D24 and her roommate picked their dorm room this morning- they didn’t get the first room they hoped for, but are happy with the room they got. Bonus - the room number is D’s favorite(lucky) number!
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D24’s college has a “New Student Info” page with a list of all of the different forms that need to be filled out, along with due dates for all of that. Plus us parents get a regular parent newsletter with reminders of the due dates of different things related to enrollment & the start of freshman year. For example, by 7/1 the following are due:
- FERPA
- statement of financial obligation
- intended major form
- data verification form
- general release form
- academic integrity form
- ‘in case of emergency’ form
- alcohol, drug, & sexual misconduct online training modules
- personal & family history form
- physical exam form
- copy of immunization record
- mental health history form (this is required at her school in order to sign up later for counseling sessions)
- TB questionnaire
- prior to 7/1 (this one was due at end of May): Myers-Briggs personality type indicator test - used to pair you up w/a roommate
- by end of May: sign your housing contract
Then on or after 7/1, the tuition, room & board bills get applied to your student account and then they subtract your financial aid and all that sort of fun.
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I’ve, fairly recently, hopped on the Notion train. Some of my buddies used it a lot during our senior year, but I always tried to keep dates mentally (which definitely won’t work in college). Definitely helped me keep track of things I need to do, and being able to integrate my Outlook calendar next to my to-do list definitely helps me visualize it. I’ve been able to map out what forms I’ve got left & more, thankfully not that many left.
Perhaps I should have done this sooner, may have saved me some headaches these past few years. 
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D24 got a dose of adulting this morning. 
She turns 18 tomorrow and I made her call the bank because over 2 months ago, they sent her a letter in the mail saying that they’d be asking her w/in 60 days of the letter to upload a copy of her gov’t ID and/or social security card…and she didn’t receive any such requests in email, snail mail, phone call, etc.
So 30 min and 2 phone calls later (1 of which was disconnected mid-transfer), D24 was finally told that the ‘account verification program’, which is what handles these required documents, won’t be asking for that until she turns 18. We had a good laugh about it because D24 said afterwards, “Oh my gosh, how come the first person couldn’t have told me that 30 minutes ago?!”
WELCOME TO ADULTHOOD, KIDDO! 
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WUSTL sends families emails and a booklet which generally explains what happens over the summer month by month. They send more detailed monthly checklists to the students, which S24 is just giving to us as well.
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D24 had the phone on speaker during the 2 phone calls to the bank because she wanted my help/guidance. Beforehand, she said, “What do I say?” In my head, I was doing this → 
But then remembered that being a Gen X’er, I pretty much spent all of my middle and high school years on the phone with my friends and had to answer the phone at home all of the time, so sort of grew up with phone etiquette, whereas my kids have had hardly any of that.
You guys…parts of the bank phone call WERE awkward from my kid’s side of the conversation because D24 would leave these long pauses in between the bank employee asking a question and D24 responding. To the point where the bank employee who ask something like, “Hello? Are you still there?”
So afterwards, I sort of gave my kid a little bit of tough love and told her, “Listen, it’s ok to not know what to say in a situation like that. What is not ok is to call them and they ask you a question and you just don’t respond because you don’t know what to say. That comes across as awkward and weird. if you don’t know what to say, come up with a script in your head before you dial the number. And at the very least, tell the customer service agent something like, ‘I don’t know how to do X. The bank sent me a letter saying I needed to do X/respond to X within a certain number of days, but I can’t find where to do that, where to upload it, or how to respond to it. Who should I talk to about it and can you point me in the right direction?’ What you should NOT do is CALL them and then they ask you what you need and then you say nothing.”
Then my kid said, “Oh, ok. Duh.”
It’s like the kid freezes up. I told her, “In a situation like that, you can’t freeze up and not say anything. You HAVE to say something. You called THEM because you NEED something from them. You need to say OUT LOUD what you need, even if you don’t know how to ask…SAY that you don’t know how to explain it and then they’ll probably help you. But don’t NOT say anything. The customer service agent will think you’re weird and will end the call.”
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We received something very similar from S24’s school.
S24 seems to be on top of his stuff, every few days he comes to me with his laptop asking if he’s missed anything on a new form or document before he sends it back.
We haven’t received a bill yet but I know that’s coming.
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D24s school is sending parents copies of what they have sent the students, which is helpful, and I add various things to our shared note. I have been pleasantly surprised that when I ask about what needs to be done, that it’s been done by her already. The only thing I really NEEDED to do was to bring her medical forms and such to my office to scan to PDF for her to upload to the portal. Orientation is next week and once she registers for classes, the bill will update and we’ll deal with that then.
