We consistently use Costco Travel for car rentals, because that automatically gives us an additional driver without paying extra for it even in states that allow that particular gouge.
But it’s 100% airline websites for air travel and hotel websites for lodging. Those two, there’s too much that can go sideways otherwise.
I’ve never had an issue with booking. com for hotels. If it’s one of the chains we have points with or I get a better price, I’ll book direct. But booking often has good deals and better cancellation policies than booking direct, especially for international destinations, where I get the added benefit of being sure my understanding of what I am booking is correct !
New update on C25!
C25’s orientation at Hofstra was last week, and the kid got permission to officially pursue a double degree (as opposed to a double major—it’ll be a BA in linguistics plus a BS in mathematics), and registration for the fall is complete. The fall schedule will be:
The first-year honors seminar counts as 2 courses, and is required of all incoming honors students. (There’s a followup in the spring, but that one’s optional for kids like C25 who come in with a large number of transfer credits.) It’s an interesting setup—each fall has a theme (this year it’s “authority and dissent”), and each week of the semester a different faculty member delivers a hundreds-of-students lecture about their own field and its take on the theme, which is followed by two small-group sessions (one led by a humanities professor, one led by a social sciences professor) discussing the issues brought up in the lecture.
The kid is mildly unhappy about having to take physics after already taking a college physics course this past year, but this one is calculus-based physics (required for the BS), and I really do think that C25 will enjoy that way more than the version that tries to hide all the interesting stuff.
And the comic books course is designated as a first-year seminar that satisfies one of C25’s (few) remaining gen-ed courses—Hofstra requires one specifically literature course, and this takes care of that.
So things are good here—we’re now basically just down to wrapping up a few loose ends and waiting for move-in this fall.
internationally I have used booking.com many dozens of times (50 times? 75 times?) over a very long time and never had a substantive issue either. But this was virtually never booking at a big chain hotel – almost always with smaller places. I think that makes things wacky - when there are 2 big systems.
I saw someone recently (in front of me in checkout in a US marriott) who booked using hotels.com to book and it was ALL messed up …the marriott couldn’t see the reservation or the payments and took ages to sort out.
Yep i tried booking.com at a Hilton in the US and it was a cluster. Internationally, no problems at all.
Kid had a 1 day orientation yesterday. We loved the parent sessions. They talked about the next 8 weeks being like pre-season and gave suggestions of things to do to get ourselves and them ready for this transition. Made us feel even more sure we made the right college decision. Kids were separate and they worked with people to create a schedule and registered for classes. My kid is so thrilled with his classes and met some new friends. He was so done with high school by the end, but finished strong academically. Actually his best year yet despite also being his most challenging set of classes. He is so excited for the next stage.
I appreciate this group for being a sounding board this spring when things in our house were so stressful. I am sure there will be bumps in the road, but this college seems perfect for what my kid needs. It is really helping me feel excited for him rather than sad about him leaving. He is my only so I know the sadness will come, but I feel at peace.
He is working at the same summer job he has worked at for the last couple of years. Boring, but steady and easy. He squeezed in some friend time but with vacations, jobs and orientations, I get the sense that the next few weeks may be hard for him to be social. Hope everyone is staying safe and cool. So hot here. I am melting. I grew up in the Midwest but live in New England. I enjoy our typical not too hot summers and have no tolerance for this soupy weather anymore.
I’ve heard of issues with hotel.com enough times to avoid it. I did once use booking with a Hilton in the early days, it was fine but I didn’t get points because I hadn’t booked through the Hilton website so I didn’t do that again. But generally, again, for the chains I’d use direct for points. I’ve used booking for a number of smaller hotels and occasionally Airbnb type bookings in the US and never had an issue.
I am too cheap to be truly brand loyal, but I join any free rewards/points programs when I book if I haven’t before. I may never benefit from the points, but I find they tend to have the best cancellation policies if I am a “member”. We also had 2 times when my son started a GI bug within hours of when we were starting drives. One time was actually 2 hours AFTER check-in, but we hadn’t left for the 3 hour drive yet. Both times I called, explained our sad situation, said I understood that we were past the refund policy, but was there any way we could get credit for a future stay. Both times, we were refunded from the hotel. Different chains, but had booked through the hotel site. One of the times, our friends were going with us and had same issue but booked through 3rd party. No luck.
Didnt make team but okay with it.
Orientation complete.
Met the roommate in person and D25 is excited. Their personalities seem to mesh well.
First year classes signed up for. S23 is super jealous of her fall schedule!
Shes being more verbal and clear about dorm decorating so that helps.
We are melting here in the DC suburbs this week. It is Too Dang Hot. S25 is working on an excavation crew this summer, but this week they’ve pulled him off the field (seems like they’ve decided to not do the work that requires serious manual labor - air quality is just too unhealthy, the guys driving machines are ok, but not the ones digging fencepost holes by hand and installing fencing - which is what S25 does). Instead, they are letting him shadow their professional staff for the week. He doesn’t get paid for that, but that’s more than ok, it’s a really good learning opportunity to see what the project managers and estimators and surveyors do.
It sounds like S25 and Future Roommate have been sharing snapchat communications (Snaps? They aren’t messages. God I’m old.). They haven’t actually used any words as far as I can tell, but are sending each other pictures and memes and it seems like S25 feels good about the roommate situation. This makes me glad as it was totally and completely random. S25 chose the first bed in his room, Roommate picked the second bed - S25 had no insight or input into deciding to room with Roommate, and they didn’t even do the looking at each other’s profiles to see if basic things like sleeping hours matched. So this could have gone really badly, but I’m glad to see that it feels like they will be good roommates.
