Hmmmm. This is a good idea.
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āSomeoneā in our household decided - yesterday - to add two more reaches. Like some sort of psychosis has taken hold.
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100% I am a school nurse in MA and it is BAD!!!
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Itās been tough in this neck of the woods and the kiddos are running scared. S24 has a lot of friends who have been disappointed so farāincluding kids at elite private schools with really strong applications.
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A similar option some of my older kids have used are the study rooms at our public libraries that can be reserved for a couple hours at a time. They are like small conference rooms.
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This is whatās happening here as well. Iām not playing with S24 anymore. Iāve taken him to coffee shops, had the whole house to ourselves, and woken him up early to get going. Thereās no time or excuses anymore.
I told him completion means paid and submitted. He has a tendency to hold on as long as possible, because it matters so much to him.
Heās not 18 yetā¦so Iām playing the parent card as long as I can. We have 13 schools to submit between now and Jan.15. Good luck to all!
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Bury the lede much?
Unfortunately our public library is a little scary. I wouldnāt let me daughter stay there by herself. But it is a great idea to try and get the kid out of the house 
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Perhaps it is a symptom of one of those viruses going aroundācall it Application Fever.
To be honest, I get it. It is one thing to know the math of the reachy ED/REA/SCEA is against you, another to actually experience it. Particularly as others are succeeding.
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S24 also has been sick but is on the mend. He has his soccer practices starting back today and games next week.
He has 4 applications due between Jan 1 and 4th. 3 of these are reaches for him and I am ok if drops one of these. We have given a deadline of Dec 30th for him to finish.
Good luck to all kids in the last stretch of the application cycle.
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We are in the final stretch. D24 has 3 more RD apps for reaches to go out and hoping to get them submitted today as she is all but done with the supplemental essays.
1 additional honors college essay is due in a couple of weeks but she may get it done by weekend.
Good news is she got acceptances to every school she applied to so far (mostly safeties and reachy matches) and most of them with the highest possible merit aid. We are chasing merit money so we will have a lot to ponder over the next couple of months before making a decision.
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S24 has also been working away on a large stack of RD applications - 11 when I last checked but the number is in flux. His ED2 application and another couple of easy RD apps went out on Christmas Eve, and he just sent off another one due January 1. He has three more applications due by January 4 that are in varying stages of completion. And then there is another whole stack due between January 8 and 15. Luckily, he is hitting the stage where he has written enough supplements that he can start to repurpose some of them, so he is becoming more efficient as time goes on.
We had purposely not made any travel plans for this vacation, so S24 can focus on his work without feeling that he is missing out. There is still plenty of procrastination, but the sheer amount of time he now has available each day means that work is getting done. He has been in fairly good spirits - helped along both by the progress he has been making and (I think) by the college acceptance that arrived just before Christmas.
As the primary brainstorming assistant, editor, and lightning rod, I am definitely counting down the days until this process is done. On the other hand, Iām finding the work load a little less heavy than I had feared. I had heard so many stories about the dozens of essays students are writing. But many of the supplements require paragraphs rather than essays and at a certain point you hit some returns to scale. Itās the process itself that seems stressful much more than the essay load - although S24 does not enjoy the type of writing that college applications require, so he may disagree with me.
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Donāt forget to request an FSA ID for FAFSA if you donāt have one yet.
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So true. At least for my S24, the combination of an unfamiliar sort of writing task and the one-and-done evaluative context is stressful, and that can lead to avoidance. But the scale is really not at all bad, he has produced many more words in shorter periods of time before. It is just that he was comfortable with that sort of writing, and confident with how it would be evaluated, and confident even if he had to make adjustments, he could.
So I get the stress, but . . . time to get it done.
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Good luck everyone.
Imagine the excitement when you get multiple acceptances and realize last month was just a small blip in the process.
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Oddly enough D24 is quite sick as well. Negative COVID tests, but I am still trying to keep her away from the rest of the kids. I think her BS is a cesspool of viruses and colds this time of year. On Christmas Eve, I moved her into my room (to avoid getting her sisters sick), and Iāve been sleeping in the living room for the last several nights --it was actually kind of convenient for Santa 
, but it meant that I was forced to be awake much earlier than I wanted on Christmas morning (my youngest still wakes up very early to dig into their stocking).
As for apps, I think D24 is in reasonable shape. She wrote most of her RD decision supplements in October when she was dithering around trying to decide where to apply early. She did not decide until the last week of October, which means that she worked on all of her reaches simultaneously. Happily, she was admitted to the early school, which means that her targets and likelies have all come off the list. She is now trying to decide which of the remaining reaches (if any) to apply to. Her schoolās college office is urging her to commit to the early school and just be done. True to her indecisive personality, she is waffling back and forth between five possibilities; weāll see where she lands. I am trying to keep my mouth shut. But the good news is that depending on what she decides, she either has almost no more work to do (because the supplements were finished earlier this fall) or one more set of supplements to write for a reach, which still might be dropped from the list. All of her dates are 1/2-1/8 so she has to decide soon. In any case, it is nice to have her home even if most of our conversations this week have been by text or through masks.
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There is no normal conversation at home other than about college apps. I am looking forward to last 4 days of my break after Jan 3 to live a normal tension free holidays!
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It is wonderful to hear updates from so many, though Iām sorry so many holiday plans were sidetracked by illness. Almost as soon as D24 got over Covid, S24 went down with a virus. Fortunately both seem ok now, but there is a lot going around. Hopefully everyone else is on the mend, too.
Thinking about everyone working on their final applications. S24 still has a few Honors applications and scholarship applications I am encouraging him to work on, but he definitely has lost momentum. The burnout is rough, and everyone asking him about where he will go is getting on his nerves.
Hopefully everyone has some fun plans for NYE and I know everyone will have much to celebrate in 2024!
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I just need a place to vent and this has nothing to do with S24, it it his D26 sister but that board is always quiet. She just recently got her learnerās permit and has been very nervous about the whole driving thing (complete opposite from S24). We did parking lots for a while and I finally said āyou need to get out on the road so you can learn actual drivingā. So a few days ago we did about an hour and it was terrifying for me but she did OK. Yesterday I said letās go out again. She was again nervous, but actually did pretty well. We pull into our driveway and she stops way short so she is still a bit in the street. I tell her to pull forward a few feet. So she does. Then slams on the gas again instead of the brake 
Proceeded to slam right into the center support beam between the two garage bays. Significant damage to the entire structure of the garage. I was super calm. She panicked and I thankfully quickly put the car in park (not that it could go anywhere at that point anyway). She ran into the hours sobbing. The craziest part is my husband I guess had seen us pulling in so he was actually standing in the garage watching us pulling in - thank g_d he did not stand in the driveway or things could have been way worse. S24 was great and ran up to check on his sister and talk her down. DH and I sat in shocked silence as we inspected the damage.
The positives: No one was hurt, my car (SUV) is fine other than some cracked plastic, DH was able to get our contractor over and he should be here in a couple hours (it is almost impossible to reach him usually)ā¦
Here is D26ās handiwork.
I am ready for one of the many cocktails (or three) mentioned upthreadā¦
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Very scary but so glad everyone is ok and that youāll get the house fixed soon. Those early learning-to-drive days are rough!
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