S19 has been back at school, living in a townhouse on campus, for just over three weeks. Classes started two weeks ago and he has a mix of fully in person (1), hybrid (2) and synchronous online (2). He is also working for his advisor and has to be in her “in person” class one day a week. Classes seem to be going well so far in all the formats.
He is so happy to be back with his friends and so far, does not mind the restrictions that make campus life different than last year. Since he’s living with 7 other guys in a townhome on campus, being able to hang out with them and still have a semblance of independence/college life is much better than taking online classes at home. Fingers crossed for each week they get through on campus!
Downside…he called me last week to say he’d fallen while exercising outside with his roommates on Saturday and hurt his hand/wrist. He plays a college sport (canceled this fall) and with workouts beginning late last week, he had been getting some treatment from the athletic trainer. Long story short, he got an xray and found out it’s broken. The orthopedic practice he went to casted him and due to the nature/location of the break, he is most likely going to be in a cast for 3-4 months! And even then, this type of injury often does not heal on its own, so he might end up having surgery. Fortunately it’s not his writing hand, but still a total bummer. He was really looking forward to getting back to regular workouts again with his team. He can still do some of the workouts but obviously not upper body. It is also impacting his downtime - with COVID restrictions hampering much of his normal social life, his main outlet, outside of just hanging out in his townhouse with his friends, was playing golf and Xbox. He can’t do either! The cast comes to the second knuckle of his fingers, and covers his thumb (he can’t move his thumb at all) and goes up nearly to his elbow.
Because of COVID, we hadn’t planned to see him at all this fall until we went to pick him up before Thanksgiving, assuming his campus manages to stay open that long (fingers crossed). It’s a 5 hour drive each way, but I decided due to the seriousness of the fracture, I wanted to go with him to his appointment next week to see the hand/wrist specialist. When I said I wanted to come, he immediately asked if I could bring some homemade meals. I guess after several weeks of cooking for themselves, they miss their parents’ cooking! So I’m bringing 5-6 meals along with a bunch of other groceries. Last night I sent him a list of everything to make sure they have room in the fridge/freezer and his response was “my roommates eyes lit and and one said you are a sweetheart!” LOL I also have to bring him some warm clothes that can fit over his cast (his sweatshirts don’t fit over it so I’m cutting the cuff off some old ones and bringing).
I can’t stay overnight so I have to make the 10 hr roundtrip all in one day. I already am lining up some audiobooks.
All in all, despite the broken bones, he is really glad to be back on campus.
Oh man @4kids4us sorry to hear about your son’s injury. That is a giant bummer…and that’s a long time in the cast! I’m guessing he might find a way to game with it over time! Have a wonderful and safe visit!
@momtogkc wow, what a turn of events. So glad your D got off lightly. In a strangely ironic kind of way this is probably one of the better outcomes? How many of us would willingly get Covid if we knew it wouldn’t affect us badly and would (hopefully) immunize us? (Of course you don’t know, or know what the long term effects are, so I’m not recommending anyone willingly expose themselves!). I’m not sure if I mentioned this here before but my cousin was touch and go for nearly 2 months in hospital with covid, it looked a few times like we were going to lose him. Thankfully he is out, completed rehab and back at work, but not an experience I’d wish on anyone.
@4kids4us ugh, so sorry about the broken hand/wrist! What a bummer. Hope he heals quicker than expected and that surgery does not end up being necessary.
D19 is also happy being back on campus, doing a lot of hanging outside with her friends while the weather is good and NYC moves slowly along with reopening. She has 2 in person classes and 3 online this semester. So far so good. Hoping it stays reasonably good… certainly it’s been better for her to be there than here in NorCal recently, where the smoke has been horrible and the apocalyptic orange skies the other day were just totally surreal (I guess you all saw the pics, I even got a text from my cousin in Israel about it!).
son19 has been back at Tufts for the last 10 days, so far so good over there. They have a very good plan in place and I think the kids are trying their best to adhere to the recommendations. He said it feels better on campus than he thought it would. Less militant. He said the kids seem united to keep the semester moving forward and remaining on campus. He’s been able to work out and do other things on campus too. It’s a little restrictive but better than being at home he says.
Hope everyone is healthy and that your kids are doing well this Fall.
