Parents of the HS Class of 2016 (Part 1)

One of the things that concerned me the most WAS my sweet girl being so far away. Not because I thought she couldn’t handle it but…because I thought I would go nuts with her so far away. We traveled to DC on Saturday and returned home on Wednesday with time built in to clean her room, pack her belongings and enjoy DC. We visited the Library of Congress, Botanical Gardens and had a few good meals LOL! She had a stressful year which was mostly influenced by her knowledge of my medical situation. My hubby and I believed she was strong but she definitely proved that to us in her first year at the George Washington University- Elliott School. She’s got her housing and schedule set for next year/semester and she’s excited about of summer internship with our states Democratic party. I know this will be her last summer home with us. She’ll visit but she excited about continuing to live in DC. So proud of her.

@zimmum …“constant bouts of flu…”

I’m happy you have your son back. What is it about college and sickness? I don’t think my son was sick three days in high school but he had “stomach flu” twice.which is really norovirus, and then he was queasy for a couple of weeks. Just in time for exams. He persevered and came out of freshman year with a 3.86 gpa.

He is at the beach for two weeks with various high school friends. He starts his job in mid June and will have only a couple of days free before he reports back to school.

What does everyone do with all the stuff they bring home for the summer? Next year we are renting a small storage unit.

@OspreyCV22 Dorm Stuff is stored in the less used part of the family room–exactly where it accumulated before it went to school. I was hoping to organize other things enough to create space elsewhere but somehow I never got around to it.

Dorm mountain has returned to our living room. The clothes will migrate back to S’s bedroom and the rest will get stacked behind a chair in the corner until August.
S has been busy seeing friends this week. It’s so nice to have him home.

@OspreyCV22 @zimmum.
I can relate. This has been a year of ups and downs, with a significant sports injury requiring 2 months of PT, and 3 bouts of the flu. I feel like my d pushes herself in a dizzying array of busyness. When she gets in over her head she calls me for advice and stresses me out. I guess she is slowly learning that there are limits to what I can do long distance. Good news is she ended the year with a 4.0 cumulative GPA :). Relieved that she is working towards her goal of being a MD. However, I think I will be happier when she masters the practical aspects of life and just calls to share the good things with me. She was home for about 5 days before she headed up to Chicago to visits some friends going to college there and then returned to her university for 1st term summer classes. She is taking a research seminar class that she had to interview for to gain admittance. She and about 8 other students will be spending some intensive time with the professor learning techniques to study bacterial infections. She also has a part-time job working at the university library. We are hoping she will come home for the last weeks of summer break and try to find a part-time job here. We have plans to get a puppy to try to lure her home to spend some time with us… And, of course, I am looking for puppy therapy to fill the void of being an empty-nester.

Because all of her roomies had already moved out, we had an opportunity to really go through all of her things to include clothes she took and just never wore, decorations, toiletries and books. All of her winter clothes, coats and boots/shoes we stored with the UPS GW Storage (thank God for that!). We actually gave away the clothes she no longer needed before we left D.C. Her summer clothes are now back in her room but the toiletries and non-perishables are now stored in our basement until she heads back to school. We’ve agreed that the items she takes back to school in the fall will be even more compact.

@Cheeringsection She received news yesterday that she was accepted into the business school, so now she just need to decide if she truly wants to transfer. I don’t know if it will make all that much difference in the job hunt. Although I suppose that it will allow some small PT clinics consider that she might be able to help with the business end of the clinic, such as marketing etc or if she decides to run her own clinic she will be better equipped to manage it or if she decides she is really not into PT she can look at careers in business. The real reason for a change wo u ld simple be because she is not excelling at the theoretical sides of chem/biology and would rather be studying something she enjoys. The only classes she needs for DPT are Bio 101/102, Chem 101/102, Physics 101/102, Stats 101and an intro to PT course, so it really doesn’t matter what she fills in around those courses she only has the physics and stats left to take.

@labegg that is interesting. It looks like the DPT gives your DD great flexibility as an undergrad. One more reason to pursue that route. My DD20 is considering PT but is a bit unsure about cadaver work. Since I don’t see it in your list of undergrad requirements, I am guessing that comes later? If so, it is great that she would have time to contemplate that during undergrad.

My D16’s roommate and her family (bless them) took her dorm mountain to their house for the summer (roommate lives about two hours from the school). She just flew home with her two suitcases.

