I have a funny/not so funny story to share from tonight.
So we are in Northfield, MN, the night before the Carleton admitted students day. It’s our last tour of the 4 admitted students tours my son picked out of all his choices. He has been verbalizing this week that he really doesn’t want to go to a small school, even though half the schools on his list were small LACs. He wants to be in a city, at a big school. I wish this clarity had come sooner but here we are.
I asked him at the beginning of the week if we should just go home, and not tour Carleton as it seemed he’d made his mind up. He said he wanted to look at Carleton again, he was curious. But I think he really is just doing it for me at this point.
So I enlisted the help of a friends’ daughter at St Olaf, in the same town. She has lots of connections. They do something called ‘Cowchella’ every year at a local bar. It’s a fun, hip, loud music gathering. Supposedly it started tonight. So we planned to meet up there to show my son that there was life in this small (tiny), quiet town.
We went to dinner at the only bustling restaurant on the Main Street. The rest of the town is dead, I mean dead. But we had Cowchella to fall back on after. We went, and it apparently doesn’t really get going until tomorrow night. Because when we walked in the bar, there was a ‘fiddle’ collective of maybe 15 people, average age 65, going crazy in the corner. It was fantastic- for me and my husband- average age 60!
After we’d talked up the Cowchella thing all day, my son just looked at me with the most withering gaze.
I knew right then there is no way this kid is going to school at Carleton, or at any small LAC. We could fly home tonight and save us all the trouble.
I’m down to one last push for the residential college at UMich, but I can already feel he’s going to be a husky. And that’s ok. He’ll end up exactly where he wants to be. Time to get on board.
that hasn’t been an issue in like 25 years…agreed.
congrats! I work closely with 2 UW (grad) alums and they both LOVED it…
It must feel good to have it done, and hope your kid is bursting happy!
There’s some good recent work that demonstrates that taking notes via handwriting is associated with better retention of course material than taking notes by typing, even when you account for possible confounds.
I don’t think there’s been good work comparing taking notes on paper vs taking them by hand on a tablet, but given the higher resolution possible on paper and the fact that paper notes don’t have to worry about format obsolescence, I would argue that paper has a lot going for it.
I know this wasn’t supposed to be funny but I laughed out loud – this is exactly the sort of thing that would have happened to us. Poor parents – we try so hard!
Although I’d point out (assuming notes are being saved on the cloud) you’re not going to lose electronic notes the way some might lose paper notes, or have them ruined by a water bottle spill in your backpack, etc. or have your pen run out of ink halfway through a lecture. so there is that.
Chiming in as SLAC professor to say that my classrooms are completely analog. Only handwriting, no technology at all. Obviously accommodations are made as needed, but the research still demonstrates that people learn best when they handwrite notes. My students have also told me that they are much less distracted in my class than other classes as they’re not looking at a laptop.
Ok, our recent tour of a large public saw a lot of students taking notes “handwriting” on iPads. Just pointing out that there can be some advantages over ink and paper for certain students.
Yeah, this—in the middle of a 75 minute long class, the temptation to check out what your friends are doing on Discord can be pretty strong, you know?
I let students take notes on laptops, but I ask that they sit in the back row so that their screens—even if they really are just taking notes!—aren’t distracting anyone sitting behind them.
Make a gift list from Amazon. Send link to relatives. Some relatives might just give money, which is also great. Our relatives who wanted to send a physical gift really liked the Amazon list because all they had to do was pick something, pay for it, and boom…it gets shipped straight away.
That’s a great idea. I am also team paper. In law school I often sat in the front to help me focus. I took notes, but just intently listening also helped tremendously. I had been out of school four years by the time I started. It seemed like a sudden presence of laptops compared to my undergrad but I could not comprehend using them.
Y’all, I’m not gonna lie: as S25 is going through his list and telling all those great schools that he’s not going to attend…I am wincing.
I think I was just so grateful to each of them for seeing something in my boy and being willing to take him on. And we worked so hard on that damned list. It is hard to let go.
Speaking of letting go …here’s the bitterest pill of the week that I didn’t even want to share because it’s too sad: we lost Speedwagon the quail. She just…died. Not sure how or why. She seemed fine earlier that day. Laid an egg as usual. Gizmo, the remaining quail, seemed pretty spooked by the whole thing, alternating between sitting in my palm and letting me stroke her for an unusually long time…and then squawking loudly and pacing back and forth and pecking at me when I tried to pick her up. The plan is to drive to an ostrich farm on the central valley on Sunday and pick up some new companions for her. And we had a little memorial service in the garden for Speedwagon before we left town for Seattle. I don’t quite know how to explain how sad this made us. Those birds have been such a simple joy to us all. Here’s hoping that Gizmo is going to be okay, and that we can find her some good flock mates.
