Parents of the HS Class of 2010 and college years beyond (Part 1)

Parents Forum Class of 20xx Community
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<p>Mablab, I’m so sorry about her bad experience. The good news is it doesn’t sound school specific; if she’s afraid of leaving, then that has nothing to do, really, with the school, just the locale.</p>

<p>I guess my only advice would be to tell her she has to give it a year. I know plenty of parents whose kids weren’t happy that first semester but had magically turned around in the spring. I really think one semester isn’t long enough to give the place a fair chance. And she needs to do well in her classes in order to transfer to the school of her choice – if it ever comes to that.</p>

<p>We’re here for you. Post early and often when you’re freaking out!</p>

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<p>welcome mablab54…(hugs) so sorry to hear your daughter is worried. i think all kids get a little scared even if close to home, as everything they know and are comfortable with is now about to change. perhaps if you set up a schedule to go up and visit her that may help. it will be a fine line though, if you go too often she may not venture out on her own, if not enough she may be more homesick… i know at my son’s bs, they wont let kids go home the first few weekends so they can adapt better. But once she gets there, maybe all her second thoughts will disappear and she will be just as enthused as she once was. not sure what the financial implications of her transferring back would be, but may need to explain those to her along the way. It would be awful if my son had to transfer as he would lose all his scholarships and transfer scholarships are few and far between</p>

2363

<p>I’M HOME! <em>hugs the grass</em> </p>

<p>I totally forgot that WV existed and that we had to drive through it to get to Kentucky. It took us eight hours to get home but felt like forever in a day. Overall, our visit my brother and his new wife was great. They are truly are in love and they are a lot alike. He leaves Monday morning for a month training in the Mojave Desert and she will be going to live with her cousin in Ohio. It should be an interesting run with these two. He has two weeks off in October and then all of December off and then will head to Afghanistan sometime in January. Everything is going to be okay :)</p>

<p>Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend! I am going to curl up in the attic and watch the season premiere of Mad Men!!</p>

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<p>@checkersmidwest… Did you actually go put shoes on…what if he’d change his mind? :D</p>

<p>Hope you guys had fun!</p>

<p>Mablab…Welcome aboard, as YDS said…we are here for you!!!</p>

<p>Glad you’re home safely mdemvizi!</p>

2365

<p>welcome back mdem!! glad you liked your new SIL!!</p>

<p>so who won the frisbee game?</p>

2366

<p>Let’s just say frisbie is not my best sport. :)</p>

2367

<p>Mablab54,</p>

<p>As someone else mentioned, it sounds like your D may be really worried about getting homesick, which is not that uncommon for freshmen.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, what to do about homesickness is counter-intuitive, particularly to the person feeling homesick. It might help your D make a better adjustment if she doesn’t call home on her cell every time some little something seems to go wrong. We’ve hosted a number of foreign exchange students through the years as well as had two of ours do senior year of high school abroad. Both directions seem to work best if at the start there’s only one 30-60 minute phone call home per week at the start.</p>

<p>Also has your D gotten her first year dorm assignment yet? If so, encourage her to make contact with her roommate(s) and start getting to know each other and planning on who will buy what for the room.</p>

2368

<p>She feels she made a mistake thinking she wanted a big school.This had been discussed many times when she was looking at schools.I am trying to not feed into the fears but also letting her know that nothing is set in stone and many kids transfer out after first year but that she needs to try it and make the best of it or she may very well regret that she had not. There is no fin. aid or scholorships involved we are paying cash so that is not in the equation .She has said no one else she knows has expressed this amount of fear that she is feeling but I’m sure everyone has some nervousness right? She had been very excited since Dec. and could not wait to go. She did not like the people at orientation,on the positive she got all her classes she wanted and it looks like the dorm as well. I think she is a very lucky girl if only she felt the same way! She has warned me that she will be crying all the way to school so be prepared.Ha.Ha.</p>

2369

<p>There’s another thread on here about kids who didn’t click with the other kids at orientation. Check it out as this is apparently pretty common. I would think that part of the deal is she’s with kids from every major and not with her “people” so it came across as big and impersonal. I’d try that with her, tell her that once she gets into the classes in her area of interest that I’m sure that will help make the campus smaller. Any clubs of interest? I know a super-cute boy going to her school, if that would help! ;)</p>

