@bjscheel Congrats on the job - that is great news!
D21 is finishing up her summer job and heading to New Orleans this week to spend a few days with her friends before she heads off to Rome. She will get to sleep in her room in her new house for two nights before the subletter moves in and then she will just share a bed with her old roommate for a few nights. She finally got her housing and roommates for Rome today. They had warned that the apartments they use can be up to 45 minutes away from the school by bus so we were nervous. Luckily she is less than two miles away so she can either walk or take the short bus ride there.
D19 finished her summer internship in Chicago. It went very well, and the PI has offered her a continuation next summer, and that she expand the stuff she did into a publication. The PI also invited D19 to join the lab at an upcoming conference.
We took her to her boyfriend in New England, where she will spend a couple of weeks, before he takes her to college. She will be volunteering to help first year orientation, so that should be fun.
On the down side, with all the kids who took time off due to COVID, more than half the overseas activities being cancelled and some overenrollment, there will be a LOT of students on campus, and, of course, the Juniors are the ones who were having issues with housing. D19 did not even know where she would end up until last week. Luckily, she and her friends all have rooms in one of the Social Houses, but it wasnāt sure. A bunch of students will be staying 20 minutes away at the Bread Loaf. A gorgeous location, to be sure, but transportation is an issue, especially when a students does not have their own vehicle. They also may be snowed in sometimes.
They will be open at full capacity, but vaccinations are required, and, for the time being (because of Delta), even vaccinated students will be masked indoors, except in their residence halls, and when eating. Unvaccinated students need to be fully masked at all times, except inside their rooms, and be socially distanced, if they want to be on campus.
Nice to hear the updates with news of jobs, internships, study abroad. Exciting things are happening for our kids and hopefully a better school year this year. I have my fingers crossed that S19 will be in Spain in the spring. We got him settled back in to school last weekend and enjoyed a nice night out in Nashville with he and his roommate (love how much they have bonded over the last two years). They both spent the last week in very time consuming but fun training as leaders (even though itās their second year doing it) in the freshmen orientation program that will last through this semester. In addition to doing some things with the new international students, they worked all weekend to welcome the freshmen and get them settled, so he is pretty wiped out.
The big news is that S ended up applying to the Big 3 consulting firms in July and got an interview at one. He went through the process, had his final round of interviews on Friday and got an offer a few hours later! He is so relieved and excited to be done worrying about next summerās internship and feels that it will make for a much more relaxing semester. Plus, a couple of people from the company are flying into Nashville this week to take him to dinner. What? I didnāt know this was a thing!
Hope all your kids are doing well and have a great junior year. Wow!
With delta wreaking havoc on travel and visas, my daughterās school has given her the option to back out of Oxford. She wants to go, but the gamble is that if she cannot get there on time she has to take a leave of absence and stay home the semester. She is still waiting on her visa, half our family currently has Covid, and sheās worried sheāll get it and not be able to travel to England (since you can test positive well after recovery). The choice needs to be made in the next day or so and she is super stressed out. Sigh.
So sorry to hear about this situation. I hope that your family recovers quickly and that your daughter is able to make (and be satisfied with) a timely decision.
@elena13 Congratulations - that is such great news!!
@milgymfam Ugh, I am so sorry your D19 has to make such a hard decision. S23 was possible exposed to Covid last week. D19 is in New Orleans right now but is planning on coming home Wednesday. If S23 tests positive I think she will stay there a few more days, she doesnāt want to risk getting it right before she is supposed to leave for Italy.
Iāve been reading both your class of 2019 and class of 2021 sagas. Itās really a lot to deal with, and I hope it all sorts itself out very soon. Our S19 has been spending the summer in Tokyo but will fly back to Ohio on Friday. He goes for his pre-trip PCR test this afternoon - heās fully-vaccinated and has mostly been staying at home, so we are hoping for the all-clear. Iām hoping our class of 2019 crowd can have a pretty normal (in relative terms!) autumn semester, but I realize this is the semester when many kids do their study abroad trips, and that certainly adds complications. (My son initially thought he wanted to do study abroad, but his coach told him heās already doing study abroad in Ohio, so no need. Seemed to make sense to S19, so heāll just continue his study of Midwest culture!)
