I love this… Mackenzie Scott donating to a whole bunch of colleges who never get big donations
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Looks like D19 didn’t get her museum internship. Notifications were supposed to be out by now, and finalists would have had interviews already. She doesn’t seem too concerned about it. I thought she was objectively an excellent candidate, but of course there are always more excellent candidates than available spots. We’ll see what else she’s able to come up with.
Still hard to believe she’s moving in a couple of weeks. After the pandemic-enforced family togetherness period, it feels like sending her off to college all over again. Bittersweet!
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Nice to see all of the updates! S19 came home last week after as good of a fall as we could have hoped. Had a blast living with four friends and being truly independent for the first time. I will say we (and the other parents in the group) were a little leery of having our 19 year old boys living on their own for three and a half months but they figured it out. Even bought a Christmas tree and decorated a bit.
S19 had an amazing internship - every day in person learning about rockets and helping to build the first rocket for this start up aerospace company. Just four people total and they all took him under their wings and taught him everything from the science behind the launch to how to weld. He’s been training and is running the best he’s ever run and learned that running 60 miles a week, working 8-6 Monday-Friday, cooking and shopping for yourself, and keeping your house clean is not easy!
He’s hanging here until spring semester starts. Applying for summer internships, running with his high school friends who run at their colleges, and enjoying sitting down for dinners he doesn’t have to cook.
He’s pretty excited to see how spring goes. He’s talked to a few friends who were RAs this fall and so has an idea of how life on campus will be different but he’s ready to get back to class.
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We get kiddo for 4 weeks this time. West Point normally gives the cadets 2 weeks off winter break. She’s keeping herself busy though between volunteering at a food pantry and taking an online course at the local community college for professional development. On top of all that, she’s got to keep herself in shape by running and swimming. The swimming thing isn’t normal for her but she wants to prepare for the swimming class she has to take this semester.
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Enjoy the time with your cadet, @ChicagoSportsFn. We haven’t seen our O2 in a year, the longest separation ever, due to Army+COVID. Christmas was depressing for us.
Is your DD preparing for Survival Swimming? How many swimming programs purposely try to drown the student? That’s one intense experience, but some cadets actually enjoy it–especially the full-gear, head-down trip down the high slide tube in total darkness into a pool with simulated battle field effects. Nothing like machine gun fire to ruin a nice swim.
Not your regular college.
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Tonight’s task is getting DD to fill out the common app for her school’s endowed scholarships for continuing students. If your kid’s school offers them, don’t let them forget to apply!
And maybe doing more looking into her summer field experience. She had one job in mind and was told today they probably already have enough staff for summer, but to apply because it’s likely someone will change their plans, leaving a spot for her. So she’d better apply other places as well and then wonder if first choice will ever come to be.
To complicate matters, she has already been offered a job, similar to what she did last summer. This is probably the best paying option, and her least desired 
isn’t that the way it goes. If she doesn’t accept it in the next couple weeks, they will advertise it, and I’m sure she can still apply if she decides to. It would be nice to be done and she could live at home then but I feel like she will regret it if she just takes it and doesn’t try to get into the area she really wants.
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Just sent the first month and security deposit for D19’s new apartment in Brooklyn! Came down to the wire, but she and her three friends found a fantastic place that just came on the market this week. It’s 25 minutes from the Parsons/New School campus and a couple of blocks from Pratt, so there will be like-minded students around. The building is so new that it’s a construction site on Google Street View. 
Now to rent a U-Haul van and move her down there tomorrow!
Happy New Year to you and yours!
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I don’t know how this new format and Part 2 works…
S19 and S17 have been home since … March taking on-line classes, chatting with friends on-line, playing games on-line, ordering food on-line. Everything on-line!
Happy New Year to you and your family!
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Apparently, once a thread reaches an arbitrary length, any new post to it shuts it down and starts a part 2.
Which seems a bit unnecessary, but hey, CC gonna CC.
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S19 has managed to stay home since the weekend before Thanksgiving. Originally he wanted to return to Nashville for finals, but he brought so much stuff home he ended up being pretty comfortable and just decided to stay. He’s worked for my husband remodeling a bathroom for someone in our community and has been doing a ton of working out (about 3 hours/day). We’ve been catching up on our Jeopardy and sports watching and the extra time has been nice. He has spent a little time with friends but mostly trying to social distance. I’ve definitely enjoyed having S and D17 home, but I’m also getting tired of not seeing friends - I’ve played on tennis teams but not much socializing otherwise. I guess it makes it a little more difficult knowing that many friends are still gathering, went to big New Year’s Eve party etc. Oh well, hopefully not too much longer.
I’ll take S19 back to school around the 17th. Oh, and I’m getting the vaccine tomorrow! 
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So DD applied for the job where they thought they might already be fully staffed- her #1 choice of summer job/required field experience. And she got it! Actually a higher up position than she was going for. She’s so excited and they are excited to have her. Glad to have that nailed down. Now I hope she really likes it!
School-wise, she is three days in but they are having a snow day today. Some online class this week, but I think next week all is planned to be in-person.