2370

<p>Mablab:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>I’m sure everyone also has some nervousness too. And many teenagers aren’t going to admit that they’re worried about going off to school.</p>

<p>You said she’s now saying she’s worried about the size of the school. You might want to remind her that there are many ways to find one’s space at a large school and make it feel much more like home. Freshmen dorms are often (but not always) set up to encourage the students on the hall to make close friends with each other. Encourage her to browse the college’s web site to identify two or three student organizations that she’d like to become involved in. And remind her she doesn’t need to join everything; she needs to find one or two things that she can really commit to in order to get to know a few students very well. She may also be worried about academics—not so much that they’ll be tough, but more along the lines of the class size: she may be very, very worried about feeling like she’s a face in a sea of faces in all her classes. So you might also want to encourage her to look at any kind of programs the college runs just for freshmen.</p>

2371

<p>Robinsuesanders Room assignments don’t come till Aug.2.She has someone she requested to room with and communicates on facebook.This girl is very excited to go as mine was at one time.I did let her know that she should not plan on coming home to frequently as she needs to adjust there.No classes on Fridays so she seems to be dwelling on that as a safety net if she really can’t stand it. In my heart I think she will be fine once into routine of everyday life. I just know it is going to be along 5 weeks here before we bring her and my patience will not hold up!</p>

2372

<p>Thanks YDS and Robin . All the things you have suggested have been brought up in various conversations.</p>

2373

<p>Mablab,</p>

<p>Hopefully the facebook connection will help. She ought to check to see if there’s a facebook group for freshmen at her college. [Is it NYU, or am I misremembering?]</p>

<p>No classes on Friday will give her some time to explore off campus with her new friends, and that should help her with the adjustment.</p>

<p>As for your running out of patience before taking her up to school, just learn to roll your eyes the way my teens do at their parents when they think we’re being real dorks about something …</p>

2374

<p>Has she had other experiences being away from home? How did those go?</p>

2375

<p>Welcome back, mdemvizi!</p>

<p>anothercrazymom - Jeffrey Zaslow is our convocation speaker! I’m really excited. Our summer reading is The Last Lecture - I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve heard amazing reviews, so I’m very excited :slight_smile: </p>

<p>mablab - I’m not sure I have much advice to offer, but best of luck to your D. I hope that once she gets there, she is able to enjoy her college experience. </p>

<p>In some ways, I feel like I’m pretty on top of my college planning (I leave in less than 3 weeks) - I’ve bought a number of things. However, I’m still missing a few really key things, like sheets and oh, I don’t know, a computer? Those might be important. This week. Really!</p>

2376

<p>Acm – I have never been in Nicholson, but it is near Dupont and looks like it is the same vintage. I imagine that they are similar… spartan, but livable. It is very centrally located to “new campus” where S will probably have most classes, the library, W&M Hall, dining, and the new business school. The thing that he will be the farthest from will be Sorority Court… I can’t imagine that he will need to be over there for any reason anyway. :)</p>

2377

<p>mablab, I hated everyone in my orientation group - my orientation leader was a weirdo and none of the other kids seemed like UNC material at all. It was a big turn off for me and definitely made me feel more anxious about school starting. Luckily I met lots of not-weird students when classes started and life was peachy! Orientation is rarely a true representation of what college life will actually be like. Tell your d to hang in there! : )</p>

2378

<p>ACM,</p>

<p>GSharp says your S will be in Nicholson at W&M. Nicholson is part of the Botetourt Complex. It is indeed of roughly the same vintage as Dupont.</p>

<p>I lived in what was then called Botetourt 3&4 (now part of Fauquier if I recall) way back when in '76-77, and my niece lived in the same building 2008-09. We both loved living in Botetourt and neither of us would have traded our freshman dorm for any of the other freshman dorms on campus. My comments are based on conversations that my niece and I have had about her freshman experience living in my old dorm.</p>

<p>Botetourt does has a reputation on the boards of being bad because the rooms are small and have not been thoroughly renovated in recent memory. The lounges are air conditioned, but unless things have changed the rooms are not. Those are the negatives. Some folks regard the fact that there are hall baths as negatives. However, the hall baths are kept pretty clean and I certainly never wanted to deal with cleaning a suite bath when I was in college. And the students sharing suite baths are responsible for cleaning their own bath if I recall correctly.</p>

