I… don’t know my daughter’s grades? My wife and I try hard to emphasize to our daughter that it’s not important to make 100s or As on every single assignment. (It is our external impression – perhaps false – that some of her friends are working, from our perspective, a little too hard on grades. This isn’t a value judgment on the other kids, more a value judgment on our hopes that our daughter keeps grades in perspective.)
In any case, it’s harder to practice not caring about every grade if we’re constantly asking about or monitoring grades. I’m sure we’ll ask next week when everything is behind us. And we’d be more vigilant if we knew our daughter wasn’t.
Now, our son (D24) – that’s another matter entirely. Multiple checks per week for him.
Maybe it is too long but S19’s resume is 2 1/2 pages. Name, contact info, GPA’s, test scores, EC’s, leadership positions, community service, work experience. This is what he gave to his teacher’s for LORs. From this base resume he was advised to create a few shorter versions – one with a leadership focus, one with a community service focus, one with a STEM focus, etc. – to be used for various scholarships. He worked off of some templates he had in a college admissions workbook I purchased.
S19’s resume is going to be an issue. By the end of senior year he’s going to have been involved in over 20 plays, but that’s his only real EC worth mentioning. So, he can split it up between in-school and out-of-school, between plays where he did tech and plays where he acted, between different types of tech?
I have the kid’s Naviance login and school system login and I check the site daily. It saves me from nagging him to find things out, I can look at a website and not bother him.
Funny thing is, I’m the parent who, for his entire school career, rarely checked his grades. Heck, I don’t think I could even tell you the name of any of his teachers last year. Up until this year, I still had to lookup my login each time I did it. My ex is always on there checking up on the kids. I never liked that, but at least he’s aware if there is a trend in the wrong direction, especially with our youngest. My son really doesn’t need any pushing at all. But he makes silly mistakes (like not realizing that a review assignment was worth 10 percent of his grade for the quarter!)
I don’t know what prompted me to look today - oh probably to see how much this essay that I’m reading over for him is worth. (We’re “this” close to all As this year) But I admit to being a bit obsessive with the Naviance lately and, therefore, I’m kind of obsessed about where his GPA and class rank will land at the end of this year. We don’t get to know unweighted GPA or class rank unless we go through the guidance counselor and sign all kinds of paperwork, so I keep logging on - kind of like when you keep going back to the fridge hoping something that you want to eat will miraculously appear there!
I can’t stand looking at D19 and S21’s grades! I get stressed out as if I were 16 years old again. I do get a weekly email but I usually don’t open it. They’re both conscientious and I don’t think any of us benefits from my looking. D19 is the kind of kid who tells me a lot, so I already know too much about her grades and I’m not kidding that my own latent grade anxiety habits come roaring back to the fore when I know too much and then I get sassy and D gets sassy and it’s just all about bad. I still have dreams on occasion about being in a class that I barely attended, don’t know the material for, can’t drop out of, and am going to fail.
I just tried editing D’s resume way down. We’re within 3 pages, folks! Lol. Clearly I need an intervention. Right now it has an opening section with the standard stuff (GPA, SAT, AP scores) and then everything else is tailored to her strengths, so it’s volunteer experience, choral music experience, and then school-based clubs. We had also put together a whole section we called “Personal Enrichment” where it listed things like her blog, some summer experiences, travels with interesting angles (a women/girls-only trip we took to Mexico City, for example), which do seem worth mentioning but I guess this resume might not be the forum for that…? I think what she needs to do is get into the Common App and poke around in there to see where some of these pieces of information might instead be housed. I can see also that I’m probably going to cave to my baser instincts and utilize a college consultant. We can access consulting for “free” since we put our D in SAT prep classes and I might as well get some advice. I feel like a cliche but D19 is our “test pancake” on whom we make all our mistakes…
I chaperoned a choir rehearsal last night and boy do those kids have potty mouths…! I can tell I’m getting old and grew up in the different era because no way would virtually any kid freely drop the f-bomb in front of an adult and barely even glance up to see if that was a problem. Sigh.
My niece went to school at CC and the block didn’t bother her at all. It’s like so many things, where you think it’s going to be a big deal, and it’s a total non-issue. I will say that CO Springs is a pretty cool place to live.
I hope you all have a great summer! I hardly comment, but I read your posts and enjoy the forum very much!
S19 got a fast food job this summer with his buddies. He seems content to get paid to hang out with them. He ditched any idea of taking a college course this summer. I really couldn’t argue with him when he reminded me he got excellent grades and brought his ACT up by 5 points junior year and he’s registered for an intense senior year.
