Grad announcements are less of a thing where I live, but I love them (I love photo cards) so I decided to do them. But because where we are they typically are only used if you are inviting someone to the actual graduation, I was concerned that people would think we were grubbing for gifts. I did not send to my whole Christmas card list (that’s 150+ people - I REALLY love cards…) but I sent to my aunts/uncles, cousins, and my S25s god parents. We’re having a small party for local family, so I made a little insert about the party that went to the local family.
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The comedy of errors continues. S25’s counselor let us know that she has his diploma and medal and that they could be picked up. He went to the school yesterday, and it was locked and there was a note on the door that everyone was in a staff meeting until 1:15. He went back at 1:45. Still locked. He was DONE!
Today he’s working on thank you notes, so I said I’d do it. I load my crutches and wheelchair into the car and head out. The woman at the counseling center desk wasn’t all that helpful, so I pulled out my phone to show her the email from the counselor. (I think she thought he must be missing something or owe a fine since he didn’t get the diploma. She couldn’t seem to wrap her head around the fact that it was their mistake.) I get the diploma and medal and head home. When I get there, I discover that I’ve left my phone at the school. Sigh. DH has gone to get it for me.
The good news is we have the diploma, and he is my youngest so I don’t have to deal with them anymore!
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Holy cow! I’m not gonna complain about anything for the rest of this season!
I hope things get better 
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Well, it was a week for S25! He had his academic honors ceremony and received a cord for being the top science student at his school. No other cords as most of his activities were not based at his high school (research team at the local medical school; summer programs, etc.) Then the EC ceremony for sports and clubs. Then, of course, the actual graduation, which was fantastic. I felt so many emotions as he walked across the stage. Pride, of course, as the kid worked so hard to get to where he is. But also some wistfulness, as this stage of our lives comes to a close and another one begins. I know he’ll be insanely busy at MIT, but I’m hoping he can hop on the train every so often and visit me in NYC. Right now, I’m consoling myself by throwing myself into my work. I’m a writer and trying to finish several projects, which will please my editors! Best wishes to everyone here as we navigate this transition.
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D25 is all done with school! There are finals this week but she doesn’t have to take any. She has a choir concert on Tuesday, senior awards banquet on Wednesday and then prom on Friday. Graduation is on the 5th.
It’s so weird that she has absolutely no homework or anything right now. She’s NEVER had that since starting high school as there has always been the next thing to do. She doesn’t know what her summer assignment for college is yet so she can relish in absolutely no required schoolwork at the moment.
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Yeah, my C25 is currently having a lot of trouble with the pause.
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My kid is JUST FINE with the no homework at the moment… 
Last week was the first week of the “senior experience” stuff that they do in between the end of APs and graduation. He’s working with his summer job - which is a small family only construction company. He’ll be a general laborer. For these few weeks of senior experience, though, he’s supposed to be doing more shadowing of the professional staff (so like the surveyor, estimator etc) - he doesn’t get paid for professional shadowing, does get paid for laborer work. The professionals weren’t available or whatever for the first half of the week, so he started the laborer stuff… and the boss had him and their other summer student (a kid who just finished freshman year at Wake Forest) building what sounds like the Taj Mahal of backyard playsets in his yard. I’m laughing moderately hysterically at this. My husband was at first kind of pissed - building a climber wasn’t the type of construction experience he’s looking for. But dude, he’s getting paid to build a play set. Who cares that it’s a play set? Plenty of time the rest of the summer to be on real job sites. (Also, I’m guessing that the company owner may not have wanted to have his crew do this project. It sounds like a pretty showy set - it’s the ground floor and a first and second floor, two slides, climbing wall, big swing attachment. I’m guessing most of his crew are guys who do not have a ton of disposable income. If you’re going to have someone work on a showy personal project, better to make it the two upper middle class kids and not your crew who might be judging you. This house also has a batting cage, trampoline, half court basketball court, and god knows what else, so it sounds like a lot of fun…)
So he did building for 2.5 days (one short day alone, two days with WF guy), it poured rain one day and he stayed home and, as far as I can tell, futzed around on the computer all day, and he spent one day in the office doing shadowing. The only downside of the office day is that it’s not near where we live - it’s about a 45 minute drive. For any local to DC area peeps - he had to drive through the mixing bowl (this is where the DC beltway, 395, and 95 all intersect - it’s challenging at the best of days for the best of drivers). The kid has MAYBE 15 hours of driving experience and I don’t honestly know if he’s ever even had to change lanes or merge. He survived, so we’re calling it a win. I plotted him a route that didn’t go on the interstates, which he took in the morning, but apparently he was feeling pretty bold in the afternoon. I hope he does the local roads next time though.