DD is applying for jobs today. She’s given up on the animal shelter one, a friend that did it only got an hour of work at a time cleaning kennels so that’s not worth it. Now she’s trying for hotel housekeeping.
Her school had a peak in cases 2 weeks in, which has drastically dropped off and now at a low trickle. I’m feeling more confident they will stay partially in-person.
Meanwhile at home, we are kept busy with the new dog. The cats have been more skittish around her than I expected so I do a lot of managing the pets’ locations so they get a break. She just wants to meet them/smell them but she moves fast! One cat is pretty cool with her now, two to go. Not too worried about the female, they will never be friends and when she gets fed up she will let the dog have it. But our scaredy-boy spends a lot of time hiding.
S19 is still plugging away in his internship. It’s a small start up so he has the ear of the CEO and is learning a ton from the engineers in the group. So far so good at the house with the five roommates. Three are super busy with school and likely don’t leave the house much. The other two are working and busy.
They walked down to the water (about a five minute walk!) last weekend and saw bioluminescence the other night. Swam in the lit-up water. And, on Sunday, he went golfing with his freshman roommate. Not a bad semester shaping up.
We have to see what happens with spring. Bowdoin’s plan is to have sophomores back on campus for spring but there’s the usual limitations that a lot of schools are doing and they’ll also only have remote class. He misses going to school and feels a little weird about it since it was never in the plan to take a break. He wants to go back to campus but none of these boys living the way they are right now are dying to go back to campus and be masked up and so limited all of the time. We will know for sure which grades are invited back to campus by Thanksgiving and then he will have to decide what to do.
Thanks for all the recent updates. Sounds like the kids are doing well (except @4kids4us - sorry about your son’s injury) and making the best of a difficult situation. S19 has been enjoying being back in Nashville, but it’s definitely not much fun, as expected. He still was enjoying being with his roommate and getting together with small groups of friends at times. It seems that most of the time I check in with him, he says he’s “grinding” with either homework, studying or his workouts. Still doing the vegan diet and glad that he can make his own food.
Then came good news and bad news. S decided to rush a business fraternity and I didn’t realize it was pretty competitive. There were close to 250 students who applied and they had to go through multiple rounds (including one where they worked with a team on a consulting case that involved a marketing plan and a presentation. The final round involved multiple interviews via zoom and some other requirements. Anyway about 20 kids made it in and S19 was very excited and relieved to be selected. Then on Friday his roommate got positive results from the Covid test he had taken on Tuesday. S19’s most recent results from a test last Saturday were negative, but he took a test on Thursday and was awaiting results. He got news very late on Friday that his test was negative. So, since the news about his roommate on Friday, they have been living separately in the apartment, cleaning everything etc. One frustrating thing is that if S19 had tested positive, he and roommate would have quarantined together for 14 days. However, since he’s negative and not really able to move out of the apartment, Vandy is saying he needs to quarantine for 24 days. So, he’s planning to retest tomorrow and we’ll talk later to see if there are other options that make sense.
Oooh, ^^, that’s a wrinkle. If you manage to stay uninfected from your roommate, you get the ‘prize’ of a longer quarantine! I think they should move the roommate out, since your S is negative! But maybe they are off campus so there is no on campus quarantine space provided?
My S19 is at Elon, they’ve been on campus since 8/21 or so, things were going smoothly and last week saw a big rise in cases. First with the football team and their contacts, and then later in the week another big rise, so they jumped to their “Alert level 2” and then “Level 3” within days. They are still doing in person classes (it seems to be around half), and say that through contract tracing they can see that the spread is from social interactions and not classes. They’ve been asked to limit their social interactions to a group to 4, including roommates. My son is in a single, but his 4 closest friends live together, so he’s not included in their “pod”. No one is allowed in anyone else’s dorm or apt (lots of on campus apts) and off campus activities are asked to be limited, and dine in is no longer available.
So, we will see. They will reevaluate after a week. They were doing well for a while, and now are not. I think the hope is that a temporary restriction will get a handle on it, like seemed to happen at Notre Dame? Son says rules are being enforced and consequences are definitely happening.
