Parents of the HS Class of 2016 (Part 1)

<p>@Cheeringsection, tell your son that you would like to tour those schools while you are on vacation this summer. Tell him that there are no expectations that he will like them or that he will want to go there, that the main point at this time is to get a sense of size of school and campus. He needs to figure out if he wants a small, medium, or large school/campus and touring campuses is one way to figure that out. So, right now they main objective is not to pick specific schools to apply to but to start the process of deciding what types. </p>

<p>My son is doing an internship for a Congressman this summer, our last day of school was last Friday. </p>

<p>Thatā€™s cool-- how did he get the internship?</p>

<p>@Cheeringsection - I agree, say you are seeing those colleges while you are nearby; he will understand. BTW my DS16 is still in school for two more weeks.</p>

<p>My D is attending HOBY this weekend. First time she will spend 2 nights at the dorm at the actual university.</p>

<p>Gah! I am so frustrated with Sā€™s school right now I could HOWL. His guidance counselor, while very pleasant, is a bit clueless. Because of delays, paperwork, and a general lack of information, he may not be able to take the dual enrollment math class he desperately needs.
Bear in mind, if S attended the high school which borders ours, he could take Calc II on site. Not at ours. ā€œThere is no demandā€ at our school, which has a certain difference in demographic to Bordering School. (Both schools are administered by the same county school district.) Consequently kids wishing to take Calc BC are pushed into dual enrollment, though Iā€™m told few actually take part in it. Iā€™m beginning to understand why.
I have a call into the county to see what can be done, but it looks like S may not be taking math first semester of next year. I am NOT HAPPY.</p>

<p>Even though the high school my son attends offers a lot of IB and AP classes they do not teach AP Macro and Micro Economics. Luckily the state of VA has a virtual school where he can take the class online during a free block at school and the high school must give credit for it. I had to fight to get him enrolled because not many at his high school use the program but he is now registered to take the classes next school year. </p>

<p>@petrichor11ā€Œ are you in FL? It looks like FL has a similar program through Florida Virtual School. </p>

<p>Petrichor, my son is part of an organization called Junior State of America (JSA.org) and they helped him put together a Youth Advisory Board with the congressman, from there the Congressmanā€™s office offered internships. My son interviewed last summer and was hired, this is his second summer doing it. </p>

<p>Seal16 my son is doing HOBY the third week of June, canā€™t wait to see how it goes.</p>

<p>Thatā€™s awesome, mysonsdad! He sounds like a motivated kid.</p>

<p>We did get the math mess sorted after a couple of phone calls to the district and just the littlest bit of a hissyfit. Assuming he gets at least a three, they will permit the late enrollment. Failing that, heā€™ll do an online program. Last time Iā€™d checked the online school didnā€™t offer Calc BC, so itā€™s apparently a recent addition. Anyway, Iā€™m just glad itā€™s sorted. Weā€™ve had problems with his schedule every year so far.</p>

<p>Clarification in rereading my earlier post: ā€œcluelessā€ was probably a bit harsh. But there are things the GC just doesnā€™t have answers to (or even realise there will be an issue about), and I get frustrated with all the confusion and roundabout.</p>

<p>Finals this week and I can truely say that I feel sorry for my guy. 6 finals in 3 days is ridiculous. Two will literally make or break the semester. He looks so defeatedā€¦lately. Just maybe he does care but the classes were just to hard?</p>

<p>Good luck to those heading into finals.</p>

<p>Ah, thatā€™s hard, Hoosier. Good luck to him! </p>

<p>S had his 16th birthday yesterday. He has some learning disabilities and for several years was 2+ years behind in reading. He has almost caught up. It took a lot of hard work on his part. Anyway, when he was maybe 7 or 8 I started getting him a $25 barnes and noble gift card for every birthday and Christmas. Sometimes we have lived an hours drive from BN, I got it anyway. Right now we live 15 minutes from BN, so we are spending this afternoon at the bookstore picking out a couple of cool books and having iced coffees. I am a member here so it is an automatic 10% off, plus I just recently got 2 20% coupons on to use on top of that, so heā€™s making out like a bandit.</p>

<p>My S has studied literally all day for his last test BEFORE the exam in his Precalc class. He will need to know it all for the exam as well but otherwise has not studied at all for exams that begin Tuesday. His first summer baseball Doubleheader is tomorrow at noon. 2 classes are APs so the exams are supposed to not be so bad but still it is going to be a long week for him with four others to prepare for. Next Saturday I think he will be sleeping quite late. </p>

<p>our school ends the week of the 17th as well. His exams start next week, I think. still havenā€™t gotten the ā€œscheduleā€ from the schoolā€¦but judging from last yearā€¦ He seems to think he will do wellā€¦?by osmosis? He does not think that going to an all day amusment park ā€œpartyā€ the sunday before exams will harm his test readiness. Iā€™m tired of arguing. I think I really have to get it into my head that he is the kind of kid who learns by making errorsā€¦lots of them. He certainly doesnā€™t learn by listening to me! And, I know he will go to collegeā€¦so, what am I worrying about?</p>

<p>Well we started off great studying at the beginning of the weekendā€¦</p>

<p>Either he just does not get it ( the urgency for studying) or he prefers summer school!</p>

<p>Two of the kidsā€™ classes (teachers they both have, actually) have already recorded final and exam grades on the grading website. Kudos to them, since exam week is still in high gear: they had theirs recorded within about 12-24 hours of the exam. Of course, theyā€™re the classes I knew the kidsā€™ likely grades already anyway, but itā€™s nice to have it official.
As opposed to another teacher, who still hasnā€™t graded a project from April 29th.</p>

<p>Oh my. No notes on this thread for two days? Have to do something about that.</p>

<p>S16 took his last two finals yesterday. Got a boost on his English final by watching Jeopardy a couple of nights earlier. One of the $2,000 answers was a quote from a poem covered in class that heā€™d completely forgotten about. He needed a quote from that poem on the final, and came up with one only because of that Jeopardy answer (and the subsequent discussion with a visiting friend of mine who is encyclopedic) two nights earlier.</p>

<p>He is spending today and tomorrow studying for the Chem Subject Test on Saturday morning. Itā€™s the first standardized test heā€™s taken in a while that actually counts for something, and heā€™s determined to give it his best shot. This is all in contradistinction to S14 who required begging, pleading, and threats to do any sort of studying like this. Weā€™ll see.</p>

<p>Graduation today for our schoolā€™s seniors. S and D both have a lot of (casual) friends in the Class of '14, D especially is bummed she may not see much of them from now on.</p>

<p>Also, final grades are in. S didnā€™t fall quite as far as I expected in class rank, but far enough to hurt. Unless several kids move to Mars in the next two years, val/sal is off the table. In a way that may be good, though-- liberating, at least. (At least for me.) </p>