S19 has a rough draft of the common app essay. I have a friend who is a professional editor and I was going to have her run an eye over it, but she’s not responding to my texts so the editing might have to wait for his English teacher. We have identified all the other supplemental prompts and he has rough ideas for all of them but everything is in draft form at the moment.
We have two weeks until school starts and there is a bunch of summer homework still to do. He has been plugging away at it so I’m not too worried. He finished his work for the summer community college class yesterday. He’s running a high B based on the tests, but the paper he just submitted is half the grade so we shall see how good he is.
@parent2one We have done the same research too and reached the same conclusion. Boys will have a 144 Hz (or something like that) monitor shipped to the dorm and have another monitor home. S19 looked into gaming laptops for a long time couple years ago. It just did not make sense since the performance was reportedly not great even with > $3000 laptops. He bought a ~$700 Acer laptop a year ago and he still plays some games with it, so I guess that was good enough. Both S17 & S19 built their gaming desktops by ordering all the components individually for about $1500 each - case, motherboard/memory, flash/hdd, videocard, heatsink/fan, keyboard with blinking lighted keys, etc. - you would think they would help mom with any pc issues. NOT.
@parent2one Interesting. My son is a gamer as well and he is starting to make noises about a gaming laptop to along with a new MacBook (he uses one that was given to us by his grandfather and is a few years old). He’s a negotiator and is negotiating hard on this one. I suspect he is going to offer to throw in money from his job…oh we’ll see how this plays out.
My kid got an Oculus Rift for Christmas last year, but it only barely works on his current system. We went looking for upgrades to his current system to make the Oculus work, and discovered that we really need to get a whole new system in order to make it playable. So we’re holding off until Christmas money arrives this year, and we’ll get him something that can go to college with him.
I don’t know if this is common, but my D’s School does not allow desktops. I don’t know if it’s a space or power issue or what, but you might want to check with your kids’ colleges to see what their policy is.
@LeastComplicated LOL. I’m still in high school mode (they’re seniors) and was imagining kids hauling in desktops to every day to high school. To be fair, I had a procedure this morning and it might be the anesthesia.
Thank you for motivating me. You all are making serious progress!!
My sister just sent her first off to college and she said no way to gaming systems. She wants him out of his room and doing things/interacting. I’m not sure what my position would be - S isn’t too much of a gamer.
We are the only family on earth who never bought a gaming system for their son. Not even wii. It probably didn’t help him socially in middle school but his high school social life is much better and doesn’t require him to invite kids over to play video games!
My kids are only low level moderate gamers. They don’t have enough time to get really into it. But they always get sucked into the latest game trend, then they binge on it and it’s done. I always give them grief about it, but they aren’t wasting time on social media 24/7 really, trolling Tinder for hookups, or smoking bongs in the basement while binge watching TV nonstop. So I don’t mind if they play here and there. They like to play together and they invite friends to come over or they play online with friends. Could be worse.
Funny because I was reading the reddit sub board for one of the colleges d19 is considering and saw discussions from freshmen there now for orientation week. Some were postings about feeling like they are the only ones who have no interest in partying and would rather game and then responses of other freshmen asking them about the gaming and wanting to connect. I saw one posting from a freshmen looking for anyone into casual gaming who might want to meet.
I think our own generation might view gaming as a more solitary activity than this generation does.
@mom2twogirls I totally agree with you regarding gaming. DS16 is a CS major. He has met many people gaming . The ACM group on campus actually has a gaming competition where they serve refreshments and game as a fundraiser. Too often gaming is vilified out of ignorance of the positives that games provide.
@homerdog I actually don’t know if son19 uses Tinder or not, but I know son17 has at least looked thru the NEU Tinder page because he had some friends over and they were mentioning some horror story dates some of the kids had, lol. So I guess it’s a thing. I don’t know, I’m sort of out of touch with all of that.
Your son needs to get with the times!! No video gaming and no tinder? LOL
@homerdog Trust me, it’s happening there. And if I had a dollar for every time someone said “not my kid” or “not in my town” or “she/she would never do that”, than I wouldn’t have to worry about paying for college
@mom2twogirls “I think our own generation might view gaming as a more solitary activity than this generation does.” Very much this. The tired stereotype of the loner gamer geek just doesn’t fit anymore (if it ever REALLY did - my husband’s a gamer and has been since a teen, and I’m a moderate gamer myself). My son and his friends are good examples (as well as husband and myself lol). We all have active social lives that incorporate both gaming and non-gaming.
@RightCoaster I’m with you on gaming vs other things they could be doing! And they also go out to movies, play pool, etc. Gaming isn’t everything lol. He does like to play the processor-heavy games, though, like Skyrim, Farcry, etc, that need a more robust machine.
I looked at the housing info for the schools he’s interested in, which are both Engineering-heavy schools, and there’s no restriction on desktop computers. I’d never heard of that before!
Wow guys. This is seriously why I’m worried about sending S away. @eb23282 i wouldn’t be so fast to judge. I really do know my kids and their friends. They tell us all kinds of stuff and I’m not missing much. There’s not even that much time they spend away from us. We drive them to and from school. Their lives are pretty straight forward right now. School, sports, home for homework and bed. They don’t even close the doors to their rooms. And no phones come upstairs. No parties as we know they are drunk fests with parents home who are cool with that. Both kids have found friends who agree that they aren’t interested in that scene. I know he and his friends aren’t using Tinder. Kids just are not that fast here. Both of our kids have had wine on vacation or at family gatherings. We aren’t trying to shelter them and would rather they have a healthier relationship to alcohol than getting wasted in secret in someone’s basement.
I also grew up in the Midwest and, when I went to college, I was freaked out by the east coast boarding school kids. The drugs. The sex. The talking about it all of the time. I was very naive. I think some parents are naive to think that there aren’t kids out there like ours. There are plenty of them.
As for video games, I’d rather he be outside playing basketball with his friends that staring at a screen but everything in moderation would be ok if he did play. I see absolutely no positive things about violent video games. If the games are less violent and bring camaraderie to friends, I don’t have problems with that.
@RightCoaster I know you’re just messing with me. He will hate school, though, if all the kids are sitting around playing video games in their spare time! Maybe we should be asking THAT when we visit schools!
Sorry for the mini rant but it bums me out when people who don’t know us tell me that we don’t know what our kids are up to.
My D goes to an all women’s college with very old dorms. I figure that’s the reason for their policy, but I just thought I’d throw that out there. They’re not allowed to have fridges, microwaves, or printers either! They have free laundry on each floor and a large percentage of the students have single rooms so that’s the trade off I guess.
BTW her boyfriend is a game design major, so of course he games at his school :).