I am so sorry for your loss. Whatever animal it is, when it’s a part of our family and our daily lives, the loss is hard to take.
Regarding turning down higher ranked schools for lesser ranked schools (if I’m understanding your comment correctly)…my daughter officially turned down her highest ranked acceptance today. She says that it doesn’t have some things that she now realizes are important to her.
For all of our discussions on here about how so many pursue prestige, I do see a generational shift in this regard. Our kids are considering a bunch of factors (cost, fit, politics, weather, location, majors/minors, extracurriculars, etc.) when our generation only considered a few. They have the resources to research things we didn’t even know to ask about. IMO this is a very positive development. Outside of the top 20, I don’t think there is a huge difference among the next 80 schools in the rankings. We have an abundance of excellent schools in this country.
Personally, I have made two major mistakes in my life. One was getting engaged to the wrong guy (that turned out OK because I didn’t marry him and married someone else, and we’ve had a very long and happy marriage). The second one was choosing a graduate program based on prestige and not on fit.
We’ve raised our kids to the best of our abilities and now we’re on the hardest part—trusting them enough to let them spread their wings and fly. Sincere best wishes to your student.
This is not so much the case for my kid (I think rank was more of s factor for him than it needed to be). I think for us it’s more about seeing him begin to shut down paths that could have each been a fascinating journey. From our vantage point, so many questions in our own lives have already been settled. Our kids? They are a bit of a do-over – a tantalizing opportunity to relive that exciting threshold phase when it was all just beginning. And this feels somehow like the first really big opportunity he’s had to close some doors. I might not be explaining this well. There were so many worlds of possibility. He could only pick one. Now that’s done. (Ugh, and also he’s going away. But we aren’t going there yet. One small grief at a time.)
I do love reading about how some kids are starting to back away from the absurdity of the rankings. I hope for more to follow suit.
That makes a lot of sense…I totally understand that. I think it’s an age thing, that with wisdom we can see all of the possibilities that lie ahead for our children, and the excitement we feel for them, before they’ve made any decisions that close off certain paths, and the nostalgia and wistfulness we feel for ourselves, knowing that certain paths are closed off.
Back when I taught American literature, I always loved to teach Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”. It used to really blow my students’ minds when I presented the theory that Frost was being ironic. They had gone through high school thinking that there was a profundity to the idea that the path not taken made all the difference, not really considering all the nuances in the poem that suggest that the chosen path makes no difference at all.
Lots of metaphors could work to illustrate the same point: paths, roads, etc. Years ago, I had a therapist explain it to me like this:
You are at a buffet. All of the best, most delicious, most wonderful foods in the world are laid out before you. But realistically, you can only eat so much. Do you nibble a little bit of everything? Do you fill up on only your favorites? What if you are allergic to some foods? Life is about choices, and there is really no right or wrong way to fill our plates. It is all delicious and satisfying. I’m probably not explaining it well but hopefully you get the point.
The laptop screen is especially problematic because it creates a barrier between the student and everyone else. I hadn’t thought of having them be at the back. Good idea. I typically require that students use paper or a tablet in class. I also require that students who opt (meaning they choose it and don’t have accommodations) to use a laptop contribute to a shared notes board. The result is that most students just choose to handwrite their notes.
I’m so sorry to hear of the loss of your quail! She sounded like a beloved member of your family. Big hugs.
So tough but sounds like it is a clarifying visit, even if in an unpredictable way. Different set of decisions over here, but similarly starting to realize my son is leaning toward the school that I have hesitations about. I don’t exactly know because we are still on break again talking about college decision until after the next admitted students day (kid is killing me). There have been so many months, but just recently I think he is starting to have some change in heart of what he wants. I also wish this had been earlier, but I guess better than after May 1. I think they are still growing and figuring themselves out. I often have to remind myself that even though they may look like adults, they are not. And I feel like time is different at their stage in life. They are still changing even in these last weeks and months. So I am hoping for clarity for my kid over the next few weeks and I am also going to work hard to get on board with whatever he decides.
Oh no! I am so sorry 
My D’s final 3 were Williams, Middlebury, and Vassar. They are all such terrific schools. Williams and Vassar were my favorites for her in large part because she knew she wanted to study art history. She chose Williams and has had a fantastic 4 years. Not only has she gotten a superb education, she has made incredible friends and has had opportunities in her field that I think are unmatched at other SLACs.
The weather forecast isn’t great for the weekend, but being a Vermonter, I would guess that won’t phase your daughter. Looking forward to hearing what she decides.