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S19 was supposed to head back east last week. We were up early. I had cleared the car of snow and everything was packed at 7am. All set to make the 5 hour drive to the airport. 15 minutes before we were supposed to leave, S got a message that someone in the house where he is going tested positive; pre-screening test and the person had no symptoms. Ug. The whole east coast house was packed into a car and headed 4 hours away to get rapid tests when they called. Interestingly, they all tested negative including the one who got the positive test. Fortunately S was able to reschedule to later in the month and the housemates will retest in few days.
S took it mostly in stride. Par for the course I suppose for this year. Winter Qtr has started up and he is quite busy. Taking another CS class, part-time machine-learning internship, and working as a teaching assistant for a class.
In other news, our house (including S) got vaccinated right when the vaccines came out since in our rural county Search & Rescue volunteers were in the first round and the sheriff dept wanted all the SAR volunteers to get vaccinated so we can resume training and be prepared for the spring rush of incidents. None of us had much reaction to shot #1 besides a sore arm for 3 days. Shot #2 was a different matter. Starting about 12 hr after the shot, we started feeling kind of crummy (tired, feverish). 36 hr after the shot, everyone was back to normal except a little tired. I knew to expect this as we have many friends (doctors, EMT, firefighters) who’d gotten shot #2 and told us what to expect. So if you are getting it, try to schedule shot #2 before a day off from work. Note even though S is vaccinated, his flight was close to shot #2 and he didn’t want to risk being exposed until the immunity was ‘set’.
Sigh next week I return to the big city for a few weeks. Here it is sunshine and snow. There it is cold and relentless rain. Sigh.
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And so D19 was diagnosed with moderate to severe ADHD (inattentive type). It had slowly been manifesting itself as she got older, and it got worse in the last semester. She still is doing extremely well, but at the cost of a lot of stress. So she will be starting medication to see if it helps (not Ritalin). It’s good that she is starting the medication now when she is at home for J term.
It is fairly recently manifested, since her therapists through high school did not think that she had it, or if she did, that it was more than a light case. However, she was put through a battery of tests, and the result seem to have been pretty clear and typical for inattentive ADHD.
Ahhh, the “joys” of a 2e child…
So she joins the ranks of about 80% of the family on both sides who suffer from ADHD.
It’s lucky that we don’t have family reunions…
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@MWolf… at least it’s diagnosed now, that must be some relief. We’ve had some suggestions of possible ADHD for D26 but so far never felt the need to test, though I am leaning towards that now as whatever underlying issues there may be on that side have definitely been more obvious with Covid remote learning. (I am a bit terrified about medication though. I may PM you if that’s ok?) And I hear you on 2e “joys”. We were warned back when D26 was 3 years old that this was not going to be easy. And it hasn’t been. A totally special, magical, delightful child… but not easy.
D19 returned to New York last week and is in her own apartment, and loving it. The plunge in rentals has meant we can get a decent place in a great location (albeit a walk up) for basically what the dorm room budget had been for this year, plus she is planning to stay over summer (summer term … fall was a bit rocky with a couple of withdrawals so she has classes to catch up… as well as hopefully an internship) so having a year lease helps with stability too vs potentially having to move dorm rooms for both summer and fall. The hope is that spring 2022 will still be able to be a semester abroad.
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Thank you! I’d be happy to talk via PM when ever you wish!
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My daughter has arrived back in PA and is settling in with her roommate. She was very nervous about flying- she wore three masks and a face shield- but the airport and plane weren’t crowded at all, and it was a short flight. Yesterday she was offered a new job in the Italian department, TAing a higher level class than last semester, so she is relieved to have that settled before school starts. February will be a big month for her, as school will be starting and she’ll be hearing from two summer programs and a study abroad program.
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I hope our '19 kids will all have a great spring semester. S19 is heading back to Denison the day after tomorrow. It’s a long flight from Tokyo, but hopefully things will go more smoothly than they did last fall, when his flight was cancelled and then rerouted with a one-night stay in LA. Delta really took good care of him and put him up in a nice hotel near LAX, but still, it would be nice if everything connects properly this time. He’s going back a week early as a member of the track team, so they’ll have a week to practice and get settled in before the other students arrive. All the returning students had to have a negative PCR test this week before being allowed on campus and they’ll be tested again upon arrival. The kids will then quarantine until they have confirmation of a negative result - 24-48 hours. After that, testing twice a week. Denison did really well last semester in terms of keeping the number of cases down, but this semester they are hoping that testing more will enable them to allow more social interaction and more activity for the sports teams. Fingers crossed.
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I’m replying sooner than I would normally, but my daughter got good news about Oxford junior year abroad today so I wanted to share her excitement. I hope everything is much closer to normal and safe by September!
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Great to see the updates from all!
S19 heads back east tomorrow. He’s on a gap year but will be living with friends from his year off-campus—half are on gap year and half are remote-learning. He’ll be living with a tight-knit group of friends so that will be great. There will be a very sad element too however. 10 days ago one of the friends in this house was in a bad motor vehicle accident. She survived but was put in a medical coma with brain swelling and traumatic brain injury. On Tuesday, S found out that outlook is poor. We read the CaringBridge update from her parents together. It was so hard. The parents talked about the conversations with the doctors and the unthinkable decisions that may need to be made in the next weeks.
I think about what to say as he leaves. ‘Hold your friends close and grieve together.’ is all I can think to say but it feels trite. Or maybe I should talk about how “letting-go” ceremonies (funerals, celebrations of life) are so important in coming to terms with this and make a place for that in the group.