I love this update!
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I love it when parents brag about their kids! I want every kid to be successful so brags are always wanted. 
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Hiya all, quick question for parents of continuing students on Private College Financial Aid (need based+merit) - have you heard yet of the aid for 25/26, or is it too early? We are not expecting any change (our income/conditions remained the same) but Iām wondering if/when to get in touch with the office and donāt want to bug them too soonā¦ (edit- also, should I get my S24 to communicate eventually, or should I do it myself?). Thx!
I think I know the school your kid is atā¦did you or your S24 file the CSS Profile and send required documents via IDOC by the deadline? If yes and you havenāt seen an FA package you or he should contact the FA office.
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D24 goes to GWU and we are not expecting to hear anything until late June/early July.
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All sorted, thanks! The awards were already in his banner web system (all as expected 
)- we were just waiting for an email but apparently you just have to check yourselfā¦ 
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General reminder to everybody:
If you donāt want to get hit with an automatic addition of a student health insurance policy on your kidās bill for the next school year, donāt forget to have your student submit proof of health insurance info to their college by whatever the schoolās deadline is. 
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Back home for a couple of days, rough adjustment to summer heat, but so very happy to see S24! Miss London and weāll be splitting time going forward but nowhere near what we did this year. Everyone asks me if Iām happy to be back in States and in home, hard one to answer honestly! Hopefully some of thatāll wear off soon, just love the lifestyle there and didnāt miss driving.
S24 is planning to submit a proposal for a design your own concentration. Much of the benefit of open curriculum is lost with adding pre-med reqs, so this is kind of exciting to get some additional flexibility back if approved. Fingers crossed.
Heās busy preparing for Orgo 2, again using Orgo as a Second Language book, and keeping busy working at clinic. He finds out next week if we got paid research position for next year. The prof heading it has told him heās her #1 pick, but some board actually decides? I donāt really understand the process. He ranked a few other options as well, but not as excited about those. Will be more to check a box in all honesty. Heās not overly invested in research side, would rather be doing clinical work.
He really wants leadership on EMS, but one issue is that he canāt work at home for summer in our county as they donāt do short-term hires. The leadership all has strong experience outside of college as itās mostly alcohol, allergy, minor injury type calls. Some choose to do campus squad and then also another squad in city to get more variety of calls. I worry about juggling all that plus adding on research. He says heād do one less shift on campus to compensate so not more hours, but still worry stretched too thin. Reminding him gpa protection above all, as he already has loads of clinical hours after only one year.
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D24ās birthday was today! At her request, we went out to dinner at a hot pot restaurant. D26 spent some of her Wally World earnings to buy her big sister a couple of gifts, one of which is a set of 4 crocheted cat-shaped drink coasters that have a catās rear end on them. Theyāre pretty awesome and were a big hit.
D24 got home from CNA class today reporting that clinicals actually start tomorrow instead of Monday. Itās a 45 min drive away and she doesnāt want to show up late, so sheās leaving the house at 5:00 am so she can be there by the 6:00 am start time.
My sister is taking her shopping day after tomorrow for a girlsā day out just D24 & her auntie.
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Welcome back @isitmayyet! Glad that you had a wonderful experience - I remember that you had a C25 - where did they land? Hope it is ok to ask!
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1st day of CNA clinicals were today. D24 got there on time and everything went well. A week from today is the final exam for the class. After the course is all done, they can sign up to take the state certification exam after next Friday.
D24 said that 1 of the other students in the class is a Class of 2025 graduate of another high school in the group of charter schools that D24 graduated from. So she & the other CNA student bonded a bit and compared war stories from high school. 
I think doing this class has been good for her mental health. Kind of a confidence boost.
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Took kid to IKEA yesterday. She picked out some more string lights for her room for the fall and also got her one of these to use instead of her current step stool to get in and out of bed. Itāll double up as extra storage. And she picked out a floor lamp, too.
B-day shopping with her aunt was a success too and they had a fun aunt & niece afternoon out together. 
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So we are just back from our annual big family vacation, and we had lots of interesting education/career/life discussions with S24.
Big picture, it appears he is feeling anxious again about it not being clear to him yet what he really wants to do (as opposed to being capable of doing). From the perspective of the NiceUnparticularParents, that is fine! But I am getting the sense that once again contact with peers who seem to have much more focused plansāincluding for this summerāis making him wonder if he should be in the same mindset.
Anyway, the latest big revelation (which I have actually been telling him all along, but that didnāt count until he did the math himself) is that between the credits he got for APs and summer college courses he took in HS, and then taking a higher than required load his first year and into the first semester next year, he can actually do the minimum load (12 credits) per term for his last five terms. And with a relatively credit-light major (although he is probably going to toss in a couple minors), he will have plenty of credits even in that structure to finish off all his med school prereqs without any summer classes, so going forward he can focus on experience stuff in the summers.
