Visited DD last weekend. Will probably have just one more trip down there- for her fiance’s masters graduation in December combined with moving them out. Still don’t know where they’re going but it’s getting close to time to figure that out.
In the meantime, her current job is being good to her, with a raise, a bonus, and a training in Disney with 3 nights paid at the Contemporary next month! She is content there now but will also be okay with moving on to something different by year end.
D19 now is a full time HS teacher at the start of August. And at the end of August closed on a nice little starter home.
Closed on a home! How terrific is that?! I’m very impressed. Congrats to your D.
I missed these recent posts, but it’s great to hear how our “kids” are doing. (Although closing on a home is way beyond my imagination.) S19 will begin his second masters program tomorrow, at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. He is studying Sport Psychology and, under the UK system, he had to first do a one-year “conversion” MSc in general Psychology intended for students who obtained their undergraduate degrees overseas or in other fields. He was at the University of Glasgow for that and, while he liked the city, he didn’t really like the program. He blames it on the size of the school, particularly the size of some of the big lecture classes, but it probably didn’t help that he already knew most of the material from his US undergraduate program. Anyway, now he can finally focus on the subject he’s really interested in, and he’s chosen a much smaller program this time. St Mary’s is very pretty school located just outside of London and is probably as close to an LAC as you can get in the UK. The school focuses on only a few key areas, including a range of sports-related subjects, and it looks like there will be only about 15 students in his program. I hope the fit is as good as it looks, and then the next step will be for him to find a Ph.D advisor to work with from next year, whether at St. Mary’s or another school.
Keep the news coming!
Update: the article that D19 coauthored has just been accepted for publication in a Nature journal. Since it’s a Nature journal, there will be a description of her contribution, so it will be obvious that it was a substantial one. Her first peer reviewed article!
It’s great timing, since she’s applying for PhD programs at the moment.
Update from here: My C19 took a leave of absence in the middle of college, but will be graduating this December, and this past Monday signed an offer letter for what looks on paper like a dream job for her coming out of college: A two-year rotational position as an industrial engineer in the engineered materials division of a large global corporation. She’ll be spending six months in each of four different areas of that division, so lots of different experiences in a short time.
It was fun to see the updates this fall on your 2019 kids. Congrats to your daughter @dfbdfb on graduation and the great job offer!
My S19 has just about completed one full year at his consulting job and fortunately is done for the year (taking two weeks of vacation and then his company has time off for the holidays. He’s been in Europe this week (hitting Stockholm, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest) and then will be surfing in Puerto Rico next week. It sounds great, but it’s also been a pretty brutal year of work with insane hours at times (sometimes chunks of time with only a few or no hours of sleep/night). He has had some pretty nice perks and most of his meals paid for, but not sure it’s worth the demands. Hopefully, it will lead to something good in the future! He also decided to pay another year of deposit for the MBA program where he committed and he should know later in 2025 if that’s something he’ll try to pursue (also depends on whether company will pay for it). Finally, in the spring he’ll apply to transfer to one of his company’s offices abroad. I was thinking Europe, but he’s also mentioned Australia. 
Hope you’re all having a great holiday season. My D19 got a promotion at the art gallery she works at. She had been the gallery assistant, answering phones, welcoming visitors and booking travel and restaurants, and now she’s the assistant registrar. The registrar department at a gallery, museum or auction house is in charge of all of the logistics and provenance, and it’s D19’s real career focus. We’re thrilled that she’s well on her way! Also nice that she and her roommate moved a bit closer to where we live in Brooklyn, so she’s now a half-hour walk away. S22 (a junior at NYU) is just over the river in the East Village, though he’s about to study in Prague for the spring semester. Great to have the family all close by and doing well.
Funny - I checked this thread just last week, hoping that people might be posting - it’s always fun to hear what everyone’s kids are up to these days. Our S19 will be flying in from London tomorrow. We are looking forward to having him back for the holidays, and it’s so much easier now that we are living in France rather than Japan. He is about halfway through a master’s program in applied sport psychology at St. Mary’s Twickenham. St. Mary’s is located just outside central London, and it’s a beautiful school. They focus primarily on a just couple of areas, including sports. Unusual for the UK, his program has only about 15 students. He went to Denison as an undergrad and we always expected he would want to move on to a bigger university after that, but after a year in a gigantic conversion program at Glasgow, he was so happy to find St. Mary’s. After this master’s, the next step towards becoming a UK-certified sport psychologist is to do three years of practical training. And after that, he wants to do a Ph.D. I believe he will be in school forever, but he has been focused on this field since middle school and it’s fun to watch him chase the dream.
Tomorrow we head down to DD for her fiance’s graduation from masters program. Which means that it’s time for the next phase as they have no desire to stay in that city. A week from tomorrow we are going back down, this time flying so that we’re free to drive a U-Haul back.
For now she is moving into her sister’s house and has a temporary job back at her internship. This summer, they will be hiring a full time permanent position which is her dream job so taking the temp job will up her odds for that. She looked into other jobs but we could tell that if she didn’t try for her dream job she would always wonder. So she’s going for it, and if not, will have flexibility depending on what fiance gets for a job. Fortunately, this area is prime location for his field.
