S22 had his final college class yesterday! Now just waiting for grades, but he’s all done with his undergrad education (I believe he said he has no finals). Exciting times!
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I think interviews vary from one major to another. Math has very few interviews. Going by MathematicsGRE (a math grad school / REU dedicated site), many schools don’t even start releasing results till late January or February. Having an acceptance in hand by mid January would be amazing.
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Makes sense. I guess I was hoping for interview invites in mid January. But if there are no interviews, Feb-March is bearable I guess!! But I really hope they are not strung along until April!
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Anyone know possible timelines for rejection fo a PhD but an offer for a Masters? I guess that’s our Plan B; however, I would also hope to know sooner than later!
Last college tuition payment for youngest child made. Woo-hoo! It’s amazing how fast the college years have flown by. Just a few more months of rent payments, and then financial adulthood!
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Yes, last year’s cycle was absolutely nuts!
I think that was part of why my kid decided to take her chances in the labor market rather than going the grad school route. She saw several seniors go through the madness.
All the best to this year’s candidates!
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Last graduate school application submitted today! Now we hope she gets some interviews!
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D22 had crazy tech issues joining the zoom call for her 10-minute interview today, and she ended up having to join on her phone like half an hour later. Yikes. But she was apologetic, and she said the interviewers were super nice and totally chill about it – she said it was clear they were trying to prevent her from panicking, lol.
They only asked three questions – 1) describe a time something didn’t go your way (and how did you react and address it), 2) what steps would you take to prep for the transition into grad school, and 3) how would you contribute to the community of your cohort.
She said overall it was fine, not stellar but she doesn’t feel like she botched it.
But, she’s submitted five applications, has five more to go. She’s now done with exams, is currently out celebrating with friends and is flying home tomorrow. Yay!
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they made it easy with question #1 
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I thought that too, lol! But she used a different anecdote. 
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Happy holidays to everyone!
This was a long and short year. Went by so fast and so much happened. S22 had a great run with some wonderful learning opportunities during the course of his summer and fall internships. He was sad to miss the fall semester at Berkeley but he is excited for his upcoming final semester and graduating with his friends in May 2026. He is interning in Boston next summer as a fun way to explore the east coast, experience another segment of the tech industry, and hedge against his new grad role that starts in late Aug. All in all, we are all thankful he accomplished what he wanted in an unforgiving market for new grads.
The youngest is still a freshman in high school and while there is ways to go, she unlike her brother has no clue what to do in college. She spent a day at Berkeley Engineering participating in a program for high school kids. Her admissions cycle feels just a short time away and i’m not sure i’m ready for all the ups and downs just yet.
DW became a Nurse Practitioner this year and i hope her hard work and commitment to continuing education rubs off on the kids as the economy of the future likely will look so much different than what any of us anticipate.
I wish the best of luck to all the parents and students stressing about the next steps - whether it’s a new job or grad school. Like I say all the time, the kids will be alright. I just hope the parents take care of themselves too.
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Hey all. Well, so far this winter break has been a learning experience… for me.
I really wanted to plan a family vacation for me and spouse, S22 and S25. Theory was that this might be our last opportunity to do something big with S22 since he’ll hopefully have a job after he graduates next year and he may not have much leave to spare on family vacation. We were going to do something new to us, but relatively less expensive and easy to do (Montreal). Then last minute spouse says “let’s go to Hawaii”. We aren’t last minute planner people, but we bought tickets for four for a week in Hawaii less than 10 days before leaving.
And in my head, I let this build up as Most Amazing Vacation And Family Experience Ever.
Which was a mistake. It was fine, we got some time away, which was nice, but it wasn’t the vacation to end all vacations. Partly because of the weather (five days of rain), partly because we just have different ideas of what to do on vacation and there was more fussing and, well, stress than I expected. Like I put so much pressure on myself to make this an overall amazing experience because what if it’s last that I barely enjoyed myself, worrying about whether everyone else was seizing the day and having fun.