Anyhoo, he’s LOVING the no homework. He isn’t typically a huge gamer, but has been playing online with some of his summer camp friends this weekend.
He wasn’t able to identify a roommate through the weird roommate internet dating format, so he’s going to picking a room randomly this week. He and I have had a few discussions about the different dorms, and the good news is that he’s totally happy and comfortable with the least desirable dorms, so hopefully this is fine. I’m just hoping there’s enough time that, if he’s picking a room that already has a roommate, he can check their profile to see if things like sleeping hours and general habits / interests seem like a good match.
He still hasn’t finished all the orientation modules that must be completed before he can set up a time to meet with his advisor and register for classes. The annoying part of this is that because he’s not done with it yet, he’ll lose out on the earlier advising/registering dates. Type A me wouldn’t be able to stand for this. He seems totally chill and not worried. I’m hoping that because his major is capped, it won’t be that hard to get into the major specific courses, because there really aren’t that many students. And re: the gen ed courses, I’m hoping that his APs get him out of most of the first year ones, so that hopefully he has some flexibility in what he takes and when. I was hoping to talk with him some about that stuff this weekend, but we’ve both been busy all day yesterday and today. Oh well. What will be will be.
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Wish I could say the same about no work to be done. My kid is so stressed finishing up his senior project, college class assessments, hours of college online orientation, which has to be completed in the next few days, a speech he has to write for senior class dinner and a senior retreat which will take him away for 3 days in the middle of all this. It’s a bummer all of this stuff is crammed in so tight. No time to stop and enjoy this moment.
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What are all your seniors doing this summer?
D25 has a middle start date for school (first week of Sept). She has had a part-time job for the past year, but is quitting it soon. She wants a job, just not that job.
She’s going for a week out of town to my ILs. And we have a week family vacation. I’m thinking if she doesn’t get a job, if completing a least a Community College course would help structure her time.
So I’m curious to hear what other people’s kids are doing!
We are going on a 2 week family vacation and in July she has a mission trip with her youth group.
D25 just found out she has a language placement test so her Spanish skills will be tested.
She won’t know her roommate or for sure dorm until early July.
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We moved between my daughter’s HS graduation and college start date so we told her to take that last summer and just have fun. We did a family vacation, she camped and hiked part of the Appalachian Trail with friends, and the rest of the time we hung out at the beach and had good quality time together as a family.
As it turned out, it was the last summer we ever had her home again as she did a summer study abroad program after her freshman year at college and then had an internship on campus when she returned. Every summer after that, she had a co-op or internship rotation far from home.
So, my $.02 is to enjoy the time together!
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My kid is continuing his part time fast food job, hoping to get more hours this summer. He is also has a six week research program (online) where he will do a project for six weeks with a couple of other students and a university professor mentor. It’s in his field (applied math), and he is so excited about it!
No big vacations for us this year (we did a trip to Europe last summer while D22 was in Germany for study abroad), but I hope we can still have some fun family time together this summer between my two older teens’ work commitments. D22 has an internship a little over an hour away, so she might even be able to join us some weekends.
