<p>Well he just got home! H went to pick him up. He already had plans before walking through the door. He found 4 friends that are also home already. He ran in the house to say hello to me, spent about 60 seconds (max) with me, and he is out the door with a friend. I am happy to see that he looks great, though he has a nice cold. He dropped his unstored things in the center of his bedroom, and they are still completely packed. He started making plans for his summer employment, and it looks like he knows where he will be working. His job should be confirmed early next week, and hopefully on Monday.</p>
<p>Happy days!!! :)</p>
<p>Yay for working children. Mine is coming home tomorrow, she gets one day of rest (Sunday) and is out pounding the pavement for a job on Monday. Hope she finds one soon, before everyone else gets out of school.</p>
<p>My D and her friends aren’t even home yet and they already have plans to spend the day on the beach this Thursday.</p>
<p>northeast
if those were my S’s unpacked bags,they would probably still be in the same position,with him tripping over them daily,until he was ready to go back to school in August.
He arrives Sunday,but leaves the Sunday after for a two week on the road May semester course.If he wants anything clean to take on the trip,he’ll be forced to unpack.
Then home again May 26.Employment ,at same place as last year,supposedly secured.I use the term supposedly for a reason…</p>
<p>Cathmee, my son might just be happy to trip over those bags all summer long too :eek: Then again, he will need some clothes to wear!</p>
<p>mmom, It is great that friends stay so connected all year long through facebook, texting etc. I suppose now they will do the same with their college friends. My son has tentative plans to meet some college friends over the summer too (I don’t know if he will find time, he plans on working full time for the summer b/c he now realizes how much he needs the money).</p>
<p>YES!!!
SO happy to hear that your son is home and that all is normal (stuff in the middle of the room, already off with friends)!!! I thought you were writing about MY son for a minute! 
I’ve been fielding calls for several days now from friends who want to meet my son at the airport tomorrow with us!</p>
<p>Hope y’all enjoy a wonderful summer! 
</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>Beruah, I hope you and your family have a wonderful, wonderful summer too! I’ll bet that you cannot wait to meet him at the airport and give him your {{{{HUGS}}}}! Perhaps you could even have 2 minutes with him before friends hone in, then again maybe you will just have to patiently wait for your precious moments with him!</p>
<p>northeastmom~</p>
<p>THANKS!! I’m kinda sad and bummed to report that my son will just be here for about 10 days…then back out to Durham for the summer. He’s taking a couple of classes this summer and also working in a biosafety level 3 lab! This will be the first summer that he’s spent away <em>sigh</em>. I honestly can’t even bring myself to think about it right now…have to concentrate on the fact that by this time tomorrow, he’ll be safely here and majorly {{{{{{{hugged}}}}}}}!!! :D</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>WildChild and H are just starting the drive from PA to TN. They are pulling a trailer with 3 years of accumulated stuff (2 years boarding school and 1 year college). WildChild has no plans to return to Philadelpia, which is kind of sad. We’ll see what happens with the transfer apps. U of TN is looking really good to me right now, especially after the $300 cell phone charge for 3 calls to Australia (“I thought it would be about $5”). How can he be so smart and so stupid at the same time?
This will be the first summer he will be home with us in a few years. He is recovering from his major knee surgery 2 weeks ago and will WORK (somewhere, somehow) so he can pay us back for telephone bills, assorted camping gear purchased while AWOL from college etc. He may take classes at Vanderbilt, depending on where he decides to go next fall. H and I are not sure we will survive the summer. Our daughter will be home for a week in June before she starts her job (Rice graduation is next week) and will probably be looking for wedding venues etc for next summer. Exciting times.</p>
<p>
Quote of the decade (I am hoping it only lasts ten years for my two.)</p>
<p>northeast Mom, can’t believe year one is over for you already.
