Good point about the hotels! I have not booked hotels for the 2 tours we currently have- need to get on that!
Yeah I made admitted students appts at all of the ones he got into but it’s hard because a lot are in early march and that’s tech week for the play / performances so there is no way he can miss school, so we’ll be hitting it hard after that lol
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We’re in the same boat. Lots of possible admitted student days, but rehearsals and tech are taking up so much of D25’s weekends through about mid-March. It won’t give her much time at all to attend events. We probably won’t hear from RDs until end of March anyway. She’s softening to the ones where she’s been accepted, but isn’t quite ready to try to get excited about any of them yet. I don’t think she’ll be ready to seriously consider her options until April.
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S25 declared yesterday that he’s going winter camping with friends over spring break. We asked him what gear he was going to buy for this “winter camping” he responded that he had a tent, a sleeping bag, and he would just eat snacks instead of cooking anything.
How am I supposed to send this child into the world? Just eat snacks…good lord.
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S25 got invited to apply for a super cool interdisciplinary research fellowship at Brandeis. And he doesn’t want to do it because he’s just not a science nerd. Episode #369 in parent the kid you have, not the kid you thought you’d have. (I’d be less bummed if I saw positive momentum in a different direction but he’s sort of aimless these days to tell you the truth. If he’s not going to become small and cuddly and curious again, I wish he’d develop his adult brain faster. This in-between phase is rough.)
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sounds like my S21, who planned his own trip through multiple stops in Europe this year! They grow up and figure it out!! It’s amazing to behold.
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Oh this is familiar! My D23 was accepted into a great honors program and decided against it because she “didn’t want to live with the nerds.” Sigh. In other news, she did win the mechanical bull contest at some bar in Austin this past weekend. We all have our talents I guess! 
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I mean, it could depend on the snacks. If you eat those vaguely nuclear orange cheese and peanut butter crackers, I feel like that has a lot of food groups… 
My older child did a nearly three week long hiking and camping trip across a number of national parks with four of his best buddies. They did cook most of the time, but there were times that they were on the road between places or just grabbed fast food for dinner… except my kid doesn’t eat fast food. So he’d go to the closest gas station with a minimart and get some kind of protein bar or protein cookie and eat one or two of those. Not a particularly healthy way to manage your caloric intake, but not a total disaster.
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I think this is an important life skill! Good for her!
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If I tried to ride a bull at this point in my life I’d probably break a hip…
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Me too! This is not a talent she got from me.
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Same! I booked a couple of admitted students days before talking to my daughter about them, she is not at all interested in going to either of them. So I guess I have a couple of free weekends.
(I attended my college sight unseen and it turned out fine, but if I could have visited beforehand I definitely would have!)
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I’m leaving tomorrow for a 3 week trip to SE Asia. I already have a box of protein bars and 3 bags of peanuts in my suitcase. I’m a somewhat adventurous eater, but having access to calories my stomach recognizes goes a long way sometimes.
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National Merit Finalists have been notified in their portals today. D25 made it. We were a little anxious about it since she almost missed the score submission deadline because she wasn’t paying attention on how to submit the score!
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How’s she doing with her decision making? I think you said she was going to visit one option again?
Exactly! I wouldn’t want to live on peanuts and protein bars forever, but short term it’s doable and sometimes a really good idea to make sure you get what you need to get.
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I have a What Would You Do…
Here’s the scenario - your kid is interviewing tomorrow at 1:15 to try to earn a full ride scholarship. Because the weather gods hate you, snow is coming tomorrow. So although the kid did everything right to set up a quiet space at school with strong enough wifi to be able to zoom, the schedule is now screwed. Snow in the late afternoon means the school is doing early dismissal… at 1:00. There is no way your kid can get home and get settled in time.
You suggested to the kid that you’d pick them up around 12:15 or 12:30, whenever the second to last class finishes so the kid only misses one.
The kid counters with “can I miss the whole day instead? I have a chem test in the morning and I’m really struggling - if I have to take it I’ll need to study all night to have a prayer of a B and I won’t have any time to prep for the interview. But if you let me skip the whole day, I can do some prep and studying tonight, and a little prep and studying in the morning and I’ll be really prepared for both.”
As a parent, I have never let the kid skip school because they weren’t prepared. But this feels like a different situation - I really want him to be able to feel prepared and rested and not stressed for the interview.
Do I make him go and take the test (doing a retake isn’t hard to schedule, but he has a history of falling behind on things and struggling to dig out of a hole) and pick him up early for the interview or do I let him miss the whole day? If it weren’t for the early release, he’d be going to school with no question.
I had a similar dilemma with my son and an audition. I let him skip the whole day. In the grand scheme of things the audition(interview for FULL ride!) feels way more important than one day of school with a test he can make up.
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I’d let the kid skip the whole day. If it would have been an in person interview, at least a whole day of school would be missed if not more! (Says the parent that just took a kid to a scholarship competition event that meant missing two days of school last week due to travel time).
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Skip the day.
Sometimes we just need a little win.
Maybe skip the day with a fun breakfast with Mom to celebrate the joy of senior year.
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