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THIS. This is so true.
D24 is exactly the same. She’s slowly getting better, but not fast enough for my impatient ass. 
I just keep reminding myself that even I don’t like doing things on the phone so much anymore. Give me a good online chat option (with a real person), and I’m happy.
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I use the Adobe scan app on my phone and it does a great job. I can save or email the scans easily.
I have done that in a pinch, but just so much easier to scan at my work and send right to the folder I need it in!
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I made D22 fill out all the health forms, immunization and other paper work for her college. The college health services required separate entries for every single individual dose of every single vaccine including the multidose series. And then an endless health questionnaire/history form and medication form that basically repeated most of the information written on the annual physical letter from her pediatrician (which she also had to upload). She was so was so fed up by the end of the process.
All I could think of was the many millions of health forms and waivers that I’ve had to fill out each and every year multiplied times each of my kids (daycare, school, day camps, overnight camps, field trips, sports/activities, even birthday party venues). I clucked and cooed and pretended to be sympathetic when D22 complained about doing her college forms, but I felt secretly pleased and maybe a little vengeful as I watched her do it for college. I plan to make D24 do the same.
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Maine (and probably other states) allows you to request the full immunization record online through a state repository - it’s what her ped downloaded and submitted with “see attached” but then she got the recommended meningitis vax that day, so I downloaded the updated version and just included that. (in Maine it’s called IMMPact if anyone needs that info!) I use it every year for camps, too!
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We have been having the same issue - S24 is putting everything off until the last minute and I keep worrying that he will drop the ball on something important. Although I also know that submitting these forms on time is not critically important in the grand scheme of things. In fact, getting into some mild trouble over missing a form may be just the wake-up call S24 needs.
There are two factors at play here, I think. One is that S24‘s consistent procrastination habits trigger anxiety in me because they make me question how he will manage in college. But, probably more importantly, I know that I would have been tremendously excited about any college news at his age, and am still very curious about it all now. I‘m eager to learn about the placement tests, the first year writing seminar options, the course selection process, the orientation trips, etc. I would love to discuss it all with him, but he is not nearly as excited and mostly just wants to get it done. Bowdoin does not include parents in any of their communications, which I fully support but which also means that I can‘t even be a fly on the wall.
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DS is getting super annoyed with having to fill out all these forms. I said welcome to my life the last 14 years.
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S24 also had a Welcome to Adulthood experience last week and he was surprised how long something simple could take. We had to apply for Visa for my S24 for our upcoming trip. Typically I fill the form for this kind of stuff and since he turned 18 I told him he needs to do it as if anything is wrong he will be held responsible. He was ok doing it but he was surprised at how some of the questions were formed and also how long it took to actually verify all the information twice before submitting. Overall it took about 45 minutes and he expected it to take 15 to 20 minutes when he started. He seemed tried after doing it :). I told him the importance of double checking everything in such documents and and do a bit more research if he is not sure how to answer.
I am glad I made him do it and as I felt more confident he could something like this himself and he was also happy he took the ownership of the process.
Now I need to ask him to do some research on opening a bank account and process to get a credit card for him. He currently has a debit card.
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Throwing him in the deep end! 
Love to see it, please come back and share the results. 
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It continues and may get worse. In one of S18’s summer internships (real estate consulting) they all had to cold call apartment buildings to research asking rents in a particular neighborhood. Many of his fellow interns were literally incapable of picking up the phone, some even made up numbers to avoid having to call.
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Kind of what I’m thinking, too. And yeah, none of it is the end of the world. I just want her to have some respect for deadlines. Ultimately, I know she’ll be fine.
Are we the same person. This is exactly how I feel. Her student account will now be showing which first-year seminar she got into, and she can’t be bothered to check. Stop frustrating me, kiddo.
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I’ve found that C24 is so excited about college that they’re handling everything, to the point that I have absolutely no idea what’s due when because I don’t need to. They’re currently stressing because although they ordered their final transcript June 2 (for a July 1 deadline), the high school won’t even begin processing requests until the end of this week. But C is the one that figured out which office at their college is in charge of receiving transcripts and they’ve already reached out to let the school know the transcript is coming, though it might be late.
Tomorrow is housing selection – both C and their roommate have late-afternoon time slots, so they may end up in a dorm they wouldn’t otherwise have chosen, but even that they seem to be taking in stride. Right now, I don’t think anything can pierce their happiness and anticipation for the coming year. It’s really cool to see, especially since their high school experience, while not terrible by any measure, was marked by feeling like they were something of an oddity/outcast.
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