<p>Let me point out that the average academic year consists of two four-month semesters. Those “four long years” are actually very, very short years, if you don’t volunteer to spend more time than necessary in the college’s area.</p>
<p>I also have a feeling that, for boys at least, back in the day when the expectation was that you would spend two years in the Army – and those, indeed, were long years – and that part of the time would be spent in Korea or Vietnam where people might shoot at you, it didn’t seem quite so daunting to spend eight semesters in Boston or Chicago.</p>
<p>JHS, is it really so hard to understand that 8 “short” semesters might very well amount to four “long years?” On the other hand, 8 semesters (or 12 quarters) in a blissful environment might feel quite short. </p>
<p>Isn’t that the beauty of having individual perceptions?</p>
<p>Was going to add more to my previous post, but hit send before I finished.</p>
<p>One of our D’s key goals is to experience something totally different than her peers/friends. She wants to go to a very large school with a true 4-season climate and huge swings in temperature (unlike the Pacific NW). We get so many comments on why would she want to do that, it’s comical. They usually say “Why on earth would you not want to go to warm, sunny California or stay in the beautiful, temperate NW?” Having lived in the Midwest for 25 years, Pacific NW for 24 years, and So. Cal. for 4 years, I can say that for me weather is over-rated. That’s what vacations are for ;-0.</p>
<p>Actually, most college semesters are 15 weeks long. And if you do a semester abroad, as many students do, it’s 7 semesters in residence. Seven semesters X 15 weeks = 105 weeks out of 4 years (=208 weeks). So you’re there a little over half the time.</p>
<p>What SoCal types sometimes have a hard time understanding is that people’s definitions of “bad weather” differ widely. My D2 grew up in northern climates. She loves the rhythm of the changing seasons, to the point that she found the one year we spent in California deeply disorienting and disturbing, and she vowed never to spend another year in that type of climate. We tried to address her need for winter by “going to the snow,” as some Californians call it, doing short weekend trips into the snowy mountains, but that just made her miss winter all the more. One of her bottom line criteria for a college was that it had to be someplace with four distinct seasons, including a colorful fall and snow in winter as those are her two favorite seasons. The year’s first snowfall gives her bottomless joy. She would not find SoCal “blissful.” More like “hell.”</p>
<p>Honestly and truly, my post was not intended to be a brag. I was responding to the implication in a post up-thread that anyone saying they didn’t go to H because of the winters is full of soup. D is a 3-season athlete, so the weather was an important factor for her, and enough so that she was not willing to deal with it even for H. Many posters on this thread are CC old-timers and have been on other threads with me, so already knew where D is. And if I had just said Palo Alto, I would have gotten accused of that same false modesty whereby the Harvard kids say they go to school in Boston LOL.</p>
<p>One observation my kids had (and I know there are plenty of exceptions to this), is that people who grow up in bad weather can be content staying indoors all day, while my kids, who are used to being active outside nearly 365 days per year, find having to do this depressing.</p>
<p>JHS, when people refer to years of dealing with harsh winters, it’s understood that the winter does not actually take up every month of that whole year. But where S went to school (shall I brag and say where, ha ha), winter started as early as October and lasted as late as April, so for people who don’t like snow, ice, slush, and cold, it could be a loooooong academic year–esp. when school does not start until late Sept.</p>
<p>Bay-
Nah. We hardy Northerners just get out in the cold. We ski, skate and hike in the winter. If you know how to dress it’s not hard to spend time outdoors.</p>
<p>^Yes, Sue22, that is why I acknowledged there are exceptions. Not many (if any) of their NE friends were outside skiing and hiking during college, though. Skating happened, but not very often. And you really cannot reasonably do any of those things when it is raining, sleeting, hailing, or snowstorming, which does happen in the NE, but virtually never in CA.</p>
<p>My point was that 18-year-olds and their parents overdramatize the college choice. It’s not that much time out of a life – even if, at 18, it seems like an awful lot of time – and kids tend to be more adaptable than they and their parents think.</p>
<p>Huge chunks of Western civilization as we know it – even in California – were developed in Northern Europe during the aptly-named Little Ice Age, most of which would have made Gulf Stream-warmed Boston (or “Boston”) during a typical winter seem, comparatively, like Bermuda. Really, it’s possible for human beings to do good academic work during the winter.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, I will quote a well-known professor whose normal base of operations was in Connecticut, and who had just given a lecture in one of those California suburbs on the Peninsula between San Francisco and San Jose. (The one with The GFG’s daughter, not the one with the Catholic college. Of course.) “How the hell do you get anything done here? When does anyone work? There were women in that lecture who might just as well have been naked, and who looked like they had been playing tennis or throwing javelins or something all morning. I don’t know if I could function in this kind of environment.”</p>
<p>Yeah, well, that guy has made it clear he does not like D’s school very much or in fact the Ivy League either (despite being an alum). But far more people have turned down that school in CT because of the seedy town it’s located in, than have ever turned down S due to sun and scantily clothed women.</p>
<p>And…there are very few scantily clad women at that CT school, either, so don’t go there if that is what you are looking for. My D told me she could wear shorts for all of about 2 weeks out of the school year, so I was not to bother buying her any more.</p>
<p>My D2’s favorite season for being outdoors is winter. She just loves the snow that much. And she probably spends more time indoors in the summer than in any other season because she doesn’t tolerate heat well, sometimes breaking out in heat rashes when the temperature gets much above 80 degrees.</p>
<p>Again, the concept of “people who grow up in bad weather” is nonsensical because there’s no agreed-upon definition of good weather.</p>
<p>Interesting logic, but still missing the point. I guess that the next step is to state that the people who happen to work about 180 days a year do not hold a full time job. Oops, don’t our noble teachers pretend to work more than the average Joe, despite clocking just about 1 day out every two days? </p>
<p>Regardless how one dissects fifteen weeks of planned courses --and overlook the “vacation” time that might not be back home or the orientation and exam weeks-- it remains that it is hard to deny that 8 months (or more) for four years might be viewed as four long years if the student does not enjoy the environment.</p>
<p>I also don’t know what that means–“grew up in bad weather.” What place has crappy weather all year long? I would pick a Midwestern winter over a clammy Texas or DC summer any day.</p>
<p>Really cancelled classes? I went to Harvard during the great blizzard of 1978 and it was the first time classes had been cancelled in 300 years. I think Palo Alto is the world’s most boring town ever, I’d rather be in Cambridge any day. (And when I was there I lusted after NY.)</p>
<p>which is exactly the point. It’s an entirely subjective affair, as everything of the … heart. </p>
<p>This said, what seems hard for some to understand, is that not everyone would be thrilled to spend much time on the East Coast, and especially in the towns that feature an Ivy League or other prestigious school that makes CC sing.</p>