Got him home, and it’s been nice, when he pokes his head out of his room from playing video games. LOL. It’s also been nice to see him interact with his siblings, they still seem to like each other and have made plans to do stuff on their own without the parents.
His grades officially came out and he kept his GPA above 3.5, so I guess he’s entitled to goof off as much as he wants for now, until summer session starts, in 2 weeks.
Twins are both home! Freshman year is wrapped, done and dusted! Twin 1 finished with a perfect 4.0 this semester…so proud of him! It just solidifies that he made the right
choice with UTA and being a bigger fish in a smaller pond. He’s going to continue working his on campus job with the College of Engineering 2 days a week and then work 3 days a week at a local restaurant in our neighborhood where he worked during high school.
Twin 2 is waiting for a couple of more grades to come in but is anticipating finishing the semester with 3 B’s and 2 A’s. I suspect at least a couple of those B’s could have and should have been A’s but his robust social life/rushing the fraternity this semester got the best of him lol. He’s going on a road trip/retreat with his fraternity to Las Cruces tomorrow, after that it’s Operation Find A Summer Job and work, work, work! because he definitely plowed through his savings in Austin these past 9 months and Bank of Mom and Dad will no longer be subsidizing his frivolous spending 
. He’ll be working as a councilor at Boys State again this year so back to Austin for another week in June.
All in all we’re very proud of our Thing 1 & Thing 2!
S23 is in a weird state where he came home a week ago but is still locked into finals remotely now so in his room all the time except to get food. He was supposed to come home today after the last final but they started encouraging everyone to leave early by closing most of the food options, closing all the libraries and study locations, requiring a big security process to get on or off campus and requiring all finals be remote. So we just last minute moved up the plan. The professors had to all scramble to come up with completely different finals to replace the planned in-class ones (that they had probably been using for years) with something that could be done asynchronously from home but as a result, at least in S23’s case became even more rigorous to avoid cheating. Some of his peers got lucky and the professors just canceled the finals and gave everyone automatic A’s on that assignment but not so for any of his classes that just made them super hard problem sets instead. And they are dragging out the finals so ow they extend through next Monday at midnight. Sigh…
S23 is home, but still waiting on final grades (his final exams were last week).
When he first got home he was acting pretty cranky and irritable.
Eventually, I got him to admit what was bugging him, and I was surprised!
“Mom, I just feel so guilty! Most of my friends have to take out loans to afford college. I feel guilty that you are paying for everything and I don’t have to take out any loans!”
Empathy is an underrated quality. Congrats. 
Why did they do this? Protests?
Yes. After some of the protesters barricaded in one of the buildings and they used several hundred police to remove them, they have kept the campus on strict lock down and made finals virtual (the last week of class had already been made virtual before). The campus still has dozens of police officers stations all over. They canceled the main campus commencement and moved the small college graduation ceremonies off campus. A bummer for all the students but especially rough for the seniors who had done all of freshman year remotely and in most cases missed their HS graduations.
Not a surprise, but he was able to officially declare his major in aerospace engineering and it all went through without a hitch. He has an advisor assigned, and he has started summer classes.
He’s also been way more talkative since he’s been home, and hangs out with us most nights for a little bit (let’s not get too crazy, he still spends most of his free time gaming). What a cool thing to see your kids actually become adults.
Where is he at school? My S25 is interested in aerospace engineering.
Virginia Tech… it’s been great for him so far, only positive things to say about it.
S23 started his summer job last night at a chocolate factory in their packaging/warehouse department. He comes home smelling minty. He is working Monday through Thursday 330pm-130am which fits as he is a night owl. He is taking 3 online classes this summer where I teach to try to prove he really can do the academic work that is needed after a less than stellar second semester. He’s taking intro to microeconomics, a sociology course, and later this summer a math course.
My S23 started his internship in a research lab last week. It’s been intense but he likes the people in the lab and it seems like it’s going to be a great experience (except for the 40 minute commute each direction).