MoWC…want to query you about Rice some day for son number 2. I also send my regards re your husband and hope he is fully back this spring. Ya’ll have been around the block this year! Hope WC enjoys soaking up Nashville. Something tells me he might like it. Run him out to the Loveless for a hearty breakfast soon.</p>
<p>Berurah, I am with you…Duke son has a his dream internship this summer. Seems like yesterday I was sending him emails urging him to get applications out in Feb and March and complaining that he was dragging his feet on pushing for something away from home this summer (our town does not hold a lot of resume building jobs). What was I thinking. Now he will only be with us a week before reporting to work. He has two exams this afternoon and this evening, and won’t return to Duke next fall…going abroad. I think I will miss him more than anyone although the job and the semester abroad are just what the doctor ordered.</p>
<p>Faline, It did go so quickly. BTW, my son really likes it in VA!</p>
<p>Northeastmom, so glad college in Virginia was a “match” for him. My nephew was in the West Ambler Johnson dorm at Va Tech and lost 3 of his teachers. Who would have thought ya’ll would have to worry about tragedy in our part of the USA when you sent your kids down here. We lost local students but so many northern Virginians also lost their young ones.</p>
<p>Faline~</p>
<p>That’s <em>really</em> exciting news about all of your son’s unique opportunities! I’m really glad that he is able to make so much of his college experience. My son finished his final final <em>lol</em> this afternoon. I talked with him this evening, and he was in a WONDERFUL mood! Can’t wait to see him tomorrow! I hope your son enjoys his summer internship and his exciting semester abroad! I know you’ll miss him <em>so</em> much, but WOW, what opportunities!</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>My son has made such wonderful friends from all over the country at Duke, and he will miss being with them fall semester. He also raves about his teachers, even the toughest ones. One of his teachers got the meritorious award this year (he loved him), another is brilliant and blind! I know your son is going to have a great time in his very cool research assignment in Durham among friends and colleagues, too. I expect my son is going to mature a great deal in the coming year with his first real job and a season abroad. I don’t think I can picture seeing so little of him frankly. Guess I will simply have to live it.</p>
<p>faline, Also a few kids from NJ, NY, and of course elsewhere, lost their lives too. No, it is not something that we thought about when we sent our son to VA. Oh, and your poor nephew! I am glad that he is physically okay. How is doing psychologically from all of this?</p>
<p>you know, the headlines where we live are full of personal articles about the dead and the survivors who filled our hospitals. Our doctors worked night and day. There were terrible wind shears on April 16 and sadly our helicopters were not able to airlift the wounded to our best ER hospital and everyone had to come by car. Two of our neighbor’s daughters were just steps away from where the first two victims were shot, but did not understand the noise and did not know it happened immediately as the two students shot in Ambler were in a sort of offset part of the hall. My nephew was also not told that two people were dead in his dorm for a couple of hours. Only a sign that said “First Floor Ambler is closed.” On his bathroom door. The wonderful Indian engineering professor and two of his graduate assistants were my nephew’s favorite teachers. Our salutatorian died trying to put a desk behind a door for his French teacher. Where we live is Hokie country. A minister’s grandson jumped out a window and lived. Just now we are hearing more about the grief and shock the adults and faculty are now experiencing. Three children in a local school lost parents. There has been tremendous and impressive support for Tech and I have been very impressed I must say with the students and how articulate they have been, and how kind they have been. I think Tech is going to get more applications, not fewer actually. My son thinks that the excessive gentleness of the Blue Ridge may have contributed to the students tolerating the gunman’s bizarre behavior. Mental illness is simply not understood by many adults much less people fresh out of high school. Even though the other students he was randomly rooming with were basically tolerant and kind, they did call the police about him. How odd is it that boys would call the police about another boy…very odd I think. The red flags were simply not addressed with proper oversight or communication between institutions. I really don’t think a smaller school would have assigned some poor new 19 year old to live with a strange 23 year old with only imaginary friends either. Anyway, thanks for asking. I would say it very much still feels raw and like a big injury here. If Ms. Giovanni and Ms. Roy couldn’t get him removed from class, something is wrong. I don’t think teachers should be afraid either. And I am a psychiatric social worker/bleeding heart type person. I regret that there was no cumulative record of complaints and clear incidences of reported psychosis for college and mental health screeners to review. His name should have been on a no gun registry. Students shouldn’t be shooed from their dorm rooms because “Jelly is here.” We need to educate the public much better about mental illness. I do understand the human wish to just “walk by” and not get involved, but our kids need to be able to set boundaries when they leave home and meet seriously disturbed peers in dorms as well as in the workplace later. They need to learn to go to people and report concerns and insist on being taken seriously. This young man was stalking random females in the dorms and his writing was very “pressured” and looked like it was full of thought disorder to me.</p>
<p>Faline, I so much agree with your thoughts about red flags simply not being addressed. It seems as though they were not addressed in Cho’s younger years either.</p>
<p>The one blessing Virginians have are their close communities and support for each other. This is one reason that my son just loves loves VA. My son, an outsider, was welcomed to VA with open arms. Several families invited him over for some home cooked meals throughout the school year, and one mother of another student sent some homebaked cookies on a special occasion to my son. Other mothers have who have visited their children in their dorms, have greeted my son with lot of warmth and affection. He tells me that one mother always has a big hug for him, when she visits. Faline, you live in a wonderful, supportive area of our country.</p>