His driving is going well. We took mostly state highways from MO to FL over spring break and it really built his confidence that he can get around even if he isn’t too fond of the chaos of the interstates.
He continues to put Missouri Science & Technology first in his list. He has just not bought into all of the big name schools out there for engineering. He has played the numbers game with grades and class rank, but doesn’t seem too worked up on cashing in on it to parlay an impressive admittance. He is really an old soul and seems unconcerned with all the nitty gritty things parents freak out about here. He has even told me he is well aware Rolla is pretty dead for a ‘college town,’ but he would be too busy with school to mind.
So he will apply to Purdue to appease me, but I can bet he is S&T bound. MO Heron.
My dream is that I show up for class and everyone is handing in their semester-long research paper which I somehow didn’t know about and haven’t written. I had that one recently!
Through experience with my son and older D, I believe my D19 will be invited to the school award next week or the following week. Unfortunately I will be out of town for more than a week. It’s no big deal though. My older D skipped it.
Hi - I don’t weigh in often on CC feeds but I do learn so much from reading them each night. Thank you all for your detailed posts!
I have a S16 who just finished his sophomore year at a university in the Boston area. Our biggest challenge with him this spring was finding a paid internship for him this summer. (He has one! So many are unpaid!). My D19, our youngest, is finishing her junior year of high school (were from CT). We are gearing up to start the college process soon with her.
@homerdog I was wondering if you looked into Bucknell in PA? We have a family friend who went to Bucknell ( her daughter actually is a current student there) - anyways our friend graduated from Bucknell with a geology degree. Just wondered if it might be on your son’s list?
@Stuffedquahog I’ve looked into Bucknell a bit for our D21 who is a dancer as I’ve heard its easy to double major in dance and something academic there. (This is not usually the case.) I’ll check out the geology program for sure after your suggestion. I just worry that it’s hard to get there from the Chicago area. So many great schools out east are a real trek for us even though we have direct flights to most cities. I’m not sure how I feel about a flight and then a long drive on top of that…especially if we are talking about cold weather areas where snow can also complicate travel. I will definitely re-look at it though. Thanks!
My recurrent stress dream is that I am in reading period before finals, and have finals and papers for at least two classes, plus I have not attended my math class (probably calculus) since the first week. So, in addition to writing a paper and cramming for a final, I have to figure out how to get the math professor who hasn’t seen me in 20 weeks to let me sit for the exam and then I have to teach myself a semester’s worth of calculus. Oh, and did I mention I am supposed to be graduating and need the credit?
@homerdog Bucknell is in the middle of nowhere. We drove through there last summer. It’s a ery nice college town , but yes, travel would be difficult.
@MoHeron - sounds like your son has a good head on his shoulders. My ex told me yesterday as we were airing our frustrations to each other over the kid that a brochure from Missouri S&T and went to throw it away. His Dad was like, “Hey - that’s a good school. You need to read that.” He did the same thing with University of Florida. It’s starting to look more and more like we’ll end up at Penn State by default. (Not that that’s a bad thing, of course)
As a resident of south central PA, I can say that Bucknell is, in fact, in the middle of nowhere. Susquehanna University is close by. Followed in distance by Bloomsburg and Lycoming. The area is stunningly beautiful. Just remote. A lot fo PA schools, including Penn State main campus, are located in areas like that. We have buses from my area that run up there. But coming from another state on mass transit would require some effort.
In other news, I am extremely happy to report that S19 finally had me review his LOE profile (I’ve been a journalist and professional copywriter for the entirety of my still-going career. He actually asks me to do this. LOL!). He made some minor revisions and trotted off to school today ready to approach two teachers and provide them with the profile.
Of course, today is the second to last full day. Next week is a bunch of half-days and finals. So he managed to get the LOE requests done with a day to spare. Because OF COURSE.
Finally, I think we know what DD’s summer plans are. She got a call from church camp where she wants to work and they took her personal information and had me give permission for a background check, so chances are good she’s in. Her cousin is already up there so we know first hand they are still short on staff so I can’t imagine they will turn her down now. This will be a good experience for her, finding out what it’s like to be 3 hours from home for a few weeks at a time (she will do 2.5 weeks in June, have a break, and 3.5 weeks in July). I have to decide whether she’s driving up alone or if I’m doing round trips.
Between now and 6/15 when she starts work, she will have a bonfire with friends, some senior pictures, a choir trip to NYC, soccer banquet, ortho appt (hopefully getting braces off this summer), and maybe a college visit. I asked her if she wanted to do the visit on one of her only free days or wait till the fall. We decided we’d see if a professor will be available to meet on the 11th and if not, wait.
MO Heron.