@bjscheel , we helped our scared kitty get used to being near our dog by doing ‘treat time’…giving them all treats near each other at the same time. Positive reinforcement of being near the dog. If you have a baby gate, that can help so they can see and smell each other (if they want), and in our house at least, the cats can jump right over but not the dog. But I think having a ‘safe space’ where the dog never goes, for a while, is helpful for the cats too. When we have foster dogs, the cats have safe space upstairs.
@TS0104 I find it hard to get the black kitty in any sort of proximity to the dog. Everybody here is indoor/outdoor (on our acreage with no neighbors or traffic) so he is finding ample opportunity to distance himself. Though last night when the dog was being calm on the living room couch, I know he was in the kitchen, and didn’t run upstairs to his safe space even when her collar jangled. But if the dog had gone into the kitchen I’m sure he would have run up there. Will have to think on this or just keep having those small exposures. This morning he was in the yard and watched her stand near us, but once she started moving around he ran to the treehouse (his outdoor safe space).
Don’t mean to get off topic, but this is my life right now! As I told DD, this is my biggest problem so I guess I’m doing pretty good!
Hope your son does okay with his current situation at Elon. Sad he can’t be in a pod with his friends.
So far so good at Midd, though a bunch of students decided that the rules against partying didn’t apply to them. So 22 students have been told that they will finish the semester online.
I realized why students behave like that, when a bunch of parents started whining that the administration should pity them and not enforce the rules, because it was so haaarrrddd those poor kids, and how saaaaadddd they would be.
Explains why the kids grew up thinking that this was appropriate behavior. Kids whose parents won’t discipline them because they are afraid of how their kids may feel, end up with self-centered, entitled kids. The kind of kid who believes that partying is their basic right and is more important the the health and safety of others, Kids for whom “I promise” is meaningless when it interferes with “I want”.
Luckily, the majority of the parents agreed that the response was very appropriate. It is also lucky that the majority of the students are not like that, and the response of the students was a lot less forgiving than that of the parents.
Otherwise, a staff member tested positive, but apparently nobody else was exposed.
So, since mid August, there have been 2 cases among students, both infected before arriving, and both have recovered.
Looks like D19 won’t be a poll worker next month after all. There’s no availability in the nearby town that was her first choice, and the open spots are all in distant burgs that we’re not going to drive her to for a 6 a.m. start. (She doesn’t drive, and has no plans ever to do so.) So, the quest for work experience goes on.
DD hasn’t gotten a job in her college town yet. And since her winter break is 6 weeks long this year, this weekend we decided to shift the plan to finding a temp job here and work a lot during break. Most of her friends are going home for break and she didn’t want to be stay there alone all that time to work a part time job. We have a couple of ideas where she could work temporarily, hopefully something materializes. She may also try to get a tour guide/admissions job for spring semester which won’t be very time intensive while classes are in session.
DD also discussed some relationship matters at length, and decisions there are tough too.
On the college front, she is still really enjoying her classes and her circle of friends. Covid cases currently very low. Mask wearing isn’t bothering her. Has her spring schedule worked out and ready to register. She’ll be on the first possible sophomore registration day so it should go according to plan.
@elena13 , congrats to your son on his fraternity! But I’m so sorry that his roommate has Covid. Was one or the other able to move out, or is your son still stuck in quarantine? 24 days is so long. Also, I hope his roommate is feeling okay!
D19 has been visiting both sets of grandparents. She gets tested and then drives to see them the next day after getting a negative result. She stays for three days and then comes home. It makes them so happy, and is a big relief for me and DH because it’s so difficult for us to go see them as we have more exposures to worry about and more responsibilities.
D19 has also had her boyfriend come visit twice, and she’s been to stay with his family also. He’s a very serious student, so that is good for D19 who isn’t as motivated to work on her asynchronous classes when he’s not around. He also likes outdoor activities, so they’re a good match that way.
She also pledged a sorority completely virtually, and is having a great time getting to know her new sisters. Lots of laughter coming from the Zoom-room. She didn’t want a campus where greek life dominated, but then she met sorority girls at her school and they didn’t fit any stereotype. I’m pleased that she will have a “family” to welcome her and a house to go to when she returns to campus.
I don’t know whether tutoring would work for anyone who’s looking for a job. D19 just put her name out among the families in our town, and she tutors on FaceTime or Skype. People pay her on Venmo. There are a lot of kids struggling with math and Spanish especially, after missing so much last spring, and getting a late start this fall.