The only likely consequence of all this is he will probably take a glide year, which we have been supportive of from the jump, and WashU also encourages. Indeed, I think I have linked this before:
S24 is apparently settling into a variation on one of the paths where you donāt take Orgo until you are a junior, all of which have a planned glide year. Which, again, seems like a great idea to me.
Working through this eems to have chilled him down a bitāfor now. But it does seem like the situation where both his parents and his school advisors are sitting together on one shoulder with a consistent message about patience and discovery, but some of his peers are sitting on the other shoulder with a different message, is still stressing him out sometimes, and is likely going to continue indefinitely.
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Sorry to hear that S24 is still worrying about his future - he probably doesnāt realize it but plenty of kids arenāt 100% sure what comes next and that is OK (my two kiddos included). I understand it can be tough to shut out the noise but many (most?) kids end up doing things they never imagined prior to graduation and that is just fine. Itās great that med school is a real possibility but if that doesnāt end up being what he wants, that is OK too. Nothing needs to be set in stone. I have a friend that was an English major in college and only decided on medicine after graduation - she was able to do pre-reqs post college and went on to a career in medicine. There are many ways to skin a cat!
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And I know it will in fact work out fine for him. I think on some level we were hoping he would take a little time after a very active and successful first year to just relax a bit, but realistically there is only so much of that he can take before he starts wanting to be working toward something again. Which is not really a bad trait in the bigger scheme!
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My D24 still knows exactly what she wants to beāa Ph.D-level psychologist (therapist). However, this is one of the fields that people leave because of its taxing emotional aspects, so I will not be surprised or disappointed if she changes her mind after a couple of years as a counselor (or even before). However, I think the Ph.D. is very important to her because I have one in a different field. Iām all for it, no matter what she does for her career afterward. Psychology is one of the fields in which you donāt have to accumulate too much debt, thanks to tuition waivers and assistantships. In other news, this summer has been rather calm, too calm. A dog recuperating from surgery, a bathroom remodeling, and other things have made us pretty housebound. Iām very grateful to have a new bathroom, though! The old one was 1980s-era, and the tub had gotten pretty much uncleanably stained. Yikes! 
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His internal drive and ambitions got him to where he is now (in academics & athletics). Iām not surprised heās wanting a focus for that drive again! Personally, I love seeing a kid diving in and going for what they want. If he later changes his mind, he will still have learned so much (about himself).
I recently read āThe defining decade: why your 20s matter ā and how to make the most of them nowā and I thought it was absolutely fascinating! It sounds to me like your son is building up āidentity capitalā that is laying the groundwork for his future.
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D24 is taking her CNA state certification exam at the end of this next week!
She & D26 are baking together this afternoon. Itās pretty adorable. Makes me happy to see them do stuff like this together.
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Greetings from the halfway mark of D24ās summer break 
! I canāt believe how fast the time is going.
D24 is having a really nice summer. Sheās working a lot (though, not doing such a great job of saving moneyā¦her summer earnings are intended to be her spending money for the school year for all non-essentials, so Iām a little anxious sheās going to find herself in a bind during the semester, but I guess Iāll have to let her learn her own lesson on that one), spending time with HS friends, hitting the gym hard (she had kind of fallen off the wagon spring semester between pledging and a tough class schedule) and getting the beach as often as she can.
She just left this morning to get the Amtrak upstate to visit school friends and her boyfriend for the long holiday weekend. Dropping her off, I realized how much I have enjoyed her company and how much Iām going to miss her when she leaves to go back to school next month. What a difference a year can make - last year at this time, I was counting the days until I could stop having a front row seat to her every up and down and fretting about her procrastination and such. She has really grown so much this past year, and is so much more mature, happier and settled. It does my heart good. Sheās still a mega-procrastinator and highly-disorganized but Iāve come to realize that she manages to get it all done every time and I just have to trust her process.
In other, non-D24 news, my D20, who has been living in Boston (first attending school, now working in her first ābig girlā job) is moving back home next month, so she can get her (free) advanced degree at the school where Iām employed. She has not lived here for more than a few weeks at a time since 2021. I am looking forward to having her here, but also cognizant of the fact that it will be a big adjustment for all of us. H and I have gotten pretty used to life as empty nesters.
The first big challenge will be that weāll be trading their bedrooms so that D20 can have the significantly larger one (that she gave up when she left for college) since sheāll be here fulltime. I honestly donāt know how the contents of D24ās current room are going to be squeezed in to the very small one sheāll be inhabiting when home on breaks. Also, the logistics of what to do with the contents of D20ās apartment will have to be storedā¦somewhereā¦while we play this game of musical chairs. it should be interesting!
Hope all of you and your kiddos are enjoying the summer break, too
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So I continue to be shocked on how internships for finance and CS related things go. S24 is about one month into his summer job and he already has to think about next summer. Some deadlines have already passed which is insane. He may decide to do math or physics research next summer but I am flabbergasted that he needs to think about all of the options already. S21 didnt get any of his arts related interships until a month or so before they began!
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