<p>And the positives of Botetourt far outweigh the negatives. The floors are small—there are only about 20 students per floor and only around 80 students per building. [Each “floor” on the floor plans actually show two floors that are separated by a half-flight of stairs.] The smallness of the halls usually generates a really deep sense of community in the dorm and it’s pretty easy to get to know everybody in your whole building. The whole complex itself also has some sense of community, which is much better developed now than it was in the 70s when only two of the five buildings were freshmen dorms. The common lounge space on the first floor of each building is quite large and very nice. Students do hang out in the lounges. And the complex is close to the cafeteria, W&M Hall, and most of the academic buildings.</p>

<p>If your S goes into his freshman year with a decent attitude towards living in Botetourt instead of dreading it, he’ll find Nicholson a good experience, and perhaps a great experience.</p>

2379

<p>Mablab: I’m sorry that your daughter is anticipating a bad start. And that’s an awful lot of money to pay if she’s not fully on board. You’ve gotten a lot of good advice so far. I’d say to remind her that you supported her in her application journey and that you think she made a well thought out decision that meets her life goals. Remind her that she needs to have a top gpa to have transfer options and then hope for the best. Once she gets there & classes start, I bet she’ll find her place. </p>

<p>The shopping here is starting to just be little stuff; D & I picked up laundry detergent, dryer sheets, etc. today. It was interesting to watch: “why is this box of dryer sheets $1 more than the others for the same amount?” Made my thrifty heart happy :)</p>

2380

<p>Thanx again to MLH. Hopefully this is right… I’m in my hotel with eyes rolling back in my head (not in the same way that our DD’s and DS’s eyes are rolling).</p>

