This brings back one of my favorite grumblings/sibling rivalry memories. We grew up playing piano and during our group sessions, we often had to do melodic dictation - sometimes double staff melodic dictation. My sister has perfect pitch. She’d hear it once and blip blip blip just writes it down. Me? I’d be sitting there humming it, doing all the tricks for each stupid note. SO ANNOYING!!!
Congrats to your daughter!!
Can’t believe we’re already in February. Had another “college talk” session/discussion w/D24 today. Here’s the latest from our casa:
So there was a little bit of interview prep involved today, too.I can’t remember if I mentioned it here yet, but she & I went to a mandatory meeting at school the other evening for her France language trip that’s happening over 9 days at the very end of the school year. 14 kids total are going between our school and another school in the same charter school system. 2-4 students will be paired up to room with host families in Nice, France for the week. 3 hr of language classes in the morning, followed by lunch on their own, and then an organized touristy activity in the afternoon. Then they have dinner with the host family in the evening.
The AP French teacher is going on the trip. She explained all of the logistics, packing, safety, etc. No kid is going to be without a buddy. No wandering off on your own. I think this is going to be a great growing experience for D24. None of her friends are going on the trip, but she is not swayed by that at all. They’re going to make a one-day stopover in Paris before flying back home. D24 is totally stoked.
Next Saturday is another mock AP exam day…D24 has a mock AP USH test in the morning. D26 has a mock AP US Gov & Politics in the a.m. and mock AP Computer Science Principles in the afternoon, too.
D24 doesn’t entirely have her act together on everything, though…she forgot to go to Physics student hour on Friday after school. Oops. Normally, Physics student hour is on another day of the week but it was rescheduled. She even had a reminder on her phone about it. Still didn’t go. 
Hope everybody has a great week!
It sounds like there has been tremendous progress with respect to the college search, but just general maturity overall with your D. It also sounds like you have a great relationship with her; kudos for the good parenting that made it possible!
I’m just happy that she’s making progress. I should have done this sooner…the switch to “we’re only going to talk about college stuff for about 15-20 min once a week” idea, that is. It’s worked out really well so far. Am totally going to do the same w/YDD when it’s her turn in a couple of years.
Oh…also learned this week that D24 is interested in getting an EMT-Basic certification. And apparently U of A has a crew of undergrad students who work 30 hr/month as campus EMTs. And U of A has a 4-unit EMT class (we looked it up). Apparently, she would need a Basic Life Support certification first…I suppose that’s through something like the Red Cross. Will have her look that up in the future.
She was not thwarted at all by being an EMT and riding in an ambulance and treating critically ill people. This came up because she asked what are some easy ways to get the # of direct patient care experience hours you need for PA school and I mentioned EMT, nursing assistant, medical scribe, medical assistant…stuff like that.
She asked what a medical scribe is and then said (after I told her what it was), “Huh, ok. I think being an EMT would be a good idea. That sounds interesting.”
All I could think was “That would totally freak me out. How are you my child?”
Wanted to share. S24 got his second quarter grades today and brought two of his class grades up an entire letter grade! I am in shock- and frankly he is as well. It felt like a long quarter, with the added stress of ACT in December and now SAT/ACT prep for March and April. I told him we are super proud of how hard he worked bringing up those grades. I will be grateful when the stress of junior year is behind us, but also do not want to wish away the time because I know these kids will be out of the nest in the blink of an eye.
That. Is. AWESOME!!
@sbinaz that is awesome about the EMT training. Definitely good experience for PA!
@coastal2024 congrats! That is a great accomplishment! It IS going by so fast. I reminded S24 this is the last semester before college applications so he needs to crush it.
Things are going well here. We have a few tours the upcoming months. I think I know what his first choice is already and it’s a really good fit, but also the most expensive of course. I did ask him about homework tonight and he doesn’t have any but said he was going to study for SAT’s. It’s really starting to sink in.
S24 has been studying hard, doing MUN, swimming, tracks, and getting rides out with EMS (hoping to get his ENT cert before end of summer). He even got his French up from 70 to 95. His Chem and Biology are also in the 90 range. Seems like he has turned himself around… for now.
YAHOO!!! That’s great!
In the spirit of “OMG, maybe the kid is starting to ‘get it’,” while getting ready for school early this morning, D24 was talking about this year’s seniors, who wrapped up their regular classes already and are currently on the senior trip to Disneyland…all of the senior capstone classes are now done.
The capstone classes are kind of set up like upper division college seminar classes and are on more specific topics, like “History of Food” or a literature class that’s all about French fairytales. Stuff like that. They have to take 1 foreign language capstone class, an english, history, math, and a science, and then there’s the class that the seniors have w/the senior college counselor and that one is all about applying to college and scholarships.
Anyway, D24 said that the seniors earlier this week and last week were complaining and whining big time because most of them goofed off all school year and didn’t do any of the assignments or readings that were on the syllabus given to them at the start of the school year. So all of the seniors were super stressed out and scrambling to do all of the Aug-early Feb assignments & reading in about a week’s time.
In 1 of the english classes, for example, the assignment for the whole ‘year’ was to write a 90 page story.
D24 also said that the seniors even were complaining to 1 of the teachers about it, claiming that the teacher basically didn’t teach anything all year, to which the teacher pretty much said, “Oh, I was teaching you all right, you just weren’t paying attention at all.”
