that’s some crazy high airfare. I waited too long to book D24’s flight home for her March spring break and ended up paying over $700 round trip from AZ to Dallas. And that’s only like a 2-2.5 hr flight!
We don’t have any senior year spring break plans other than D26 recuperating from foot surgery. We’re driving from AZ to Anaheim on 2/4 after her school day is over so we (kid, me, Spousal Unit) can go to Disneyland on 2/5 w/2 family friends of ours. Her senior class is doing their senior trip 2/5-2/7 to…get this…Magic Mountain of all places (ew). The majority of seniors picked that because the Magic Mountain day included free food.
Next big trip will be in August 1-1.5 weeks before both kids have to head off to college. Doing Disneyland again but adding on a day at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley and hopefully a day at the D23 convention in Anaheim, too. Family friends are going to join us for that, too.
THEN the week of college send-off is going to be busy! Hoping the planets will align so ALL of us can help D26 get moved into her dorm at U of A and then the next day, D24 & I drive all day to TX (we’re having her take 1 of our cars w/her for junior & senior year). The day after THAT, D24 moves in, and then the next day I fly home.
For people who are anticipating having more acceptances to colleges than they will have time to visit before decision dates, I think that what @sbinaz did with her D24 would be one good way to help determine which schools to prioritize visiting (realizing, of course, that other factors come into play such as program, cost, distance, etc.).
S26 finally got his grades for the first half, As in all his AP classes. I wish the kid was a bit more organized, every college application gets submitted 1-2 days before the deadline, his final exam scores are always higher than his regular semester grades. But despite all the messing around his overall UC GPA is 4.2 which puts him in the middle range of accepted students to his target UC schools. Now we just wait, we visited most of the UCs already so we won’t be making any plans until he gets his acceptance letters.
Senioritis is in full effect for both teachers and students, he said first week of class they didn’t do much of anything, the teachers are just waiting the year out as are the seniors.
On the senioritis front, D26, who is a top student and maybe will even be valedictorian, said last night “you know I’m basically done with high school like tomorrow, right?”
Graduation is in JUNE. But OK! I know better at this point than to point out facts.
I think senioritis is worse for the top students! My D22 was salutatorian. There wasn’t a moment during school, ever, when she slacked off and didn’t do excellent work. I mean, sometimes she procrastinated and pulled it out of her arse, mind you, but she was capable of doing that and still excelling.
She was SO DONE by January of senior year, even though she was still waiting to hear from schools because she hadn’t applied ED anywhere.
Now, my D26 also has senioritis, but she is nothing like her sister in terms of schoolwork. Naturally bright, so she does well, but she’s been “done” with school since like 8th grade.
I feel like I have senioritis!! I am so done dealing with all the admin BS happening at the high school. There has been a lot of turmoil in our school district over the past few years and I am so ready to be done with all of it. D26 has some dedicated, hard-working teachers, but all the other “stuff” has been super frustrating. But of course I also do not want to wish this time away
Great first semester results. UCs are ridiculously competitive, imagine 4.2 being in the middle range!
My kid is ending the first semester with all Bs and 1 A. 2 of the Bs should’ve been A’s if not for the missing or late assignments. But I am proud of him because 2 other Bs were going to be Cs but he worked hard and managed to bring those up, and I am just choosing to focus on those and call it a successful year so far. This semester has been unbelievably hard for him - anxiety and EF issues combined with college apps and tougher classes does not make a happy kid, but he survived.
But it doesn’t bode well for the couple of colleges where he is deferred ( one is in his top 3 choices), plus a couple others that require mid year report. Ah well, everything happens for a reason and I have no doubt in my mind that he’ll end up where he is supposed to be.
I just took a look at flights if we had to travel to visit colleges- most of my daughter’s options aren’t even direct flights. I really should have looked at that -and told her she had to use that as a criteria so I could come visit more easily!! (I doubt that would have convinced her though!)
Visit planning is definitely going to be complicated for us! We didn’t have the opportunity to take D to visit any schools outside of CA & OR before she applied. Unfortunately, I will be recovering from upcoming major surgery probably most of the spring semester, and will need a lot of help from my husband, so neither parent will be available to fly with D. So she may have to make a decision sight unseen.
I just came to say this. My daughter does not have senioritis yet (but they haven’t gotten to mid-terms yet and she has the seal of biliteracy test coming up), even though she’s already committed to a school. I kind of doubt she’ll get it even in second semester, though. I, on the other hand, seem to have a massive case of senioritis on her behalf. I’m so ready for her to move on to the next chapter, even though I’m going to miss her so incredibly much.
VRbO/airbnbs have a horrible habit of canceling on people when there are events and they think they can get better rates. Also I think there are often cancellation penalties. I think we’ll just wait for the end of January and assess if we even need to be thinking about it. Worst case it’s a day trip from the nearest big city (where the Hyatt places are a whopping $168 or something, lol).
It’s definitely seasonal stuff/captive markets. I remember a couple of years ago when we were thinking about going to NYC for thanksgiving- flights to Europe from SFO were literally half of what they were to NY. (I think that was the year we ended up deciding to avoid airports altogether and did a long drive down to Palm Springs.)
On that front… if you are looking at savings on rental cars… there is an App/Service “Turo” which is like an AirBnB or VRBO for personal vehicles.
DO NOT USE THEM - at least not until they’ve been around another couple years. We’ve had nothing but trouble with them - 4 different vehicles assigned due to a myriad of issues and cancellations etc - customer service phone was a joke. Technically the CS agent spoke the english language - but comprehension of conversational ‘American’ obviously not on their application. Use at your own risk.
D26 is going with her friends with a few parent chaperones to Riviera Maya. They’re flying out of Canada, flights were hundreds cheaper. Since Canadian tourism to the US is down, we’re gonna take advantage of the more reasonable airfare.
But OK! I know better at this point than to point out facts.
