@LoveTheBard Oops. Sorry for using lingo. Public school special needs education
not looking for sympathy, just sharingā¦ S returned home from a weekend trip last night. First time I saw him since his rejection from ED school. While he had a great weekend with classmates, he returned and emoted. He was really upset with several. He felt he worked hard for all his HS years, and really wanted this. Got to the point where we had to give him his space. While he has had small disappointments in his life, in his mind, this is his real first large scale rejection/disappointment. While Wife and I know he will get over it, and it will be a learning/growing moment, it still painful to see your child hurt. I know it will all pass, needed to share to ventā¦Thanks for listeningā¦Have a good day allā¦
@payn4ward --awesome! Hope he holds it steady for next year.
Iām so jealous that yaāll can check scores online IN DECEMBER!!
@Stem2017 Wow. I didnāt know your family had gone (is going?) through that. Sorry if I missed an earlier mention. You have earned the right to be as sappy as you want.
@curiositycat333 Itās a thing here too. In both my kidsā high schools, students were allowed to opt out of at least one semester test each semester if they had an A or better in the class, had a certain overall GPA and were not subject to any disciplinary stuff or had missing work, etc. I frowned upon that at first, but it has been a motivator for my kids, at least.
@stlarenas D18ās bf broke up with her right before Thanksgiving, and sheās still in a funk about it. Iām slowly devolving from being super supportive (been there, been dumped like that as a 16 yo in a 6+ mo relationship), to Cher in Moonstruck: āsnap out of it!ā (because Iām fierce and have no patience for month long moping over a guy that was not that great anyway).
Plus like @LoveTheBard , I donāt feel fake 
Iām an internet friend, but my intent to support is genuine.
@curiositycat333 no finals if you have an A here.
@twoforone99 no good has ever come of any time Iāve ever intervened with a teacher regarding grades in high school. And believe me, Iāve really tried back when they were younger and had crap teachers. Now I just say that crap teachers (and bosses) are part of life, and you have to learn how to manage them on your own.
D18 did not do as well as Iād hoped on the PSAT. Her math score went from 620 (cold, no studying) to 590 (apparent to me that there was no studying involved this year either!). Her verbal went up to 660, which is solid, but with her sub 3.0 grades, not going to dig her out of the community college hole sheās putting herself in.
H and I are seriously considering moving to florida for in-state tuition next year because those schools match up better with what sheās looking for, and she wonāt qualify for HOPE here in GA with that GPA. Yeah, we had her tested, no, thereās nothing wrong with her except she doesnāt do her homework. It makes me want to tear my hair out. Which is already going gray.
D17 finished both scholarship applications last night around midnight. Right now her top choice is back to being UMDCP because they have a GEM team (which she discovered last night-itās computational bio stuff). Feb 1 feels impossibly far away.
I finished two of my four classes today-I donāt know if Iām going to get an A in ceramics because I was constantly confused by the kiln schedule and either had stuff done way too early or three weeks late. X_X
@dfbdfb - but assignments for class have the implied requirement that it be completely original work. When multiple colleges ask you to tell you about yourself, there is no requirement that it be different from what you told other colleges. They just want to learn about you in your own words - they donāt care if youāve said the same thing to other colleges.
I mean, if you copy your entire extra curricular table / list to give to multiple colleges, wouldnāt that also be plagiarism if you did it on a paper and took someone elseās table? Do you feel thatās immoral as well to do on college apps?
Also, itās fine to tell multiple colleges that theyād be a great fit or somesuch. Though telling multiple colleges that theyād be the ābestā fit is not right IMO.
I think self-plagiarism is an oxymoron. Your work is your work.
OMG, suspense level = high right now. EA decsions looming, and PSAT for younger son.
No Info Available!!!
@BigPapiofthree vibes about your son. Heāll bounce back, good on you to support him. Maybe remind him about how good he really has it, even without getting into #1. Heāll have plenty of good news comingā¦ embrace that.
@twoforone99 - not sure if I should be proud of this, but I have a similar story. For DDās Calc class as well. She had a low B. I told her a higher grade would be betterā¦ 
āBut Dad, Iām doing well, everyone has Bās or Cās.ā Her calc teacher is new this year. So I emailed the principal of our (small private) school, and asked her non-specifically if there were any grading standards / guidance given to new teachers. She said that they take that kindof thing very seriously, and asked for more details. I said ādonāt tell my kid Iām contacting you, butā¦ā She didnāt respond to my 2nd email, but this week there are suddenly extra-credit HW assignments in the classā¦ :-/
On the one hand, I feel bad that I was one of āthoseā parents - but on the other hand, I would do ANYTHING to help my kidsā¦ :x :x
D has her Calc final @ Penn this Thursday @6pm and SCEA decision is released same day at 3:00 PM. Hoping it has no effect on her performance 
D has become a big George Harrison fan since starting guitar in 9th grade. She became a vegetarian a couple of years ago on his birthday. We arenāt exposed to too much pop music since we are barely ever in a car. I play a lot of different stuff but I generally stay away from the challenging stuff in the public places of the house as I get a lot of frowny faces. I used to DJ in college and grad school so some of it is off the grid. Iāve filled Dās iphone with more poppy stuff from the 80s/90s like the Smiths, Cure, Blondie, Liz Phair, Pavement, etc
@BigPapiofthree - that which doesnāt kill you makes you stronger? DD broke up with her (first real) boyfriend (of like 6 months) last summer. It was literally incomprehensible (for me at least ) how hard it was on her.