Nice to see all the updates, even if they aren’t all going quite as hoped. But yay for the good news ones!
I just spent a few days in NY to see family, and D19 (with appropriate sequential covid testing first!) NYU is not allowing socializing in dorm rooms (obviously roommates are “pods”) and has closed lounges after a small outbreak (6 or 8 cases) linked to a lounge in a freshman hall, so D19 is chafing a bit at the evenings. However as the city continues opening up her and friends have plenty to do during the days. Enjoying classes (combination of in person and online) but says they have much more work than last year. She’s loving living in the village - which is buzzing day and night. Mask compliance seems generally good around there. Part of my family otoh live near one of the new covid hotspots and are worried about that. As are we. We are planning to head there for thanksgiving (NYU has asked students to either not go home for thanksgiving, or stay remote thereafter through to winter break if they do) so hoping this doesn’t all go pear shaped again.
Son19 has been on campus for a month now, and is enjoying it thoroughly. So far so good on campus, not many kids have had to enter quarantine. They get tested 3x per week. Food has been good and classes going well.
The Nescac announced today that they won’t be doing a winter sports season, so that is a bummer. His team can still practice and train and I think they might try some sort of virtual race, all teams run in their own indoor track and post times. He was kind of bummed, and hopes they can have a season in the Spring outdoors. We’ll see.
@RightCoaster I hope he gets to have a season. That’s such a bummer. DD’s college did not do football, but is planning on winter sports. Her BF is playing college football this fall though. They did have some cases pre-season (him being one of them) but apparently it’s going fine for now. DD won’t see him until Christmas, and probably only a little bit. His school is not doing the extra long break, and football may shorten it further.
DD on the other hand has 7 weeks off and we think we have a job lined up covering a maternity leave at her sister’s shop. She’d mostly be doing reception, shipping orders, taking orders out for curbside pickup, and sorting product. Her sister will confirm this week, but the boss talks like he’s planning on it. Should be ideal with no evenings or weekends, and getting to live with her sister.
Things that my children apparently don’t tell me until all the drama has played out:
D19’s flatmate was exposed and so had to isolate pending a test. It didn’t affect D19 (they all have separate bedrooms, so there isn’t intense direct contact), but if the test had come back positive, she would have needed to isolate and get tested while the flatmate went into full quarantine.
@RightCoaster , I love the idea of a virtual meet. It wouldn’t be perfect because each track is different and the times aren’t strictly comparable, but it still sounds like a lot of fun. I hope the NCAC (Ohio) conference thinks about this as well. They haven’t made any announcements yet about winter/spring, but the track team at S19’s school is practicing as usual. S19 tore a hamstring during a time trial and was on very restricted activity for a couple of weeks, but he was just cleared to begin regular practice again and was also able to get back to leading campus tours as of last Friday. @dfbdfb , I had a similar experience - I just heard yesterday from S19 that his roommate had been in quarantine after developing a fever. Yikes! Luckily his test was negative as well. Six more weeks to go before the school shifts back to remote for finals, and I think they are going to make it. We live in Asia and haven’t been back to the US now for a year thanks to the pandemic. Usually we go at least once a year and stock up on all of our American necessities. This year, S19 is going to have to be the pack mule when he flies back home next month.
One of DD’s classes was an online class that is also part of the master’s level for her major. It was compressed into a half semester, so it was a lot of work! She got 100% on her final project and overall a 97% so she is pretty pleased with herself Especially since she looked into dropping it after doing very poorly at the start.
Now will have a little more free time for the rest of the semester.
S19’s most recent results from a test last Saturday were negative, but he took a test on Thursday and was awaiting results. He got news very late on Friday that his test was negative. So, since the news about his roommate on Friday, they have been living separately in the apartment, cleaning everything etc. One frustrating thing is that if S19 had tested positive, he and roommate would have quarantined together for 14 days. However, since he’s negative and not really able to move out of the apartment, Vandy is saying he needs to quarantine for 24 days. So, he’s planning to retest tomorrow and we’ll talk later to see if there are other options that make sense.
Especially since she looked into dropping it after doing very poorly at the start.