hear about the travel trouble and glad to hear that it worked out.
I had a similar experience last May. I missed my Southwest flight from Boston to Denver, so I walked over to the Jetblue counter. They would not let me buy the ticket because there was only 75 minutes left (! not long enough to process the reservation!) Giving up on the direct flight, I used my phone to buy United ticket to Chicago with 45 minutes to spare while walking from another terminal. The airplane door closed as soon as I boarded the United. While in plane, I used in-flight Wifi to search for connections, and found a Southwest flight from Midway airport to Denver had been delayed (using FlightAware app.) I took a taxi from O’hare to Midway, and then talked to the confused Southwest agent to change my missed ticket that was rebooked to the next day to the delayed one. The agent took forever to change the ticket. I ran to the gate, and the door closed behind me for a second time. That was how I made it to S17’s graduation.
I tried to talk my son into applying to a couple of free but competitive summer programs but he was not interested. He’ll be doing summer water polo training and swim team plus college stuff, but mostly he wants to work. He wants to make money and he loves that his summer life guarding job has such a fun atmosphere that it doesn’t feel like work.
I still worry that he’s missing out on a good opportunity - probably could have gotten into the governor’s honors program in our state or another good program - but I have to step back a bit and try not to push too much.
Getting started on the college search process has been a bit stressful so I’m trying to focus on the positive. He finally brought his math grade up!
My son is doing a 2 week program at the University of Minnesota this summer. I booked his airline tickets last night and commented how strange it felt to to be making arrangements for him to fly alone and my husband reminded me that soon he’ll be doing everything without us. I’m not sure I’m ready for this stage of parenting!
@mindatwork No joke! DD is seriously considering a school that will involve flying home. She’s flown several times with us but never alone. We’re visiting next month so my plan is to have her be in charge at the airport and see how she does. I just wish SW would make a nonstop between the airports- as it is, it’s 2 hours in the air and 3 hours layover, ugh. She wants to be a flight attendant for a few years after college, though, so she is looking forward to flying back and forth.
But she’s my BABY! She won’t turn 18 until the first week of college, and her short stature and round face make her look even younger, I think that makes me even more protective. :((
dont post here as much as I once did. See we are talking about summer plans. S gets out memorial day weekend. he will be a CIT at gamecamp for two weeks. Meanwhile he has to take 9th grade Lit online due to a very long story . At the end of June he is then going to be a CIT for a science and technology camp. Oh and I have the privilege to pay for all these opportunities. The good news is that if he becomes a counselor next summer he will finally make money. Once he gets back in later July we will start working with the college consultant that we used for our oldest for his essays and common app. She is very reasonable and a former English teacher. i found with my D, by having her be responsible to someone else, and have a weekly hourly meeting, everything got done with minimal meltdowns. Well worth the 500$ or so we spent. She also is good with working with kids on the spectrum, which is an added bonus.
When we got the invitation for the kiddo to apply to TASP I was quite excited. I did not realize that this would mean that he would refuse to think about any alternative summer plans until we heard back from them. I had the feeling he wasn’t getting in, and last night he opened the email (he looked at his email unprompted! I’m impressed) and found out he wasn’t getting in.
So we’re scrambling about. He stayed home all summer a couple of years ago and it didn’t do well. My kid is active and extroverted and needs to be around other people for good chunks of the day in order to be happy.
We don’t have an extra car for him and we don’t have the budget for a lot of the fancy summer experiences. There are a few places within walking distance he could get a job. Nothing impressive, but . Too late to get in to the internship programs near my office. He could walk to the community college so that’s a definite possibility. He has to take a health class for graduation next year and the scuttlebutt is that the teacher is terrible, so we’re looking into whether he can knock that class out at community college.
D took the free SAT at school today. We figured it couldn’t hurt even to practice sitting for the long test even if we are focusing on ACT now. She said she thought it was easier than last time even with the essay. he also forgot how much more time you have compared to ACT so she was finished with most sections early.
We have no summer plans for her at all yet. Just like when talking about college when we talk about what she wants to do for summer she says I don’t know. We will most likely be doing two family trips so that kind of interferes with some options. Guess we all need to sit down and figure out what we are doing!
Let’s hope this is the last snow day. It’s currently about 10" and falling hard. So they will take a day back from spring break for exceeding district allotment of snow days. We are on hold about summer - waiting on whether dd gets into governors school and if not, I think dd will likely just find a job involving ice cream. Good idea to enjoy a summer without building up a resume talking pt I think.
S19 wasn’t interested in applying for any of the summer programs, either - he wants to get a job and save up some money. Fine with me! Our only dilemma is when he should apply… we’re going to visit our Florida “family” the second week of summer vacation, so my gut tells me he should wait until we get back vs trying to explain to prospective entry level job manager that he needs a week off right away. Any thoughts?
@parent2one I would actually apply before because 1) they always ask for a start date and you can give them one after your vacation 2) a lot of places don’t get back to you for a week or two after you apply so by the time they actually hire you summer is 1/2 over.
This happened to my D15 and a week into training when they realized she could only work the summer they told her not to come back the next day.
Just an fyi. Although not a major ski resort, Dartmouth Skiway is just 20 minutes from campus in Lyme. Has about 30 runs with enough terrain variety to appeal to most skiers. Convenient if they’re just looking for a day on the slopes without having to travel too far.
No courses or job for S this summer. He’ll be busy with sports as nationals for his main sport is in early August. 6 weeks of double practices and hanging with the team or sleeping when he’s not training. However 3 weeks are at a training camp in Europe so that’ll be different, though same train-eat-sleep-train-eat-chill-train-eat-sleep daily schedule. He’ll have one week free at the end of summer and will go hiking with friends or work on a trail crew. Any free time he has will be working on apps I think.
When DD applied to the local dairy sweet, it took at least a few weeks to get an answer. She started working this fall and has had about 6 hours a month. She was hating it. We talked about quitting but she was scared to do that and ended up just putting in a notice that she couldn’t work during soccer. Now the last couple weeks she’s had a few shifts and they went well. She’s considering continuing to work there when soccer is over. Once it’s summer, they will be busier (it’s boring working a 3 hour shift with one customer), more of her friends will be working there too, and I think if she works more often, she will be more comfortable with it. Hopefully she isn’t miserable if she stays on. There are precious few opportunities for teens here.