It will be nice to have her just over an hour away and the girls are excited to live together. We are driving the U-Haul up for her and she will arrive after they spend Christmas with his side. Fortunately she is taking the cat to Christmas so we won’t be handling his crying in the U-Haul for 4.5 hours 
When we moved here from Chicagoland (a 6 hour drive) we sedated our kitty, but she still whimpered ever so often.
D19 should be getting responses next week on whether she has any interviews from the PhD programs to which she applied, so she’s pretty stressed.
@MWolf Best of luck to your D19 
. I hope she gets all the interviews!
Mine just graduated from an accelerated nursing program, adding a BSN to her BS in Psychology. After a period of adjustment, which was a bit lonely and overwhelming, she had a terrific experience. Loved living in NYC, loved the work, the people, etc. Nursing is a great match for her personality–practical, hands-on, a helper, but also intellectual and likes to know how everything works. She’s generally an introvert, but really enjoys working around other people and being on a team. She’s also a person who thrives when she’s at the top of the class and able to have work/life balance. Her undergrad sciences prepared her very well for nursing school, so she was able to do succeed while also taking up running, getting back together with her college boyfriend, hosting a lot of friends in the city, and (to my delight) coming home often 
.
Next up is the NCLEX exam to become a certified RN. Once she passes, she would like to do a nurse residency in pediatric acute care. Those are tough positions to get, but she wants the most on-the-job training and mentoring possible. She thinks this is the right area of nursing for her to start off, but luckily there is plenty of flexibility. She also applied to NYU’s Nurse Practitioner program and got in, so they will hold her spot for 2 years while she trains/works, and then she could go back.
I don’t know how long people have been reading my posts on CC, but when D19 was in 8th grade, she missed 60 days of school due to severe migraines (which she’s had since age 5). We honestly thought she might have to be homeschooled for high school, and she used to worry so much that she would never be able to hold down a job, get married etc.
She has come so far, and I am so grateful for her inner resources, and for medical advancements in migraine treatment. Medically, we are so lucky to be living now, and I have daily reminders of that! It’s also nice that D19 is coming full circle because the first provider who really connected with her and made her feel seen and empowered was a nurse practitioner.
Keep the updates coming!
Congratulations to your daughter - it’s a wonderful story. Our D21 suffers from migraines, so I can relate, and I share your gratitude for medical advancements. One of the other great things about moving to France is that now she has access to monoclonal antibody therapies that were not available in Japan.
It was a difficult week for D19, but ended well. Five rejections, one hard (actual rejection letter), and four soft (not invited for interview when invitations went out), and then had an article rejected. However, on Friday, D19 got an invitation for an interview, and a faculty member responded from another program and would like to speak with her, though it’s not certain how that will play in admissions to that grad school (it hasn’t yet sent out invitations). It’s certainly not bad.
Evidently this is a very difficult year - top Neuroscience PhD programs are getting the highest number of applications ever. We’re talking 600-800 applications or more (according to the heads of graduate committees) for 40-50 interviews and 15-20 acceptances at the colleges. Worse is that a huge chunk of those are great applicants who did not get offers last year and are reapplying after building their resumes another year.
On the other hand, she did only apply to top programs this year, and may expand her search somewhat next year if she doesn’t get an offer this year. Also, her resume will be better next year. In any case, getting an invitation to an interview means that her resume is good enough. So even if she doesn’t get an offer this year, she’ll feel more hopeful when applying next year.
It’s winding down, and D19 has two interviews and one place where she is interacting with the PI. That last place has the possibility of accepting students if a PI is interested, but invitations to interviews haven’t yet been sent out.
All three are very top programs (generally ranked in the top 20 or 10 worldwide), and are getting (as I wrote) applications from hundreds of highly qualified applicants (600-800 applicants and interviewing 30-40). So, for a first-time applicant, she’s actually doing very well - far better than the vast majority of applicants. So even if none pan out, she knows that she already has a great profile, and feels good about the application season.
Now she has the interviews coming up, so we’re all crossing fingers, toes, and other various appendages.
PS. Although rankings of the departments which hosts the PhD programs doesn’t always say much about the quality of the program, it does affect the chances of being hired as a faculty member after graduation.
D19 has an offer for one of her top choices, and the offer includes a recruitment award. She’s still waiting on one of the places she applied to, but it’s unlikely that they will provide a better offer. The place that offered her the position is also international (unlike the one she’s waiting for), and is therefore not subject to the uncertainties in NSF funding that exist for USA grad schools.
She still needs to get her student visa, and find a place to live, but she’s (knock on wood, and other superstitious stuff) starting her PhD program this fall.
Back in December, D19 was already strategizing how to have a better application next year (she had some real good ideas), but, thankfully, she will most likely not need to do so.
That’s wonderful news for your daughter! It seems like a good idea to go abroad, especially given her field and what is happening with research funding. S19 has been doing his graduate work in the UK so far, but his next step towards becoming certified as a sports psychologist is three years of mentored practical training. He may go back to the US for that, both because there would be more opportunity and because he wouldn’t have to worry about trying to get a visa - practical training doesn’t work for a UK student visa.
Congrats!!!
@MWolf - I’m a little late, but congrats to your D! That’s great news! What will she be studying? I hope she has a wonderful experience.
Thank you! She’ll be doing her PhD in Neuroscience. She’s officially accepted the international offer (Canada) and has initiated the student visa process.