So the lesson to self was to not do that, to not put such high expectations on things, and to remember that my kids are adults now, with different wants out of vacations, and that’s ok and we can still all have fun but it will be different.
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Hugs to you. We’re still finding our way on how to travel with adult children, too. We went to London and Paris this summer as a family, and some of it was awesome, and some of it was…not.
I get it, though. I’m feeling somewhat peeved at the moment because two of my three got Pokemon games for Christmas, and they stayed up most of the night playing them, then slept in until like 5pm today. No one got up to say goodbye to my MIL before she flew home this morning. We have rough plans to watch Stranger Things as a family, but you know, people have to be awake for that.
I know it’s silly to be annoyed, and teenagers and college kids can be self-absorbed, but dude.
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Well we are traveling tonight to Portugal and although we are a pretty well traveled bunch the kids definitely have gotten pickier over the years and to some extent want to chill more than sightsee. So that’s always a bit of a battle in getting out on time especially when i sign us up for day trips with early am departures. Wish me luck!
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I’m sorry that your vacation was not all that you had hoped for.
I appreciate you sharing your experience so that others like me can learn from it.
I also had grandiose ideas of a great family vacation before DS22 gets swallowed into the corporate world with only 2 weeks of vacation.
And so I will heed your words of wisdom: we’re going to do a smaller drive-vacation (so that we can take along our old dog) to Quebec City (so we get to have “Europe” without having to fly).
Originally was going to Rome/all-over-Italy this summer, but I can’t do the crowds and summer heat, etc.
One suggestion to others:
I loved so many parts of our San Francisco/Berkeley, CA vacation last June, and 1 big part was the 3 hours time difference.
So while my “vampire” families like to sleep in, waking up at 9am PST felt like 12noon for our East Coast bodies, so it wasn’t as difficult to get moving at 9am.
Heading out for girls’ trip for some sun+fun+rum tomorrow 
Happy New Year!
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That’s a good call. We spent S22 post high school/pre college summer traipsing around Europe for a good month and the week we spent in Italy in essentially 100+ degree weather every day were the worst parts of any vacation we’ve ever had. Positano was gorgeous but not in 115F temp.
We tried something new for last few trips with our D - she creates a shared google document where we all add what we’d like to do/see. We prioritize what’s most important to each of us and then have a family meeting (usually over FaceTime) to come up with a game plan. Ever since we moved to that model, D feels a sense of ownership to the planning process and there is much less grumbling. We negotiate start times and down time too. It also takes a huge amount of pressure off of me to make sure everything is perfect and everyone is having fun.
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Ooooh. I really like both the shorter driving tour to Quebec City that @huango is thinking about (we’re in the DC metro area, so while a long drive to get there, totally doable as a shorter driving vacation for us) and the shared google planning doc idea from @momofboiler1 .
My spouse and I have * always * vacationed differently. I like a plan, he hates planning anything. And for years the vacation planning would drive me nuts because I’d try to get him to talk about things that he was interested in doing, if he preferred A or B, which hotel he wanted, or things that he wanted to add to the agenda ahead of time, and I’d get responses like “i don’t know, we don’t need to talk about that now, there’s plenty of time” and then time would just… run out. And it would make me so frustrated and stressed out trying to get him to plan, that it made vacation planning miserable and anger inducing for me. So years ago we came up with a general plan that we’d take turns. On even years it would be my vacation - I’d plan it, I wouldn’t ask his opinion on things (because his unwillingness to have an opinion meant I was just waiting for him and couldn’t move forward), and we’d do what I wanted. On odd years, I’d defer to him and not try to plan anything, I would “offer it up” (as the nuns in my long ago Catholic school would say) and, frankly, I’d assume it would suck and if it was better than that, I’d be pleasantly surprised.
This has generally worked well.
