@JanieWalker I completely agree. S is playing games online, chatting or watching Netflix with friends daily. They all have more time to socialize since few have activities or work.
This situation has been a lot more difficult socially for my younger one since those virtual socializing opportunities are harder for the little kids.
That is so wonderful. 
@homerdog Thanks for sharing. Seems overwhelming to try and meet those guidelines for sure.
@SammoJ I love that!!!
Sadly, D does not really have anyone she keeps close contact with. No zoom, no facetime, no sustained texting conversation. Just a text here and there with days between responding on her part and the other party. More like, " Hope youāre well" in teen speak. That is why a job is so important for her. I have to force her out of her room into human interaction for her well being.
Her birthday is next week and she does not have anyone to invite to the birthday dinner. This social isolation makes it harder for her keep relationships that were already only school based going.
AP: Calc BC, Physic 1 and Chem this week then Lang and Psych the week after. D did prep but not as much as she usually would. I think being away from the school chatter has lessened her sense of urgency on prepping.
I am sorry to hear this - is it possible for her to get an essential worker job once her AP exams are finished? (I understand if you wouldnāt want her to thoughā¦thatās a health risk, and each family needs to be sure they are okay with having their teen work with the public right now.)
I havenāt been here in a while! A lot to catch up on. @Momof3B Congrats to your son! Our band director said heāll be making the section leader announcements next week. (S21 isnāt in band but D23 is, too young to be a leader yet) I doubt marching band will happen for us this year 
S21 has thee AP tests (APUSH, English Comp, Calc AB). He doesnāt seem stressed about it, says heās got it covered. Weāll see. Iāve been focusing my nagging on the brag sheet his has to give his counselor for her to write his recommendation (I can only nag about one thing at a time LOL). Kept saying it was āalmost doneā so finally I made him show it to me and was able to provide some feedback to hopefully move it to fully done.
Also signed him up for a 1-week college essay workshop this summer. I thought I might get resistance on that but he was fully on-board. I think he likes that someone will provide some structure and guidance to get the essay process started.
One weāre past the brag sheet I will shift my nagging to solidifying his application list so he can at least figure out what the various essay requirements are. @NJWrestlingmom College of Charleston recently came up for me when looking at statistics/analytics/data science programs so Iāve added that to the places for S21 to investigate further. Heās definitely not been interested in exploring much. At this point the list may just be VT, JMU, UVA, UDel.
He also is set with a camp counselor job for the summer, if the camp is able to happen. I really hope they can figure out a way to do that. Otherwise he needs something else to do. One project might be editing together some family home videos. My dad has a bunch of old reel home movies from the 70s that he wants to convert to digital and then edited together to put in order, add titles and simple commentary. S21 has taken a video editing class so I think he can handle it and would be a nice thing to do with his Pop-pop via Zoom. Just need to get my dad to finally take all the film over to Costco to start the conversion. Heās been talking about it for several years. Iād planned to get this moving when we visited them for a week at the start of the summer but now that trip is unlikely to happen.
@JanieWalker duly noted. She is applying to Chick-Fil-A.
@TVBingeWatcher2 the one closes to us is doing such a great job at social distancing and keeping the employees safe. I told S he should look into getting a summer job there also.
I was a but apprehensive about letting S21 keep his job at Whataburger but Iām so glad that I did. Heās been working 4 days a weekā¦Before quarantine it was only 2 days a week. Without that human contact and socialization I would have a hard time keeping his sane. And heās making a killing in tips lolā¦heās the friendly Ipad guy who stands in the drive through taking ordersā¦with a mask, gloves, standing back with a cheery disposition lol. Someone gave him a $10 tip yesterday and thanked him for his service 
@Aguadecoco that is what I am seeing at our local one too. Good luck to your son.
@momofB love that!!!
@momofB Thatās awesome! Iād like S23 to get a PT food/grocery job but DH is really apprehensive about getting sick so heās no on board with that idea. DH got a UTI this week and was convinced he must have COVID-19, despite us all going nowhere but weekly, careful grocery runs since late March. His dr and the ER disagreed and wouldnāt even test him, gave him an antibiotic for the UTI but he still doesnāt believe they know what they are talking about.
