<p>Just curious--Those of you who are freshman music majors, or parents of same: Between audition travel, information visits and post-acceptance visits, how many days of school did you/your senior miss during the school year? How difficult was it for your kid to make up the work? How did you keep the number of missed days manageable? What number is manageable? Did the high school excuse all the absences? Because of travel days, I'm finding it may be very difficult to keep the number of missed days below the expected number at my D's school--even though many schools will come to her area to audition. How did it all work out for you?</p>
<p>D is now in grad school, but way back as a senior in HS D missed approximately 9-10 days.She had 6 schools on her list and 4 were out of state. The first week of school we met with the Principal and discussed in detail the audition requirements of each school and we asked for his personal support. He said that if any teacher questioned her planned absences that they should be directed to his office. He also wrote a letter backing her up. We had no problems. As far as missing work, D arranged to have work done ahead of time and also brought assignments along. Basically I credit the cooperation of the teachers to that first meeting with the administration.</p>
<p>DD missed about 13 or 14 days…(all 2nd semester) for auditions/visits/sample lessons…
We were even very creative with scheduling so she would miss as few as possible…</p>
<p>Time off was not a problem clearing with her school as she was a fine arts BS and they understood what was needed…YMMV</p>
<p>Making up assignments was difficult…but she managed…While going through her things after she left for college this fall I found several VERY detailed schedules on how she planned to get everything accomplished…ex 6:00-6:15 translate xxx, 6:15-6:40 study for xx…, 6:40-7:05 xxx …You get the idea…I didn’t know my DD could be so organized…Guess she had to be to survive the process</p>
<p>Best of luck all you H.S. seniors and parents…will be rooting for you</p>
<p>I think 14 but it could be 12, we left a day early for each audition to get a good start in the AM and had a few early fall visits as well. Our HS really didn’t bat an eye at any request. Our high school routinely has about 12 - 15 music majors so I guess they are used to it.</p>
<p>I had no clue that absences could be a problem when my son first started this procedure
3+ years ago. He had a huge # of absences due to traveling for auditions plus the usual school performances and other senior activities. Towards the last of the school year we received a letter from the principal listing his schedule and all of the unexcused absences and a request for an explanation regarding each absence. After a lot of research on our part we figured out where he was during each absence sent the info in and he received “pardon” and all was well. If we had known this may be a problem when he first started out we would have talked to the administration ahead of time and saved ourselves a lot of stress.</p>
<p>We met with the principal and superintendent (as I remember) before our daughter even started high school, and they gave a lot of flexibility through the years. Our part of the bargain was to say we would do work in our family to keep her up, and we also said, on our own not because of pressure, that we did not want to impact teachers too much. However, teachers were wonderful and I have a feeling that the principal e-mailed them at the beginning of the year to tell them why she was gone a lot. We have a small school, so maybe we were lucky.</p>
<p>D probably missed 10 or so days of Sr. year for visits/auditions. According to our h. school’s criteria, these were not “excused”. We don’t have many students going thru the audition process, so, fairly early on, I wrote a fairly detailed email to all her teachers and the principal explaining what was expected of D. Also updated them with specific dates she would be out once I knew them. Add to this a couple days for area-all state and all-state choirs and I imagine some of the teachers were not too happy. But, she got all her work done, and if there was negative feed-back, I never heard about it.</p>
<p>My son missed about 14 days of school, including one 10 day stretch in late February. The teachers were all accommodating, and he spent a lot of hotel room time working on his cumulative senior project.</p>
<p>Just like the above posters, we did what would seem like the reasonable thing to do and met with the vice principle explaining that our daughter would have at least six out-of-state auditions requiring at very least six days out-of-town. The vice principle told us that the county allowed only three days for college visits – the rest of the days would have to be unexcused absences. We could have, argued, protested, written letters to our congressman, and/or escalated the issue to the principle and then to the county (which by the way did not have such a rule). Instead, we did what any reasonable parent would do under the circumstances. We wrote sick notes for the days after the first three were used up. My SOP is to avoid lying at all costs because I think it sets the wrong example for my child. In this case, I could justify it by saying she was suffering from a physical disability – not being able to be in two places at once. I didn’t have the energy to make a case out of the issue. As some say – A babe’s gotta do what a babe’s gotta do.</p>
<p>Aside from the administrative issue – travelling to auditions during winter months is stressful and time consumming. The student still has to keep up with studies and the demands of senioritis. The advice: try to keep extra curricular activities to a minimum; help your child develop good long- and short-range planning skills, and take care of as much of the logistical arrangements as possible to ease the student’s stress (and your own). My child, of course, participated in lots of extra-curricular activities and got sick twice during the audition period. So, I wasn’t able to follow my own advice. Good look. Somehow it will work out as evidenced by the number of people on this site who have lived to tell about their experiences.</p>
<p>This conversation makes me feel better about our school system - one of the few things that does [sigh]. I just leave a voicemail with the secretary whenever the kid is absent, without having to give a reason, and it magically becomes an excused absence.</p>
