<p>^^ I’m reminding myself, too. Last night my H said that he feels a little lost because direction #3 (culinary school/food business) is very unfamiliar to him. But he’s a chemist, and that’s just what chefs are, according to a young celebrity chef we heard speak recently. So I guess dear S is following in someone’s footsteps after all.</p>
<p>The really important thing, though, is he does not have to follow in anyone’s footsteps. He can blaze his own trail. I’m in a similar profession to my late father, and he always acted like my career was all about him. That’s behavior I do not want to repeat.</p>
<p>Alumother,
I keep reminding myself that S has matured tremendously on the social front while in college, and that had been a long-standing concern. He is emotionally happy and healthy, and knows who he is and what he wants. There are still bumps in the road (and don’t we all have those?), but they don’t paralyze him the way they used to. He asks for advice and is pleasant to be around. He definitely has his quirks, but he has embraced them and works his way around them (i.e, he refuses to learn to drive, but is an intrepid traveler who is unflappable in the wake of cancelled flights and confusing public transit).</p>
<p>He has the tools. Now he needs to use them effectively.</p>
<p>CountingDown, that is a beautiful description. He sounds like a great guy. And I have to chuckle that several of us use some variation on the expression, “I keep reminding myself”!</p>
<p>Mine (D) is one of those “up in the air” and I think she has moments of dread but mostly tries not to share them with us. She is adamantly not interested in grad school, but took the GRE yesterday (and was quite pleased with her unofficial score ranges). Hmm . . . “I keep reminding myself” to keep my mouth shut and let her figure this out, or come to me when she wants my input.</p>
<p>you know, D was much more apprehensive about graduation and the “real word” before her internship this past summer. I remember her saying last spring that she didn’t really want school to end because, even though she’s not wild about tests and papers, at least she understood tests and papers. Not so with the “real world,” where grades (and concrete measures of achievement) are nonexistent and where the rules of the workplace may be much murkier than that of classrooms and syllabi.</p>
<p>I don’t know if I explained that clearly… but anyway: this summer internship was really helpful. D was able to see that the business world isn’t so scary (excepting the 14-hour workdays!) Now she seems much more relaxed about her senior year.</p>
<p>I know what you mean. S had an internship last summer, and it seemed to demystify the working world for him–and led to quite a few jokes about meetings and conference calls. Though he seems to be headed for life in a kitchen, I don’t think he’s averse to working in an office after that summer experience. He felt like a real grownup.</p>
<p>I just can’t believe these kids are now college seniors! As D is our youngest we get to celebrate that last tuition bill soon. The loan payments will go on forever, but no more financial aid and loan applications. Yeah!</p>
<p>S2 has not. He really doesn’t know what he wants to do. He will spend the Spring sem. doing an internship (required for graduation). He told me today he has a meeting about the internship on the 12th. So at least I know he’s keeping up with that.</p>
<p>Just found this thread. D is a Classics major and is applying to med school now. Has 7 interviews scheduled and it is still early in the interview season. Top Ramen dinners are calling my name!</p>
<p>S was invited on a business trip with the team he has worked with the past two summers. The impression we get is that they expect him after graduation, though no formal offer has been made yet. </p>
<p>In D’s major (accounting), the interviewing for permanent jobs after graduation starts now with on-campus interviews and job fairs; many seniors already have job offers from their summer internships. Most without job offers now will have second interviews/on-site interviews and job offers by Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>Congrats on the engagement, Counting Down! My own senior D just broke up with her long-term (3.5 years) long-distance boyfriend. I think it was just the distance that finally did them in; D says that although she loves/loved him, she just couldn’t envision another two to three years of the long-distance thing while they both finished school. There was a time when she was sure they would marry, but oh, well - looks like no impending engagement for them!</p>
<p>scout, sorry to hear about the breakup. My younger S’s GF broke up with him after three years and it has been a tough time. S1 and fiancee are looking at a wedding two years out, which I think is a very wise move on their parts. They are at different schools for the next year and then have to figure out how to get jobs in the same city, deal with visas, etc.</p>
<p>Wow. Engagements. Business teams. Congratulations.</p>
<p>Son thinks now, after a long summer at home with mom and working for dad, that he really wants to be financially independent. Ha! Talk about natural consequences. He is also honing in on the sort of creative work he’d like to do, if he takes the creative rather than analytical path. </p>
<p>He’s thinking not conventional fiction, but some sort of writing for TV or what we used to call “video games.” Interactive narrative, I suppose, which is the way the world is going.</p>
<p>If he goes towards the analytical, he is now thinking perhaps something political, so he can do good in the world. All of this may turn out to be an immediate direction, or perhaps longer term, with time spent for the next two years in an entry level job that pays the bills and puts him in a city with friends and the sort of social climate that will be happy for him.</p>
<p>I love watching them ripen, if that’s the right word, especially when I feel I’ve given enough space to do so. He hasn’t started looking per se, but he has a set of places, people, and areas to investigate. Princeton starts late, so in the next few weeks I expect he will go to the Career Center and begin the formal process.</p>
<p>Let’s all cross our fingers for each other and our children.</p>
<p>S will be graduating in Dec, so he should be well into the job search. How much he’s done is a mystery to us since he shuts down when we ask him about it. He seems confident that he’ll have a job with the non-profit he’s been working at for the past 19 months, but they haven’t discussed salary yet & he certainly couldn’t survive on what they pay him now as an intern. So we remind him that until he’s sure he has a job he can support himself on, he needs to keep looking for a job. We don’t think he feels the same way we do about that.</p>
<p>I’ll be crossing my fingers for my son & everyone else’s child.</p>
<p>Thanks, CD. The break-up seems to be a mutual one, and D and her ex-BF remain amicable. In fact, they spent an awful ot of time together this past month - if you didn’t know any better, you’d swear they were still dating. They were (are? so confusing!) each other’s first “real” love. I have no idea what’s really going on, except that they both agreed to see other people now.</p>
<p>I know my job is really to be the sounding board, the shoulder to cry on, and the support - but part of me is still sad. H and I really did like this BF. We weren’t ready for them to get married, but on the other hand, we’re sad to see him go.</p>
<p>My D has just returned a bit early - has another week till school starts. She has no idea what she wants to do, but has a list of things she plans to investigate. I think that makes sense for her. I’m not going to worry (at least not yet).</p>
<p>I don’t have a clue. If he had stayed on his previous path, he really wouldn’t have been able to find a job until close to or after graduation. Now that he says he wants to go to culinary school, I don’t know what will happen between graduation and the next step. It’s possible he’ll need to have more kitchen experience. Writing about this feels a little depressing–don’t know exactly why. He needs to do what makes him happy. And who knows what the next eight months will bring?</p>
<p>The depression my kid experienced while out of state was real. After 2 years OOS and a quick transfer to the local state university, she is on track to graduate in Dec 2012. I’m amazed that she didn’t miss a beat. She got her professors from both schools together to write her letters of recommendations for internships, conferences, grad school and other opportunities. And best of all, she’s happy!</p>