@NJWrestlingmom My kidās up to 32 schools. I have no idea how weāre going to narrow down the list. Weāve signed up for a bunch of the virtual information sessions but those arenāt the same as being there. Weāve also built a spreadsheet with key factors and done a weighted ranking - but that only goes so farā¦
It was a hard decision to make for sure! If I had anyone in our household who was immunocompromised then it would have been a definite NO! When my anxiety started peeking I did have him take a 3 week break from work to see how the curve would spike in our area but thankfully our County has faired better than others. We are hyper vigilant about his routine when he gets home from work (clothes straight in the laundry room and shower before he greets anyone etc).
@NJWrestlingmom Thatās a lot of schools! Personally, I donāt see the problem with applying to the max of 20 on the Common App though if a student is shooting for a bunch of schools with less than 50% acceptance rates. Especially for next yearās cycle, when a lot of 2021 spots might already be filled with 2020s taking gap years (hopefully not, but right now, who knows). So everything is going to be even more unpredictable perhaps, so if a kid has the time to write all those essays and the money to spend on the application fees, applying to a lot of schools makes sense. But maybe not 32. Maybe narrow down by current acceptance rates if most other things are equal? And of course price.
I think my S21 has 15 schools on his list, which honestly already sounds daunting to me. I remember going through this with D16, and she āonlyā had 7 schools on her list, and even then I thought that was a lot.
Just got news that his two week program at Yale this summer will not be in-person. I think they will try to do it virtually.
He took the ACT last summer and did well, and his score will confirm his NMSF status. I am seriously considering not having him do the subject tests he signed up for, If I remember correctly subject tests are not happening in June - can someone confirm for me?
Correct, @carlson2ā¦no subject tests in June.
@carlson2 On subject tests, check for updates to the collegesā websites. Many have changed from ārecommendedā to optional or no longer consider. There are a few holdouts, though.
Wow - lots to catch up on today!
My daughter has 5 AP tests - 3 next week Chemistry, BC Calculus and APUSH, and then English Lang and Spanish Lang next week. Next week is her schoolās finals week, so there wonāt be any classes after the AP tests.
Sheās been reviewing on her own and most of her teachers have been doing content reviews. She already took her final in Calculus, which mimicked the current AP Calc format and she did well. Sheās feeling good about that one, Chemistry and APUSH. Sheās least confident in Spanish. Sheās convinced sheās going to be given a cultural topic that she wonāt know anything about, but they prepare the kids well, so I think thatās a lot less likely than sheās making it out to be.
@NJWrestlingmom - my daughter visited CoC last June. We honestly thought it was going to be the school for her. Turns out she felt it was a little too urban. She met with the honors college and really liked what they had to say though; it wasnāt the educations she would have received, it was the physical campus that dropped it from the list. She visited UofSC on the same trip and it instantly become and has stayed her frontrunner since then, which we thought would be too big and just sort of added it onto the trip since it wasnāt too far away from CoC. Thatās why I really want her to visit some of these schools like Tulane and Elon that sheās currently interested in. Until you put āboots to the groundā what looks good online and on paper might just not appeal to you in person.
D21 has four AP exams next week - Calc AB, Chem, Physics 1 and APUSH and then Lang the following week. Chem and Physics are on the same day (Thursday), which is how they were originally scheduled as well.
Summer is looking like application and essay writing, possibly working as an online tutor for our school district (she applied last weekend, wonāt hear back until end of the month at the earliest) and online art classes. Iāve thought about suggesting a fast food job - we have two places within walking distance - but since the fall start date for school is up in the air and may be as early as first week of August, Iām thinking of letting it be. Since a lot of the summer camps are closed here, and she was going to be a camp counselor, Iām going to encourage her to offer babysitting to my colleagues for some extra $$.
She has probably 3 definite schools on her list to apply to at this point. She has another that is probably not affordable now (UCLA) since DH was laid off in early March, and one that may not be a fit if she leans to science or engineering (American). There are about 13 more listed as maybes right now. One of the 3 definite is a financial safety but competitive admissions, the other two are probably admission safety/matches but dependent on merit. She knows she wants a school in or near a large city, diverse campus, >2500 students.
This may be helpful for the group - the StriveScan college virtual college fair I posted a while ago has a YouTube channel with all of the recorded sessions on it - they added another two weeks for the individual schools to give 45 minute information sessions and recorded them also. So there are a bunch of schools with āon demandā info sessions now - Iām hoping to watch a few at a time with D21 once her exams are over, since itās been tough to sign up for some of the live ones sponsored by the schools.