On the other hand, he and his longtime girlfriend broke up, and his closest friends from high school are always traveling or working—so he’s already looking forward to the social dimensions of going back to college in August, even with the bit of nervousness around it being a new college due to transferring.
I keep trying to encourage him to be grateful for what the summer is offering (no homework! research experience!) and see if the rest will get better in June & July.
Hope your kids are all able to appreciate the change in routine that summer brings.
Where is he transferring? Mine is too hope all the transfers out there have better fits!
He decided in January to transfer to our state flagship where he will be closer to home, have friends from high school, and get the big sports experience. He applied and was accepted early. He ended up having a good second semester at his SLAC and made some good friends there, so I’m hoping that he gets everything out of the transfer that he hopes for🤞
Good luck to your daughter too. I keep telling myself that one way or another this is all a growth experience for them!
Smelling minty 
is he bringing any 
It is fun reading what all of our 23s are doing this summer. My daughter has been enjoying catching up with friends. She had her wisdom teeth out last week and has mostly recovered from that. She did a little bit of substitute teaching until school got out. She’s also taking Calculus at our local college, which is taught by a good friend of ours, so that is going well. She finishes that class this week, and is glad to have been able to complete that requirement at home over the summer as she has many classes in her areas of interest to fit in during the year.
Her main job as a camp counselor starts next week and she’ll be doing that for the next six weeks. She’s really looking forward to it - it is an Art and Theatre camp and she gets to teach Scriptwriting, along with some other more performance-based Theatre classes for the first four weeks and then will teach dance and musical theatre choreography to smaller children (ages 4-8) for two weeks.
She was really happy at Muhlenberg this past year - she had great classes and met a nice group of friends. She’s going to be in a triple next year with two friends and is excited about that. She had a rough spring semester - first she had mono, and then a tough breakup with her hs boyfriend - but still managed to make Dean’s List. She worked really hard to get caught up in the second half of the semester. She’s excited to go back for sophomore year and put the troubles of that spring semester behind her.
Muhlenberg changed their fall production right at the end of the spring semester and they were doing video auditions over the last month for the new fall show. She recorded a fantastic audition video and was invited to Zoom callbacks but found out this week that she wasn’t cast. So that was a bummer. She’s had some luck being cast in smaller productions but hasn’t been cast in a main stage production yet, so that is one of her goals for this year.
I’m really enjoying having her home for the summer but I’m also glad that she enjoyed college so much and is excited to return.
Mono plus tough HS BF breakup is like a right of passage for 2nd semester freshman year.
For those who have followed my D23’s saga through not feeling the fit at Hamilton, applying to transfer and deciding on St. Olaf, we are hoping it still works out. Apparently they (100% 4 year live on campus school) decided to renovate and close two dorms at once. There have been grumblings on the parent page for a few weeks about kids not getting their housing choices. And upperclassmen who wanted to live off campus being denied. Well today the school emailed all transfer students that they will be housed off campus, 1.5 miles away, (if google is correct- in assisted living townhomes). So, take the 20ish kids who most likely had a bad experience at their first choice schools, and sought out something better, who know no-one and make it even harder to meet people, and integrate into already established friend/social groups? Great idea! There will be no school provided transportation, you still have to buy a meal plan. They only provide a bed and table and chairs. Oh Hell No! My kiddo enrolled in a special series of courses for freshmen (is technically still a freshman) that are all supposed to be housed in the same dorm. Cross your fingers, say a prayer, whatever, that this can be undone, or I am NOT sending her there and we’re back to square one, with no time to figure out where to take classes 
Oh gosh I’m so sorry!!! Sending hugs to you and your daughter!!
We have all our fingers and toes crossed that things work out with St. Olaf. 
There are still plenty of schools accepting transfer applications and giving financial aid on the NACAC list if you end up looking for new ideas.