A friend has triplets going through the college acceptance process and it’s made me nostalgic for this site. So fun to see all the updates!
My DD is in the home stretch now in terms of deciding where she’ll be in the fall. Her original plan was to get her PhD somewhere on the West Coast, to be closer to home, and she got into some great programs there. On the night before the deadline, I convinced her to submit an application to Harvard, because the program was excellent and what could it hurt - and she ended up getting accepted there, too. (Score one for Mom!) She’s visiting the 2 campuses she hasn’t seen yet over her spring break, and that will hopefully help clarify all the pros and cons. She of course has a huge spreadsheet going
I would appreciate any advice about housing / neighborhoods in Boston from those of you with daughters there or headed that way. I have some distant family my DD’s age who recently moved there, but that’s the extent of our connections in that part of the country.
@Curiosa2 - I’m probably not much help about Boston neighborhoods. In the year and a half since my D graduated, she’s lived in the north end and now lives in Allston (across the river from Cambridge). She doesn’t have a car (most of my family advised against it due to the expense and parking and working from home), so she likes to be close to public transportation. When she first moved to Boston she was pretty surprised at all the costs associated with leasing the apartments (not including rent and deposits). For the first one, she was just taking over someone else’s lease and the apartment had been found online through connecting with a roommate, but she still had to pay a broker’s fee. Now she has three roommates so it’s pretty affordable but not that nice.
I meant to update- she got the scholarship and will be heading back to Oxford! She will also be going to middlebury for a masters (summers only) and Penn. She has always taken the winding road less traveled. Ha!
Amazing the things she’s doing and the places she’ll go!
Today mine is flying to her first work conference, in Pittsburgh! She’s been conducting interviews for student employees, and all kinds of grown up stuff. She laughed the other day when a student sent her a thank you email after his interview and addressed her as Mrs. ___________.
Ooh, that’s exciting!! One of the other students in my grad program (in the cohort ahead of me, or maybe two years ahead, can’t precisely remember) did her dissertation work on Faetar, a highly endangered Franco-Provençal language of northern Italy (plus an immigrant community in Toronto).
There are lots of other languages and language varieties in Italy that need documentation and preservation work. Thank her for me.
3 months ago D19 finalized her plans for after undergrad. She started out as a BioChem/Spanish major along with PreMed. First semester junior year she realized she was not going the PreMed route. I was somewhat relieved. I was afraid of the debt for med school for her. She did research during undergrad and was on two published papers as an author. After that she realized she didn’t like working in a lab. She switched to Bio/Spanish with Latin Am Studies & Education minors. She decided she wanted to teach HS. Since she did not major in Education she is not certified.
She found a program where she will get a Masters in Ed and get her certifications. They will pay for the school an apartment and give her a stipend to live on. She has to stay in that area for three years and teach there. Overall it is the cheapest way for her to get certified.
So much going on here. Congrats on all the grad school acceptance and decision plus the RealLifeJob news!
D19 is graduating in a few weeks but, ever the procrastinator, still has no post bacc plans. The lack of a job offer or a place to move to might actually be stressing her out more now than it is bothering me–which is a nice change of pace, honestly.
DD found out that she was selected for Phi Beta Kappa, which is nice, and she submitted her thesis- all that she has left now is to defend it next week and she’ll be simply waiting for graduation.
S had his last day of college classes yesterday and it seems so strange. He should be finished with finals and everything else this weekend. S submitted 3 grad school apps in the past few weeks and will submit the final 3 this week. Then we celebrate! Graduation is on 5/12 and we have three days of events which will be bittersweet for sure. It’s been fun to get to know a lot of his college friends and their families over these four years.
Next up is 6 months in Europe before S starts his consulting job in January. His current plan is one month of surfing in Spain, one month of surfing in Portugal and then about 4 months in Italy and hopefully improving his Italian so he can become proficient in a third language. I’m definitely envious and am hoping we can visit him in the fall. I hope all your kids and doing well and congrats to those who are graduating!
@elena13 Six months of surfing, traveling, and Italian immersion—I’m jealous, too!
D19 was accepted to NYU’s 15 month nursing program yesterday! Her plan is to get her RN, work for a year, and then potentially return to school depending on which direction she wants to go in (clinical research, Global Health, Nurse Practitioner, etc.). I feel very lucky that she will be close to home.
Wishing everyone who has a graduate smooth travels and a wonderful time at graduation. Fingers crossed all our logistics with grandparents etc. work out, and may it not be hot yet!
S19 will graduate next week from Denison. We flew over from France a little early so that we could watch his last few college track meets. We’ve only been here once since 2019, so everything from the drop-off four years ago is still fresh in my mind, and I’m having a hard time believing he’s already done. He has two graduate school acceptances so far and expects to hear from another couple schools in the next week - all in the UK. These are all one year “conversion” masters in psychology that are designed for students who either did their undergraduate work outside the UK or pursued a different major. After this one, he will do a second masters focused on sports psychology and then a Ph.D. It’s a long road, but he’s excited and we’re happy he’ll be relatively close by. We’re also looking forward to having him with us this summer.