<p>Bennington 1<br>
LoisHK’s S</p>

<p>Boston University 1<br>
momonthehill’s D</p>

<p>Brown 3<br>
astromom’s D
L.A.Parent’s S
momof2men’s S</p>

<p>Bryn Mawr 1<br>
Queen’s Mom’s D</p>

<p>Cal Berkeley 1<br>
IloveLA’s D</p>

<p>Cal Poly Pomona 1<br>
gotaplay2’s D</p>

<p>Cal Poly San Luis Obispo 1<br>
lilmom’s S</p>

<p>Caltech 1<br>
PaperChaserPop’s S</p>

<p>Carleton 4<br>
aliceinw’s S
neumes’ S
pmartin57’s D
Youdon’tsay’s S</p>

<p>Carnegie Mellon 1<br>
CaliforniaDancer</p>

<p>Carthage 1<br>
Kajon’s S</p>

<p>Coastal Carolina 1<br>
austinmtmom’s D</p>

<p>Colgate University 1<br>
Pengo’s S</p>

<p>Colorado College 1<br>
skier29’s S</p>

<p>Columbia 1<br>
LetsGoMets’s S</p>

<p>Columbus State 1<br>
musicmom26’s D</p>

<p>Dartmouth 1<br>
standrews’ D</p>

<p>Elon 1<br>
Lafalum84’s D</p>

<p>Emerson 2<br>
intouch1520’s D
runnersmom’s niece</p>

<p>George Washington 1<br>
1sttimemom’s D</p>

<p>Goucher 1<br>
nightchef’s S</p>

<p>Grinnell 1<br>
sDonCC’s S</p>

<p>Hampshire College 1<br>
ALF’s S</p>

<p>Harvard 3<br>
Bubbe’s GS
LIMOMOF2’s D
mountaingoat’s D</p>

<p>Haverford 1<br>
Bclintonk’s D</p>

<p>High Point University 1<br>
KYParent’s D</p>

<p>Ithaca 1<br>
mdemvizi</p>

<p>Kenyon 1<br>
boiledegg’s D</p>

<p>Lafayette 1<br>
BonnieNewJersey’s D</p>

<p>Louisiana State 1<br>
Psi’s S</p>

<p>Loyola Chicago 1<br>
mpabon’s D</p>

<p>LSU 1<br>
alexahet</p>

<p>Macalester 1<br>
Cecil’s S</p>

<p>Marymount Manhattan 1<br>
showmom858’s D</p>

<p>Middlebury 1<br>
journey919’s D</p>

<p>Millersville University + CC 1<br>
PAVenturer’s S</p>

<p>Minneapolis College of Art and Design 1<br>
redbug119’s D</p>

<p>Northeastern 2<br>
colorado_mom’s S
pugmadkate’s S</p>

<p>Northwestern 3<br>
FindAPlace’s S
momof3sons’ S3
tboneParent’s S</p>

<p>NYU 1<br>
Mablab54’s D</p>

<p>Oberlin 1<br>
qialah’s D</p>

<p>Ohio State University 1<br>
want2babuckeye’s son</p>

<p>Ole Miss 1<br>
mantori.suzuki’s S</p>

<p>Pitzer 1<br>
mom2sons’ S2</p>

<p>Pomona College 1<br>
BengalMom’s S</p>

<p>Princeton 2<br>
GSharpM7’s D
hopeful12345’s D</p>

<p>Rhodes 1<br>
mimimomx3’s D</p>

<p>Rice 2<br>
MuppetMom’s D
proudparents’ S</p>

<p>RPI 1<br>
Brooklynborndad’s D</p>

<p>Scripps 1<br>
scualum’s D</p>

<p>Smith 2<br>
rocket6louise
teenage_cliche</p>

<p>St. Olaf 1<br>
robinsuesanders’ S</p>

<p>Stanford 1<br>
applicannot</p>

<p>SUNY Albany 1<br>
donnagal’s S</p>

<p>Swarthmore 3<br>
2girls4me’s D
Keilexandra
momof3sons’ S2</p>

<p>Tufts 3<br>
CountingDown’s S
mathmom’s S
momof2inma’s D</p>

<p>University of Alabama 2<br>
AL34’s S
RobD’s D</p>

<p>University of Alabama Birmingham 1<br>
parent56’s S</p>

<p>University of Buffalo 1<br>
coskat’s D</p>

<p>University of California @ Santa Barbara 1<br>
esobay’s S</p>

<p>University of Chicago 4<br>
artloversplus’s D
jackief’s D
motherbear332’s S
PayFor’s S</p>

<p>University of Cincinnati 1<br>
mommuisc’s S</p>

<p>University of Delaware 2<br>
Booklady’s S
zoosermom’s D</p>

<p>University of Georgia 1<br>
somewhereinga’s D</p>

<p>University of Illinois @ UrbanaChampaign 1<br>
BerneseMtn’s S</p>

<p>University of Maryland 1<br>
ELY’s S</p>

<p>University of Michigan 2<br>
hopeful2014’s S
littlefalls’ S</p>

<p>University of Missouri/Columbia 1<br>
CheckersMidwest’s S</p>

<p>University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 3<br>
almar4’s S
BCandBU82’s S
veewhitty’s D</p>

<p>University of Pennsylvania 1<br>
kindredspirit’s D</p>

<p>University of Redlands 2<br>
missemily516’s D
vballmom’s S</p>

<p>University of Richmond 1<br>
PAVenturer’s D</p>

<p>University of Rochester 1<br>
PinotNoir’s S</p>

<p>University of Scranton 1<br>
1sokkermom’s D</p>

<p>University of South Carolina 1<br>
MomLive’s S</p>

<p>University of Southern California 1<br>
pixeljig’s S</p>

<p>University of Texas at Austin 2<br>
MaineLonghorn’s S
SWTCAT’s D</p>

<p>University of Virginia 5<br>
2education’s S
curiousmother’s D
jc40’s D
jingle’s S
shillyshally’s D</p>

<p>Vanderbilt 1<br>
BlessedTwice’s S</p>

<p>Vassar 1<br>
psychmom’s D</p>

<p>Villanova 2<br>
archiemom’s S
FLVADAD’s D</p>

<p>Wake Forest 1<br>
DougBetsy’s S</p>

<p>Washington University in St. Louis 3<br>
limabeans’ S
PAO2008’s D
sacchi’s S</p>

<p>Wellesley 1<br>
Sailorette’s D</p>

<p>Wesleyan 1<br>
sewemma’s S</p>

<p>Wheaton MA 1<br>
SLUMOM’s S</p>

<p>William & Mary 3<br>
12rmh18’s S
anothercrazymom’s S
Flinty’s D</p>

<p>Williams 1<br>
GTalum’s D</p>

<p>Yale 4<br>
learninginprog’s S
my2sunz’s S
tango91’s S
vicariousparent’s D</p>

<p>Total Result 129</p>