<p>Ds2 had his freshman orientation today. Said it was more fun than he thought it would be. His older brother will be a senior this year. I think they’ll have lots of fun.</p>
<p>c’smom, I know a couple of kids taking BC cal as freshman, After that, they can take multivariable calculus, linear algebra, AP stats, number theory. Not sure what else.</p>
<p>First day of Freshman year is complete 
DD2 said she had a little bit of a hard time finding some classes, but the only time she got “lost” was when she was trying to find the gym. Not too bad. Classes & teachers all seem acceptable and she has at least one friend in each class. Our middle school is the biggest feeder school for this HS, so there’s a lot of familiarity there. </p>
<p>Spent a good amount of time last night writing checks, signing papers, registering emails and (for the first time ever) giving out my cell number for text message updates from a teacher. Happy that it’s Friday!</p>
<p>I’m happy to see this thread has been started. My only child will be starting hs in a few weeks. I discovered CC pretty recently and while I appreciate all I have learned so far, I’m trying really hard not to freak out. Man, where did the time go??</p>
<p>I’ve got a D in this grade. I’m not thinking much about college for her yet, as I have a junior S to focus on. She is the only athlete in the family, which may offer a new set of college challenges. At this point, she is not sure she wants to play either of her sports in college. Our classes don’t start for a week and a half, but field hockey preseason starts Monday!</p>
<p>Soooo…
How has it been for kids that already started a few days ago?
Kid is starting tomorrow, already thinking about making it to each class on time and not being tardy. The building is huge…</p>
<p>So far so good. Last week was the first full week, so Friday’s arrival was very welcome. DD has the same math teacher that my oldest did and she’s very sweet, but, um, well, shall we say forgetful with age I think the class that has riled her up the most is her history class. It’s the 1st year this teacher is in our system, and she has experience at the college level, so she’s told the kids she’s expecting college level writing. But they’re Freshman in HS. I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a march of annoyed parents soon, but I figure it’s good to toughen them up early :)</p>
<p>Open House was last Thursday; I think she’s settled into a routine. Definitely no where near as much homework as in 8th grade, which I had expected, so that’s good.</p>
<p>Hope everyone else’s year started off well too.</p>
<p>I also have a rising freshman. Her high school does not start until 2 more weeks. She just finished her volunteering work this week. Here is hoping for a good freshman year, it’s a new school for her, ie all her middleschool friends don’t go here. We petitioned to move to this high school so she can walk to school easily.</p>
<p>Just joined CC, and I’m coming on-board this thread! Thanks for starting it! My spouse thought me strange for thinking of college for our youngest son, but given the range of possibilities and the “high technology” of the process, I better get on the learning curve now. Oldest son’s college planning process was, well, ad hoc, though it worked out well for him; he’s graduating (fingers crossed!) in 2010. Our grade 9 boy will be more of a challenge to find a good fit for. He’s in a brand new high school with just one year level of 24 students. Great for him since he’s ADHD and needs the individualized attention. But we’ll need lots of information on how to work out a long-term (as in to 2013) plan. So I’m glad to be here and I hope to learn a lot from the discussion.</p>
<p>Our family is slowly getting used to the wake up call at 5 A.M.
I am probably the one that has the most trouble with it, since I am a night owl and it is very, very difficult for me to go to bed early. Our freshman has no problems with it at all, although he reported yesterday that he felt like falling asleep during math
Homework is managable, I have to say that he utilizes his time on the bus quite well.
A lot of writing in his LA class, but we have been warned about it, it is a pre-IB program.
Thankfully the teacher wants everything submitted electronically and kid loves this!
He absolutely loves his Physics teacher - it is an older gentelman that reminds him of the mad scientist from Fringe.
I am pleasantly surprised that some of the classes are quite small, 10-15 kids.
Overall a fine start, althought getting used to being in the school of 2,500 from a school of 350 is proving to be challenging…for me :)</p>
<p>Oh, almost forgot…son got his first recruitment letter the other day! Can you believe this?!
I promptly shredded the thing after he barely glanced at it.</p>
<p>I’m glad to hear that those who have started have had a pretty good 1st week. My son doesn’t start until Tuesday. He did have a week long orientation that makes things seem very promising. After traveling with him on public transportation the first day, he was fine the rest of the week on his own. That was the biggest fear for both of us. And he actually came home excited about what he was doing. This is a kid who I had to play 20 questions with just to find out he got an A on a test. I’m just curious about what his roster will look like. I’m hoping he did well enough on their placement test to skip Alg1 and go straight into Geometry.</p>
<p>Midterms here already! Can’t believe that time is going so fast!
So far no major problems grade wise. DS had to re-take a couple of quizes for which he “forgot” to study but is generally happy and learning quickly how to best approach each individual teacher. Homework - I expected much more. He utilizes his time on the bus quite well and does not have to stay up way, way late (well, he had to one time ).</p>
<p>I (alone) went to the college presentation the other week. It was Exploring College Options with Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Penn and Stanford. It was very well attended, the room was packed. Majority of kids were seniors, which I found odd. I thought that those events are frequented mostly by juniors, to do it in the fall of your senior year seems a little late, but maybe it is just me 
Another shocking thing happened when Georgetown representative asked how many of the kids present there already had their letters of recommendation ? - NONE!
