She's talking about a gap year

snapdragonfly
Sat, 12 Feb 2011 10:49:35 +0000

Thank you all for such thoughtful responses. I’m going to reread them in case I missed anything.

Michael, that is pretty much what I decided to do. Her drama teacher did connive to get her into all of the competitions even after we had discussed that she did not need to to them. So, she’s in them now and really can’t back out - but - I told her she didn’t have to stress about them. Show up for practice, do the best she was up to and then forget about it when she’s not there and just ignore all the malarkey her teacher puts on her.

We also discussed the grades. You are right, it’s not necessary she kill herself for all A’s this semester. Those DC credits will be really good for her to have but all she has to get is a C in order for the college to accept it as credit, and the grade itself won’t be counted in her gpa at college. And the scholarships will all have been given out and over with long before the 8th semester final grades are in. As long as she doesn’t utterly flunk, I’m sure they won’t rescind anything. I really think if she has mostly A’s and a couple high B’s, that even if she gets a C in economics, it will not matter much. So I said, try to get a B but if you end up with a C don’t worry. (she DOES need to get that C or she may have summer school which would not be good. But I think she’ll pull that off.)

~the sad part is we had a wonderful economics teacher that everyone loved but he died of a heart attack last year. : (

And as much as possible I’m letting her take those mental health breaks. I think you hit the nail on the head with that girl. It’s been relentless for months now - there hasn’t been a weekend that wasn’t either an ACT, or a school contest, or an audition, for ages. Today, there isn’t any thing going on at all and she’s so happy that she can get together with her friends until she’s ready to come home, rather than cut it short to be at something. She’s very much an extrovert and if she isn’t spending enough time with her buddies, her batteries don’t get recharged.

And it’s true that her teachers are mostly clueless about what she is trying to do and what it takes. No sympathy at all. And her drama teacher seems to think she should have gotten ALL of her essays done last summer - including the ones that the colleges don’t tell her she needed to do until after she was accepted and then qualified to apply for extra scholarships, things like that. (this is the woman who thinks dance classes were a waste of time, and doesn’t seem to understand the difference between getting into a junior college and a capped BFA - so you see what she’s had to deal with)

She only has a few auditions left and those are for money. (the money part is important though because they are all at private schools.) So she doesn’t need to stress about those; they really ought to be a piece of cake, by now, as she knows her material so well.

As for how hard a BFA will be for her to handle - I think she’ll handle it as well as the average kid at least. She does have those DC hours which will give her a lot of breathing room. This is why she did them - so she’d have Spanish and Algebra behind her already and not have to deal with them during her freshman year. Because they’d be just as hard in college, but she’d also most likely have her scholarship and thus her college career (lose scholarship, come home) on the line too and that would be far far worse. I think she needs to remember that because I know she will be so so glad when this is all in the past and she’s reaping the rewards.

I think judging from all this, we probably should reckon it up to “all working out as it’s supposed to” if she doesn’t get into any of the extremely high pressure programs. I know the high pressure really competitive schools have excellent training, but if she learns best in a somewhat less stressful environment, that’s where she needs to go. I realize and so does she that the real world will be brutal and even vicious but we are of the theory that the purpose of college is for her to get her training and confidence built up; not to make sure she gets a really good taste of how vicious the vicious parts are. Some are of the theory they might as well “get used to competition” from day one in college, but I think even the less fast paced programs are going to have plenty of competition and work and stress; I think any well regarded BFA program is going to be plenty enough work and competition for her. She’s 18, she doesn’t need to be mature enough to deal with the real world right now. She can do that in 5 years. If she were ready for that now she could just hop a bus to Broadway and dispense with college. ~this is how WE see it; this may not hold true for every kid and just because it’s our view doesn’t mean the opposite view isn’t just as valid, but for her, I am very sure of this.

If she does end up with a really rigorous program (and that would include academics - there is a range of that in her school list too) that might be an argument to maybe consider the gap, so she’ll be recovered. If she ends up at some of the schools on her list which are less selective (but still good) academically, I think she might not need to, if she can ease off this spring and have a fun and relaxing summer.

She does not need to decide any of this now.

She’s already feeling better this weekend than she did last weekend - we backed out of a couple things and while she’s not one hundred percent she’s a lot better. She had a meltdown earlier in the week and she NEVER does that - she’s an extremely grounded, well balanced, happy little person most of the time, who works hard and cares about outcome but knows when it’s time to let things go. It’s so unusual for her to not be handling things well. But this fall and winter have just kind of been piling up on her and she hasn’t had time to recoup yet.

We are just going to “cruise” this spring and see how she feels later. Thank you all for the input and support and for any future remarks too, as this process continues. Also I’m sending mellow vibes to your kids if they are feeling the same way - I haven’t replied to my PM’S yet but apparently my child is not the only little human to be feeling the stress! Nor am I the only parent to feel it either! It’s good to know we aren’t alone!