Reality sets in and application is unfinished

Olymom
Fri, 01 Jan 2010 14:34:34 +0000

I’m glad the kid preservered and was rewarded for the tenacity – but I am thinking more of the kid who is faced with a pile of applications and realizing that one or more schools is “neither fish nor fowl” – it’s not really a marvelous fit nor is it anything particularly special to the student. It is simply one more opportunity in a sea of opportunities.

As a parent, we can want all doors open to our darlings. It is more natural, however, for some doors to swing shut – they aren’t right for our kid. We are down to the wire for many applications. Parents and students can add battles to the already stressful situation or they can pause for a quick analysis: how much of the To Be Done pile is left? What are the sequences of priorities?

My guy would have stuck with it if I had insisted. But he had finished 8 applications (Eight!) and he was tired. I got on line and read through the website of the one remaining school – I couldn’t see that this particular school had enough different and special to make it worth another slog through an essay. When I expressed my analysis, my son embraced it with a great sense of relief and went off and buried himself in a fantasy novel. Win-win in my book.