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Mine doesn’t graduate for 2 more weeks and leaves for school mid-August, so that leaves a couple weeks free. They aren’t 100% done with schoolwork, yet, but close.
They will be working at a camp for a TBD number of weeks (!). I wish employer was more organized but the camp is relatively new and I think not 100% sure how many people they need, and where. They have training next week so hope they have it sorted then… I am hoping they get 4-5 weeks of work so have a couple weeks to do nothing. We also have 2, 1 week trips - one a real family vacation and one is a visit to see/help older relatives - it is in a nice summer area so a bit of both.
For college, dorm selection is next week. RIT lets you pick your exact room, kind of like picking a seat on airplane! There are ways to do it with pre-selected roommates but not going that route.
They also have to do a math placement test in June (for which I am a bit worried) but it is what it is. Maybe Spanish, too, but I am not sure they have any interest in taking more of that or not.
I am also going to try to convince them to take a CLEP test to possibly pass out of freshman English, but suspect they won’t want to - also fine, but suspect freshman english class is boring and they’d prefer a more fun elective. I am going to suggest they review format and practice questions for a day, and take the test. No harm if they fail and big upside if they pass. That said, not going to push too hard, as obviously not fun!
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S25 doesn’t graduate until June 23, but we have a lot of senior activities between now and then: two senior proms, one final exam, and one final paper. He also has some busy work homework (which annoys both me and him).
Conn has all first years choose a virtual intro to orientation session (his is next week) and then they have until June 15 to complete some online classes about course selection and residential life. He will get a list of 30+ courses to pick from for his first-year seminar (I think they rank their top five favorites), and a survey asking about his interests, past coursework, and major plans. They then assign his first semester coursework. He found a roommate, and both submitted accommodation requests for a split-room double. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they get it.
After that, we have a two-week trip to Japan in July, and he has to be on campus at Conn on August 20. For the one month in between he will probably sleep, shop, pack, spend as much time with his boyfriend as he can, and he wants to get a second tattoo.
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C25 has a job working full time (8-5) as a day camp counselor, and y’all…the pay is $23/hr‼️ We don’t even live in a HCOL area – minimum wage is I think $12/hr? We thought it was a typo when we saw the paperwork. This is super helpful for saving up for next year as they won’t be able to work as a student overseas. The job offer was locked in by April, which seemed early to me at the time, but wow I’m so glad now that we put the effort in a few months ago. A frantic job hunt would’ve added a lot of stress to the last couple of weeks. We really have no major plans other than a week at the beach in late July. It’s shaping up to be a pretty chill summer and I am so grateful. The family-stress part of my brain needs a break! I’ll still have work stress but that seems like nothing compared to this paat school year.
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S25 is working as a construction laborer this summer. As his major is construction management, this is a good summer gig so he’ll be able to say “I’ve done that” and have some familiarity with the work.
He’s also going to the beach with friends for a week after graduation. I’m hoping that we can do a family vacation in August before school starts for S25 and restarts for S22. We still don’t know when S22s summer job ends, so that’s something to figure out.
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S25 graduates Wed and no specific plans for summer. He usually spends the summer helping and taking care of his GrandFather. GF usually gives him some cash since it prevents him from getting a summer job and there is a lot of manual labor work and errands that needs to be done. Then he will have the usual college requirements of orientation, placement tests and prepping. He did get into the Science LC so now just needs to find a roommate.
Will likely do a couple of day/weekend trips. Like @momofboiler1, I told him to take the rest of the summer off as this will be the last one of no school/work responsibility…ever. College starts mid Aug so I feel like it will go very fast.
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D25 will be lifeguarding for the third summer in a row. She will also enjoy no school work until the end of August!
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S25 is going to work as a kitchen staff at a language camp in Minnesota that he’s been going to for a few years and loves.
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My daughter will be working at a sleep away summer camp. She will have only a few days inbetween summer camp and the start of band camp in August.
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