Thank you. It’s a good thing to hear!
Yes, you’ve been nominated. Click on the link I provided.
Yes, it is my email. I will change the password asap
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Thank you. Even if they ask it I will not share with them
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Wait…you might want to let this one go…you don’t want to irritate your parents…but perhaps have a conversation with them about this.
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Thank you. My mother is essentially non-negotiable so I really hope she can cease her control when I’m in college. I’ll talk to my father later on.
Thank you!
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Did they write the email well? Email communications are important- hopefully it was well written and sounded like you. My DD would have been upset with me - she would never give me access to her email.
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Thank you for you advice! I may just let it go since it’s good to hear colleges won’t care much. But I’ll be more careful next time
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Unfortunately, it does not sound like me at all. They write in a somewhat abrupt way, and I tend to write more politely. Anyways, their writings are not too rude.
OP- I agree with everyone else- Adcom’s won’t care and it won’t hurt your chances at all.
Here’s what I learned (decades of experience and years of therapy)-- the best way to stop sharing is to stop sharing. That’s it.
You don’t need to have a showdown with your parents, you don’t need to tell them to butt out, you don’t need to tell them that you are becoming an independent adult.
Just BE that person. No sharing of emails (and if you do need to share to keep the peace, make a separate email address for important things that you do not share with them. They want to read every time you’ve been approved for a Walmart credit card? Great- share that email address with them!) You can figure out your own boundaries with or without their permission!
Congrats- the Presidential Scholarship is a great form of recognition!
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That’s honestly such a great idea. For some reason I didn’t even think about making a separate email address. Every time they ask me to share information, even if I don’t want to I share with them anyways. I guess I have to be smarter sometimes. Thank you so much for your advice!
You can do this. It’s just a slight mind shift. Overshare ALL the trivial stuff-- if you meet a friend for ice cream, tell them who you saw, what flavor you ordered, the price went up 20 cents per cone but the cup is still the same. Your physics teacher is going on vacation to Costa Rica this summer and is going to go ziplining, isn’t that crazy? You heard a rumor the superintendent of schools is leaving for a bigger district, had they heard that? You need to see the dentist before you leave for college, you’re going to make an eye doctor appointment while you’re at it, OK?
Overshare. Elicit feedback. Ask their opinion. It will fill in the blanks on all the stuff they DON’T know about!
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Interesting view! I really like your answers! ;D
I don’t know if there are cultural/family culture values here, but I cannot imagine requesting let alone requiring access to any of my kids’ emails, or using the emails as if I were them. This is a much bigger issue than whatever was sent to the colleges. You are almost an adult and deserve privacy and autonomy. I get that parents pay for things. Maybe a counselor could sort this out. Once in college, are your parents going to require you to sign a release and give passwords so they can check on grades etc?
It’s hard for me to predict what they’ll do in the future, but probably. I just hope for college I can go to east coast and the physical distance can reduce their desire to control my life
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It’s a process for everyone, but harder for some! I don’t know you or your parents and don’t mean to criticize, just sympathize.
Good luck with your acceptances.
They CAN control your life. Once you leave for college, you will ask their opinions about “everything”- register for the 8 am class with the world renowned professor, or take it at 10 am with a less famous person; eat lunch at the “fantastic” food court which is a 20 minute walk from your last class so you need to run to be on time for the next class, or grab a sandwich at the “grab and go” cafe; should you wash your jeans in cold water or use the heavy duty cycle which uses warm water; is Advil better than Tylenol if you have a headache but no sore throat… the list of things they will need to control is endless.
And none of it matters. You’ll eat what you want when you want; you’ll take whichever course works best with your schedule (“oh darn, the 8 am lecture was completely full but I’m on the waiting list”) and you’ll either do your laundry or not.
One of my kids is the champion of “Yes mom, thanks so much for your help”. it took me years to realize that he hadn’t taken any of my (fantastic) advice since he was in the 8th grade. He was just so darn polite and solicitous!!! And really- I didn’t have a clue what was going on once he got to college except that he had an overdue library book which turned up on his bill at the end of the year. But only overdue three days…
You can do this!!!
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I’m so sorry your parents did this. It’s not okay to pose as you. Personal email is something I would never, ever ask to be let into, much less use to write messages, and like others have said, I encourage you to talk to them about that breach of privacy and how it felt.
As a parent, there are times I’ve sent suggestions to my kid for HIM to send. I’ve also made a couple of calls to colleges with his express permission, because he was at school and I needed to speak to someone.
Unlike some other parents here, I do have the logins to his portals. I don’t see this as helicopter parenting. I see this as an example of helping my kid through a very confusing and stressful process by picking up some of the administrative pieces that can be Byzantine. Some financial aid and scholarship forms would never get in there without me. The housing process at one school was so convoluted, I had to work on it during school hours with the IT department, and he was not there to log in and out. Again, I have his permission, and I never pose as him to write messages.
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I agree that they shouldn’t be in your “business” since the colleges are trying to treat you like an adult and it is completely a lack of trust and respect.
I’d rather “hear from the student” and not from the parents who purport to be you. It really is a violation of trust on so many angles. You’re a big girl now. That’s supposedly what they prepared you to be-an adult.
When our eldest went away to school, she had all the communication with university because she was an adult- 18 years of age.
We were given separate email access, from the university, to pay the bill.
We never received her grades
We never received information about her classes.
Information about the university was posted on the website. We didn’t receive diddlysquat and that’s the way it should be.
She shared, what she wanted to share, whenever she wanted to share it.
We talked about her feelings about school, her classes, the professors she liked, etc.
Sometimes there were things that were private to her, that she didn’t want to share with us. That’s OK because we trust/trusted her judgment; adults should be entitled to privacy.
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