THEN D24 said…wait for it…“Oh my goodness, there is NO way I am doing that next year. How stupid is THAT? I mean, doing all of that stuff last minute? No thanks. I’m gonna do a little bit every week so I don’t end up so stressed out.”
…to which I replied, “OMG, I COULD JUST GIVE YOU A BEAR HUG RIGHT NOW! YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW MUCH JOY THIS BRINGS TO MY MOM HEART!”
D24’s reaction: 
Then she said, “The seniors told were telling us that for their classes, the teachers give you the syllabus in August and it lays out all of the reading, all of the assignments, when they’re due, what’s going on each week. And the teachers don’t nag you and remind you to do it each week. It’s all due at one time at the end of the year. Mama, they run it exactly like a college class. I am NOT procrastinating next year!”
Given how many times since 7th grade I have heard this child whine, “I’m sorry! I forgot!”, I am SO STOKED to hear those words this morning coming from my kid! 
I was thinking, “OMG, maybe this is all going to work out after all!”
so a big high five to all of us fellow parents who have more gray hairs now than we know what to do with…we’ve made it this far, we can make it through to the finish line! HAHAHA!
Well, the universe has a way of keeping me humble. On the way home from school today:
“Mama, so I got my Physics quiz back today and I got my AP USH quiz back, too. I got a 100% on the physics quiz and a 68% on the APUSH quiz, but I already went to student hours today after school and I can bring the grade on it up. Oh and I’m going to skip Robotics on Friday so I can study for the mock APUSH exam on Saturday.”
So…HOORAY for her getting a 100% on the physics quiz! Seriously, that class has been a major struggle for her all year. Boo about the APUSH quiz. She DID also say that she’s almost done going through all of the Modern States’ lectures for 1st semester US History. That means that she’ll be able to take the CLEP exam for that soon, so I’m grateful for that. UofA, UNM, and NMSU are all more lenient w/a passing CLEP exam score getting you general ed credits compared to AP exams…at U of A you usually have to score a 4 or 5 on the AP exam in order to have it count as college credit. UNM and NMSU allow a lot more 3’s.
D24 got a rejection email today from the UofA KEYS summer research internship. Email said that they had hundreds and hundreds of applicants. And because they’re short staffed, are not able to provide feedback as to why applicants were rejected. But that’s ok.
D24 is really disappointed. First rejection of the college season. I told her that I’m proud of her for trying. She’s understandably really grumpy about it.
She doesn’t realize this yet, but I do think that it’s important for kids to experience failure once in awhile. There’s a lot of personal growth that can happen from messing up at something, from not getting 1st place all the time, for not getting a participation award/trophy.
On a different note, she said that 3 of the 11th graders are graduating this year, which is an option at this school. She said that she’s glad that she’s not graduating this year.
Tomorrow apparently is the seniors’ last day of regular class. They’re all going to march down the halls at school wearing their caps & gowns and everybody in the school lines the hallway to cheer for them. Hard to believe that in a year, that’ll be my kid, too.
So we’ll figure out a plan B…she’ll continue her regular Sunday hospital volunteer thing. She’ll get a part time job. It’ll be ok.
D20 just got a rejection from an internship she had applied to 5 months ago. Honestly, she had assumed it was already a no from the length of time since the application went in.
She was laughing about it a bit like, “I was pretty sure y’all had ghosted me and I had written this off but I guess you decided to make it clear that it was a ‘no’ when there was little to no doubt? Thanks for the belated certainty of rejection in written form!”
I share this because I agree with you in regards to rejection and how learning to handle it is part of life. D20 has had her fair share of rejection over the years, and she has gotten a lot better about being able to put it into perspective and then shake it off. It also keeps her humble during her wins…as she knows what it feels like and the seeming randomness of it from both sides.
D20 has also gotten a lot more confident about putting herself out there. I used to say, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” and she would roll her eyes and say, “yeah, uh-huh”. But now, she applies for more opportunities, asks for favors and assistance, volunteers without prompting, negotiates the first offers. Because she’s been told no enough to know its almost never as bad as you imagine hearing no will be and many times you will end up getting some of the best, most surprising yeses!
Such great life lessons!
Sorry to hear about the summer program not working out,. but I agree with you 100% about them needing to learn some tough lessons as well. It sounds like she has a great hospital job already. I am a nurse and never had the opportunity to do anything related before starting nursing school and I felt way behind in terms of comfort level with patients and hospitals. It is great she is getting the experience now.
Could not agree more. Way back in the Stone Age my dream school was Georgetown. I did not get in and was devastated. Ended up at BC and it was by far the best possible place for me. Looking back I cannot imagine having gone anyplace else. But at the time that rejection really stung.
I did some quick math last night…the program basically had a 15% acceptance rate this year.
I agree with the importance of facing disappointment and moving on. With my older D20, this was a recurring scenario throughout middle school/high school. Things did not come easily for her and she learned to work hard and take emotional/ego risks. The result is a college student with a ton of grit not afraid to put herself out there. My D24 has had a completely different experience - just about everything has come easily for her and I can tell you it has done her no favors. She really does not know how to work hard and at the slightest indication that she’s not going to immediately succeed at something, she “loses interest.”
@sbinaz 15% acceptance rate is steep!! I’m always converting those to rejection rates in my head. Is your D thinking of going for EMT certification this summer? My D19 did this and loved it.
Our good news is that S24 passed his NY road test! 
It’s a fairly challenging test, and not uncommon for kids in our area to fail multiple times. S24 has driven almost every day since September, even when he had to drag one of his parents out to supervise 
.