I’m not kidding about his unwillingness to plan ahead of time. One year, when it was his year, he had the general idea that we’d drive to Niagara Falls, then go to Toronto to catch a Blue Jays game and see Toronto, spend a day at Canada’s Wonderland amusement park, drive home through the finger lakes region and spend a day at Cooperstown, spend a day in NYC, spend two days on the Jersey Shore, drive home. Totally lovely! Until I tell you that - other than the two times we spent two nights in the same place - every morning we woke up not knowing where we’d sleep that night because he didn’t make, or even try to research, hotel reservations until the day we needed to sleep there. We also had no tickets ahead of time to Niagara Falls or anything touristy in Toronto or NYC, or the baseball game or amusement park. It was all fly by the seat of your pants. I am NOT comfortable with that, so I just went in with the thought that it would likely suck, and if it was better than that, great. Well, other than the hotel we found on the road the night we drove up to Niagara (which I’m reasonably sure was mostly a by-the-hour type place) everything was great! We had a lot of fun. If I’d been planning the vacation, I would’ve been disappointed because we didn’t do things I would’ve wanted to do - they were booked or unavailable. But because I had assumed it would all be a colossal failure, I was pleasantly surprised by the things we did do. That trip still ranks as one of the best all time that we have taken as a family.
I forgot about that for the Hawaii trip this Christmas, and it was that unfortunate mix - having expectations plus someone who just won’t commit ahead of time (seriously - even once there I couldn’t get him to commit to a day to tour the Palace, so consequently once he was ready to do that, there were no tickets left and we didn’t get to go) that left me so frustrated. I knew what I wanted to do, I had expectations, and they went largely unrealized.
Of course, the other main difference between that long ago Canada/NY/NJ trip and now is that the boys are adults now, with opinions. So finding some way to thread this needle for the future will be key. I think the google doc organizing might help with that. If my spouse doesn’t participate in the sharing ideas, well, that’s his problem. Or, since we all know that he likes to spend some time just driving around, we use that as his input “day to just explore”.
Anyway, things to think about for the future.
Meanwhile, right now I’m looking into the other room where my S22 is reading a book, sitting in the glider rocker we bought when we were expecting him. We were so poor back then, it’s a cheap junky chair that we bought at Walmart, where I’ve restuffed the cushions more than once, but no one has wanted me to get rid of it. I know he really should be working right now - he’s got more job applications to be doing, and some work on his senior project he should be doing. But watching him just enjoying himself and taking some time to relax makes me so happy. He’s always pushed himself so hard and filled his schedule so much, that time to relax has always been fleeting for him. I’m glad he’s taking some time now.
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I have long advocated a menu style plan for vacations. Just like you can’t eat everything on the menu at the restaurant you can’t do everything there is to do on a vacation. I usually make a Google Doc or an email with menu items and then try to get people to pick what they are interested in and encourage them to add to the menu. They are usually not interested in adding to the menu, though. My husband loves a good wander through a city and my grown kids (D22 is the youngest) like to do their own thing too so I will put things I think they might like on the menu like vintage shops or record stores and then I will put things I really wanna do on there too. We do not all do all the things. Usually H will do a thing with me if I really want to, but we leave it pretty loose (except for accommodations – I’m not about leaving that loose).
So D22 has transferred schools again. This is her third school. I think it will be good, though. She is living with her girlfriend and will commute. Closer to us, too.
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My wife is the vacation planner and I am the spontaneous type. I am pretty sure she enjoys the planning more than the actual vacations. I approve stuff, but then tend to forget about it and complain when I feel we are overscheduled. Over time, we’ve reached a compromise where she leaves time in the vacation schedule for us to be spontaneous and visit something I read about on the plane ride or discovery while wandering. Or that time can be used for rest. Works pretty well for us.
We are bringing S22 and the rest of the family to Hawaii a few weeks after his graduation. We still get our older kids (and now also a DIL) to go on vacations with us. It does get harder to schedule, but they are all motivated to make it work.
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