He’s reached out to his advisor to ask some questions about the math class he’s registered for and if a different choice would be better. He’s comfortable with however this turns out, so that’s good (and I’m glad he asked).
I’m a smidge annoyed with the health center. They have Very Stringent requirements regarding ADHD. I can’t tell if it’s just if you want their doctors to prescribe ADHD meds or if it includes if your home doctor sends a prescription to the on-campus pharmacy. Their requirements include a full neuropsych eval, including all the ADHD testing and IQ testing, within the last five years. Our neuropsych eval is definitely more than five years old, but we see his treating physician at least every six months to re-evaluate and every Year we go through the basics and we’ve re-done a lot of the paperwork, just not ALL of it. At my S22’s school we just had to send all of his records and a letter from his treating physician, and their staff doctors will prescribe ADHD meds. At Clemson, I just want the pharmacy to fill the prescription, and I can’t tell if we need the full paperwork for filling a prescription or if that’s only to have the doctors there take over med management. I’ve emailed the medical center twice now to try and find the answer to this, and gotten no response. I can’t tell if I’m emailing the right person, but I’d appreciate at least someone saying “I’m not the person you need, please try X.”
Is it possible as a backup to do mail order and have the meds shipped directly to him? Our insurance does something like that for 90 day supply scripts. Hopefully the college pharmacy will get back to you soon!
I feel like we are so behind on things after me being a lunatic about doing things early. Kiddo still need to turn in all of his health center paperwork, apply for accommodations, and get his request in for transfer credit review. The fact that he has to do all of this himself stresses me out. I think I’ll sit with him this weekend to help “shepherd” him in the right direction. (with a cattle prod, if necessary!)
No word on dorm or roommate, and it sounds like he won’t hear anything until late July/early August. And then no course registration until orientation the first week of September. Feels so late, but such is life at Rose-Hulman!
@OctoberKate, I feel your pain. I have no idea how the whole ADHD (and anxiety) meds are going to work. I guess I should get S25 cracking on the process. Blurgh.
Just a thought, one of you might start a separate thread asking how students have accessed their meds while away at school, and the various machinations needed to make that happen. You may even find a parent/student from the specific school your kid will be attending. Another good resource may be the school’s parent Facebook page.
Re: ADHD meds at college -
Unfortunately, we can’t ship with our prescription and our insurance. Because it’s a scheduled drug, it has to be picked up, in person, every 30 days. The challenge is figuring out what each specific state requires. Massachusetts, where older son is, requires a doctor visit every month in order to get a refill, our doctor can’t prescribe into MA (but has no problem prescribing into NY, PA and is prepared to into SC) and you can get the prescription refilled no earlier than 28 days after the last one (so when there’s only two pills left, and you better be able to get a doctor to see you, a pharmacy that is actually stocked (which has been a challenge) and then be able to get to that pharmacy. It’s been hard, but S22 has managed it.
As a state, SC doesn’t seem so complicated, so it’s just dealing with the school.
@Kumihama-Cho - if you do make a thread, I think there have been some discussions about this in the learning differences sub-forum, but I haven’t found them to be superhelpful. Because every state and school can be different, and every insurance co and prescription can be different, it’s not the most helpful. You might ask on the college parent facebook page - if you are able to make yourself anonymous and responders can be anonymous. Otherwise, just dig around on the school website. These are common questions, so they certainly have a plan. And I think - related to meds - its ok for the parent to get the plan of action in place for the student to effectuate. I’m all for the student taking ownership, but at least for the first time, it’s not a great learning opportunity, it needs to be done right with no steps missed.
The heat: sucked walking through campus with my post covid lungs.
My fave swag was the fan that attaches to the cellphone port!
Adhd meds: We live in Wisconsin. My sons psych np can phone in monthly refills to New York pharmacies. We schedule inperson visits on his breaks.
Would disability offices have this kind of information?
I think they would generally refer to the health center. The disability office / office of accessibility services / whatever typically only handles accommodations. We aren’t going to be using S25s IEP in college, so although we stopped and talked with accessibility at accepted students day they really didn’t have any relevant info for us.
I will say that at S22s school both offices - the IEP/accommodations folks and the medical center - are super helpful. Although MA has challenging requirements as a state, the school has really helped us walk through them. I’m hoping that I just haven’t found the right person at Clemson to help answer questions for S25.
Clearly, I just needed to complain out into the void. After not hearing back from one office, shortly after I posted here I found a different office/person (the head pharmacist) and I emailed them. And Hot Damn if they didn’t email me back almost immediately with a TON of useful information, even answering questions I hadn’t answered and giving specific instructions that we could share with our primary care doctor. Luckily for us, we do NOT need to re-do the testing as long as our doc prescribes, which is good, that’s what we’ll do. AND they will let us send three one-month prescriptions at once, so that’s great too. Woo hoo!
Good suggestions! I’m also going to reach out to S25’s psychiatrist. He said he can still meet with our son remotely even out of state, so hopefully that will ease the process a bit.
My kid is also going for a double degree. One is a BS in math and the other is a BA in German. This has worked out perfectly for meeting the studying outside area requirement for the honors college.