<p>That said, D has already alerted her senior year teachers that she’s likely to be missing some time and why. As long as she doesn’t come down with the flu, we should be ok.</p>
<p>stradmom…might I suggest that you still might want to give a headsup to the people in charge…The local school system we live in also was very good about just magically turning my call into the office into an excused absence…However, after D1 missed whatever the unmagical number of absences was we received a letter stating that she only had one more allowed absence and that after that she would need a DR. note to be excused…so maybe you just have never hit the special number.</p>
<p>opera-mom - thanks for the advice - this might be one of those times when my motto “it’s better to apologize than ask permission” might not fly!</p>
<p>Our school system was WONDERFUL. All TWENTY of DS’s absences his senior year were excused. He had a number of days for auditions, and participated in four music festivals…two were out of state. And his grandmother died that year…so a couple of days off for that. The only hard part was that he DID have to do all of the coursework and making up all that work was not easy to do. BUT he managed!!</p>
<p>D missed 4. Her school was very rigid and permitted only one day as a junior and two as a senior for college visits, and they really didn’t care what excuse you have.She did end up taking a couple of days to sleep because two trips were very intense and she also came down with the flu right after her last audition. Believe it or not, we actually got a nasty letter from the Vice Principal, complaining about it- clearly she did not understand what was going on and she didn’t want to hear an explanation. But, her guidance counselor and the woman who kept all of the records concerning college apps were great about it and they dealt with the administration. D’s senior year was no walk in the park and she was taking several APs and dual-credit college courses and she is hard-wired to excell at everything. She carried her school work with her and could be found in a corner between auditions/testing/meetings, working on an assignment. She took her laptop and whatever was needed to work in the evenings at the hotel.
I understand the numbers others have given in this thread and envy them the fact that their schools were understanding, but on our side of the coin, if D had missed that many days, she woudn’t have been able to graduate. Not only does our state have some silly regulations, but the number of exams and presentations she would have missed would have been impossible to make-up. Because of the dual-credit things, and the teacher’s commitment to a group she was taking to CA, the course was trunkated, so a lot of days away from that class could have been disasterous.When you go to talk to the school’s administration, check to see what kind of class participation requirements (group projects, presentations,etc) your youngster has and find out how those can be accomodated. " Group Projects" are all the rage and missing one’s part of the work could result in serious penalties.
There is no “magic number” since so much depends upon the courses she is enrolled in, the school’s feelings, state regs and teachers’ co-operation. You do what you can, and remember, it will all be over next May 1st! Good Luck to all of the Class of 2010!</p>
<p>We were fortunate not to have a restricted number, but DD sent in the list of dates and she worked way ahead of time with all of her teachers about which dates she would be gone. They helped arrange any issues with group projects and tests. She ended up with auditions on a couple of holidays and a Saturday so she only missed around 4 days for auditions, but then missed several more for decision time return visits and lessons. So her total was around 7. Oddly enough, it was her Chorus director that gave her the hardest time. DD missed the District and State choir auditions and she never forgave her. Took all solos away from her for the rest of the year.</p>
<p>I think in the end DS ended up missing 2 or 3 days. However, he only applied to 5 schools, and auditioned at 3. He was well targeted, and did early review at Oberlin. If he had not gotten in on early review at Oberlin, then we might have added some schools. We also did pretty well at getting the audition dates we requested, which were near to or in school vacation weeks.</p>
<p>To the best of our recollection, our D missed around 6 to 7 days in her senior year between visits and auditions. That’s on top of about 3 in her junior year for school visits.</p>
<p>Mind you, since we live in the Northeast, the farthest we traveled for a school was around 320 miles away (naturally, that was the school she selected) so our travel time was not as much a factor as for those traveling across the country.</p>
<p>Were any of you able to schedule visits during or around days the high school was off that the universities had classes in session? I understand that auditions are not that fleximble at most schools but for visitation we hope to use those kind of days where possible.</p>
<p>Trumpet 57 – Yes, you can try to schedule things around hs off days. As you probably know the universities post their calendars online and you can try to schedule things based on that information. Regardless, if the teacher you want to meet with isn’t there on the day the hs happens to have an off day, the value of the trip is undermined. Audition dates are the trickiest, but by now most the schools will have their audition dates posted. However, last year Northwestern didn’t post its audition dates until November 2. So there are exceptions.</p>
<p>We lucked out with NU, and did get a Friday off of school. The other schools often offer a choice of dates, and you can try to work those around to your best advantage. In our case, expense-wise (because we came from the west coast) it made the most sense to just take one long road trip. Our school didn’t have any mandatory days issues, son scheduled the time as far in advance with his teachers as possible and had all the work. Probably because we are a small District, all teachers knew son, his college goals and work ethic, and were very accommodating. Nobody forgave work–he got it all done on the road. The biggest bummer was missing his last year of varsity mock trial because of the audition timing.</p>