What I have carried with me from the event is the notion that we hear frequently on CC - courseload and grades/GPA are the most important factors in the college admission process. I think that I will drag my S to one of those presentations in the future just so he can hear this! Looking long term is alomost an impossible task for an adolescent…</p>
<p>Wow midterms already. My kid hasn’t even received his school ID yet. His school is also having a meeting with the seniors to discuss the college application process. I also thought it odd, like it should have been done in the spring for the juniors. But then I have to remember that CC isn’t like most places. I guess it makes sense if you consider that most kids are probably taking their first SAT in the October sitting or trying to retake it to boost their scores. I have been getting on my son to read read read in hopes of improving his vocabulary. I keep threatening him with the 1000 words every high school student should know book as the alternative. He’s a big horror fan so I got him an H.P. Lovecraft anthology. I also got him the novelized version of the 30 Days of Night graphic novel series. We’ll see how that goes.</p>
<p>We have parent teacher conferences on Tuesday. Progress reports came home last week. So far so good. I think my freshman has adjusted pretty well. Her major annoyance is that all of her friends who are in band are unavailable for any social activities until November. She told them all that they have to quit :)</p>
<p>My oldest is a senior & quite a few of her friends are still trying to figure out where to apply. The local college fair (with 150+ schools) is this coming Thursday and I can’t imagine waiting until Senior year to attend. I’ll give my Freshman a pass though :)</p>
<p>They recommended that some freshman take the PSAT this year as practice (she’s in a pre-IB English class) and they keep trotting out the fact that they have 4 NMSF’s this year…one of which is her sister; apparently this has led to a few amusing conversations with some of her teachers. Nothing like sibling pressure.</p>
<p>Kelowna, your Freshman is in Calc BC!?! I thought it was hard as a senior. How is he doing in it?</p>
<p>^^so far no problems, althought he did mention that the teacher is just cruising forward and at such a speed they will be done by Christmas His heaviest workload comes from Honors English (pre-IB) but even that is not overwhelming.
We also had P/T conferences last week and it is nice now to be able to picture the face of the teacher whenever we are discussing subjects/school work.
PSAT for practice in 3 weeks. This school produces A LOT of NMSF, I think 18 or 19 for 2008. He wants to do the PSAT and will go in absolutely cold. He does have some practice taking SAT (talent search), so this should be a nicer, shorter version of the latter. Will see.</p>
<p>As for being advanced enought to take BC as a freshman - it is not unheard of at this school. There is actually a freshman there who took BC in 8th grade. Is now taking math the the local flagship. Logistically it becomes a nightmare, I can already see that.
We will see how it goes, but graduating in 3 years is something that we have talked about. There is again conversations about boarding schools at our dinner table - something that son would not even discuss last year but this year is considering.</p>
<p>Oh heavens people I am so NOT ready to begin again. DDs are Rachacha’ D1’s age and also college freshmen. They are twins and launching two over the last year left me drained. DS is in the high school class of 13</p>
<p>My only advice (not that anyone has asked me) at this point is please please don’t pressure your frosh…allow them to enjoy the relative peace of freshman and sophomore years. Guide course selection as “most rigorous course load” is extremely important to many schools, encourage ECs that your child is drawn to and enjoys. Encourage academics freshman year counts but recognize that many schools look at an upward trend very positively and straight As are not required to get in to the vast majority of American Universities and LACs. There are even kids at the top 20s who don’t have perfect GPAs.</p>
<p>Feel free to research schools…It’s fun but don’t bring your child into the process so much unless they want to be. Follow their lead. And if they aren’t leading anywhere for a couple of years so be it but you certainly can and should educate yourself on campuses, processes, and the timing of standardized tests. </p>
<p>That said, I took my girls on their first tours the summer between sophomore and Jr. years. We live in a rural area bereft of many options and I wanted to start to show them what was out there.</p>
<p>I worry that this one will be so stressed out by college. He’s competitive and wants to be the best. He sees what we’re going through with ds1 right now and he told me, “Mom, we’re making horrible memories!” I laughed so hard. You’d just have to know this kid. He was joking. :)</p>
<p>I definitely agree with historymom about seeing what they are drawn to - at first I was disappointed that D2 wanted to give up band in favor of an Intro to Business class, but after a few weeks I really see that entrepreneurial spirit coming out in her and how much she is enjoying the class (most students in the class only take it for the field trip to NYC). Other classes are OK so far - I am trying to encourage her to do well in Global since only the top students are invited to take AP European History next year (the earliest AP offered in our school) and I think she can handle the challenge.</p>
<p>D2 is also lucky that she gets to experience different colleges early since they host hockey tournaments at their rinks. She was at Kent State this past weekend and will be at Cornell/Ithaca in a few weeks so she will see what the largest schools are like. That was our first step with D1 to see what size of school she wanted and whether she would prefer a university versus an LAC (she chose the latter)</p>
<p>My D is finding out how hard it is to have practice until 5:30, games twice a week, and get all her work done. Her social studies teacher assigns a lot of reading and essays, as well as longer term projects to manage. This is the same teacher she would have for AP Euro next year, so she can get an idea of her teaching style (many don’t like it). All the other classes have more manageable workloads. I can’t wait until field hockey season is over! Then we get a break until the spring sport starts up.</p>
<p>We are getting up at 5:30 A.M. every day so he can be on the bus at 6:20. One day a week there is a violin lesson at 6:00 A.M. so we have to be up at 5:00 :o
DS is not complaining, it is me who has problems. It is a challenge to go to bed early enough to be ready to get up at such a wee hour.
Clubwise he is exploring, trying out different things. So far Robotics and Debate look good, but wants also to try Mock Trial and Crew (this hopefully not till spring!). Would do cross country but we are so far away from this school and I think they practice in the mornings.
I asked him about Honors Society (really enjoyed it in middle school) but got a blank stare and a “No” . Is Honors Society an important EC?
He is not doing any music at the school, despite playing two instruments. Bad idea?</p>