The consolation I took out of it - life will always contain some big disappointments and hardship. Having the first / some of them at home with the full support network in place is probably better than the alternative.
Hang in there, for future better times.
@MACncheez Brokenhearted by Karmin: Yep I like it. I think D17 may go for this one, so Iāll share.
@STEM2017 Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles/George Harrison - I donāt believe you found out about this one from your kids! But yes, good and sad. D17 loves the Beatles. I wonāt let her play Eleanor Rigby - most depressing song ever.
Cāmon more links to the guilty pleasure song your kid/s introduced to you!
I know I already put in a link to one before the QOTD, but Iāll cheat:
[url = <a href=āhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2oswMvFTGY%5DRoustaboutā>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2oswMvFTGY]Roustabout (Bassnectar remix) by Beats Antique. Oldest D danced to this one at her HS graduation and I never get tired of it.
A global comment: Can I just say how much Iām enjoying hearing about the very grown-up reactionsāfrom simply taking it in stride to doing whatās essentially grievingāto rejections here? Itās more heartwarming than the waves of acceptances, really.
Guilty pleasure song: I guess thereās a couple different levels to answering this for me. My actual answer is probably ā[The More We LiveāLet Go](The More We Live Let Go by Yes - YouTube)ā by Yes, but thatās a bit obscure for this sort of prompt, really. My hit-song answer is probably EMFās ā[Unbelievable](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R63gYHIgaB0)ā, but my guiltiest-pleasure genre is 80sĀ synthpopĀ cheese, and the high(?)Ā point of that genre for me is ā[Lay Your Hands on Me](Thompson Twins - Lay your hands on me 1985 - YouTube)ā by the Thompson Twins.
Seniors getting out of finals: Well, at most schools in this district (though not at my daughtersā, oddly enough), just as it was in the district I grew up in, graduation comes before finals week, so yes, seniors are exempted from year-end finals. This does lead to kind of a weird situation here where they still sit for finals in fall-semester-only classes but not year-long or spring-semester-only classes, but whatever.
Self-plagiarism: I want to stress that I wasnāt saying that every college application essay should be completely new workāin fact, the genre itself militates against that. What I was raising was that we have a process that encourages reuse of essays as part of the gatekeeping into a system that forbids that sort of thing, and that seems rather a big disconnect to me. (And yes, self-plagiarismāI actually like @curiositycat333ās ādouble-dippingā better, since itās more descriptiveāis totally a forbidden thing in academia, as you can see by looking at nearly any collegeās policies on academic dishonesty. Of course, cited references to earlier work is fineāthatās all about documenting the provenance and chain of transmission of knowledge and its creation, of courseābut youāre not citing earlier work in college essays, right?)
@carachel2 is āgrade exemptā kind of the same thing as taking a course Pass/Fail? D17 is talking about taking the second semester MV Calc (maybe by then it is Lin Alg?) as P/F. Sheās not trying to preserve any sort of rank, just to take even MORE pressure off her senior year (sheās into: I-wanna-go-to-college-NOW mode). She knows she will take MV/LA again in college, so she basically wants to āauditā the second semester. Sheās got a solid āAā for this first semester, and sheās not the type to skip the homework just because sheās taking it P/F. I havenāt decided if I am on board with this ideaā¦thoughts appreciated.
can I plagiarize other peopleās comments about Self-plagiarism For college apps, Self-plagiarism should be totally ok IMHO.
@MACncheez --yes I think so.
And what she describes is also a VERY good reason the kids give to GPA exempt certain classes. D is at the point where a 95 could kill her rank vs. a 97. Which IMO is so ridiculous. She wants the pressure eased off just a bit. She has already exempted AP Calc BC and honestly she still has a great grade. She hasnāt slacked off and started failing the classā¦itās just made it so she doesnāt feel the pressure as muchāa reward I think she has very much earned by this point.
DS19 is also waiting for PSAT scores. Of course, Iām not exactly excited to get them back - he said āthe math was hard - I left out like half of the questionsā¦ā 
Well, DD went from something like 60/60/60 on the (old) PSAT sophomore year to a 35 on the ACT, so maybe I can be as lucky with DS? [-O<
Seniors Exempt from Finals - Finals for Seniors are held at our school before graduation, however if a Senior has an A as their final grade for the class at the end of the actual term for them, then they are exempt from taking the Final. If their final grade for the class is below an A then they need to sit for the Final.
@twoforone99 I would certainly contact the school about the policy change and your concerns about itās overall negative effects. I would have my son advocate for his grades if he thinks heās been graded unfairly. Perhaps also a talk with your son about your expectations for his performance in that class regardless of where he falls on the spectrum of grades?