She is still trying to secure her summer job from last summer so is a bit bored. Hopefully she’ll start working next week. I think a part of her wishes she had just stayed out west. She wants to buy a car and is weighing the pros and cons of buying here and driving out or just waiting until she goes back to start school.

My consistently 3.4 GPA student in HS has . . . a 3.4 at the end of freshman year. At least she’s consistent. She wants to get it up to a 3.5 for grad school purposes, but I’m just happy she gets to keep her scholarship. Organic chem, calculus and physics are looming for next year.

@labegg
Sounds like the PT program your d is enrolled in has a lot of opportunities. The business major sounds like a good option if it interests her more than the other majors she can choose. I remember reading in our local newspaper not too long ago that a nurse had been promoted to be director of a surgery center for the biggest orthopedic group in our city. I think she worked there for about 18 years prior to the promotion. Perhaps Management of PT offices or medical groups, in addition to practicing PT, would be an option in her future.

@mstomper, my oldest got a neuropsych eval in the last few months, which revealed that she has ADD (not super shocking, but nice to have official identification, so that we can proceed with teaching appropriate coping mechanisms.) She has anxiety issues too, and definitely has a hard time getting started on tasks that she doesn’t have a clear idea on how to tackle.

@Cheeringsection I had to do gross anatomy and neuroanatomy as an undergrad in OT school . Each school has their own requirements , and it is a very difficult course, especially when one is allergic to formaldehyde . She will also most likely have to do small animal dissection in undergrad

Thanks @carolinamom2boys that virtual anatomy option at CWRU looks better all the time! Too bad it is so cold there.

One of the areas n she picked Marquette is because she is allowed to take cadaver lab as an undergrad.

D is home today! In some ways it feels like she just left and in other ways, the start of school seems like an eternity ago. She had a great year and loves her college. She has a good group of friends. She was in an intensive ‘western lit’ program at her school where the participants all live together one dorm (actually 2). It was tough, but also a bonding experience for them all. I’m happy to see that it has been the educational experience that she wanted. She wanted the full-blown “liberal arts” experience and that’s what she is getting. She got heavily into student theater and joined a choir. She declared a major and is off to Hungary next year to study number theory (!) Now some downtime and then she starts her summer job.

Picked up DS yesterday and helped him clean out his dorm. Since he’s moving to an apartment (still technically on campus) next fall, i was a bit nostalgic to go back into his tiny dorm room and eat in the dining hall with him one last time. Came home late yesterday and the washer/dryer are running 24/7 to try to get his clothes smelling somewhat fresh again :). He usually sleeps in until 2 pm (cuz he goes to bed now around 4 am), but his alarm went off at 9:30 and he popped right out of bed to leave the house at 9:35…a first for him. I wondered why, but turns out his GF was making him breakfast (they met at school, but she lives 1/2 hour away). So his first day home was back with her until about 4:30. We had fun eating dinner together, though, and hearing bits and pieces about life on campus. We have dorm mountain in the living room, too, although for a guy I realized it’s not all that much stuff once the clothes went back in his room.

What a great feeling to have them home, even for a little bit! I can’t believe the first year is a wrap!

^ Once the clothes were put away, the rest of S’s things fit behind a club chair in the corner of the living room. I rearranged things when S was out - so when he returned he immediately said, “Where did all my stuff go??” Lol!

Grades are in so S has relaxed considerably! It seems to take him a week or so to decompress after finals week.

My D has a nice routine going. She has had Fridays off and worked only every other Saturday for half a day, and they are closed on Sundays, she likes that. Still gets around 30 hrs a week.
She finally got her intern license so can start working on the 500 hours, she might get about half this summer alone.

Brother and sister have about 2 weeks of school left. Concerts and 5th grade graduation, and finals for my junior.

I’m so happy to read that I’m not the only one who plans to store the crate of college stuff in a corner of the living room all summer :). I keep putting all the essential back-to-school stuff in it so we don’t have to figure out where it went to during break, like his student ID, the extra long surge protector and ethernet cord, pingpong paddles and balls, posters, desk stuff. I’m afraid if it comes out of the crate, we’ll never find it again!

Before starting her internship, my sweet girl and some of her friends are attending a huge concert as part of the Indianapolis 500 (she’s attended twice). After her internship ends, she’s heading to San Francisco to attend a three day concert with one of her roomies (a birthday gift from her dad and I). I can’t even…