Thank you! D19 decided that sheās all in and just going to hope for the best. She said she wouldnāt know herself if she just quit on going because of fear or worry. I can respect that. One of her friends from school said if it falls through sheās welcome to move into his off-campus house and just hang out in the area until spring. She was very touched by the offer. My D21ās teacher for two classes is giving her 1-on-1 zoom instruction for both classes this week, which was so nice of her.
Hope everyone and their families has had a great summer, or as great as possible. @milgymfam, sorry to hear about the struggles, and I hope everything works out well. @elena13 and @bjscheel, congrats on the job news!
D19 had a pretty good summer. She and one of her roommates joined us for a week of our two-week vacation on the island that gave me my screen name, which was lovely. S22 had two friends of his over for several days of that time, and it was nice to see them all getting along well. Weāve come a long way from the days when D19 wouldnāt even walk with S22 as they went to the same school at the same time, in their middle- and elementary-school days in London.
D19 had an internship at a design firm during last school year, and they kept her on for the summer. While she enjoyed it, she got a little burned out working full-time and taking summer classes, so when they asked her to stay on into this school year, she declined. Sheās going to look for another job, but fortunately itās not a financially pressing issue for us and she doesnāt have to stress about it. Sheād mostly been using the job for extra spending money, as we pay her rent and grocery bills, and she saved a lot of it.
Speaking of money, an interesting little thing with the dynamic of the four roommates. Two of them, including D19, are being fully supported by their parents; the other two are paying their own way, so weād all mutually decided they would pay less of the rent. Apparently the other full-pay parents have grown tired of the arrangement and wanted to pay less, though still not an equal amount, while the self-supporters pay more. D19 asked me if we could keep paying the old amount for her so the self-supporting women could pay a bit less, and I agreed. That kind of nickel-and-diming is how the rich stay rich, I guess, but weāre content to be merely affluent. Itās not an amount that would really hurt or help us either way, and I donāt feel like imposing material costs on struggling college students to make some kind of point.
So DD always dreamed of doing a study abroad but with Covid decided to focus on graduating early instead. Now she has found out about a 12 day trip to Ireland with a subject matter that is totally her interests. Cost is going to be on her, she can either take from her savings, or do a small student loan (sheāll have no other college debt). Assuming for now travel will be okay in Mayā¦debating whether to encourage her to spend $7000 on a 12 day trip and a class she doesnāt need (but would be useful in her field). Sheās very much an Experiences > Money person!
@Vineyarder, great update! Also, thatās so kind of you to help out your Dās roommates. I love your philosophy!
@bjscheel that trip sounds amazing, but I can see where the cost would be something to think about. For that price, I might want to see about doing a month-long program or something where she can travel a little after the class. I wish I had been able to do something like that in college. I donāt think sheāll regret a small amount of debt if needed.
D19 stayed on campus doing research all summer. It was nice as she got 6 credits and a stipend. She was also able to do some remote work from her job last summer. School is back in session and she doing her thing along with a small job at info center. She is going to have to start making some decisions for life after undergrad. I have no idea what she will want or end up doing at this point.
Yes, it feels like this is the year when our kids who went into their freshmen years with no clear direction will need to get more focused. S19 is now pretty set on double majoring in psych and sports science, with the general idea he would like to do graduate studies in sports psychology. But that involves a lot of decisions - itās a pretty new field, and the graduate programs may be in the Psych department, but they may also be in Kinesiology or even Education. So he needs to look at the individual programs and professors carefully to find things that mesh with his interests. In the meantime, heās having such a great time, I really hate to force him to focus too much on the fact heās already half way through. You would think that with the pandemic and everything thatās happened, time would move more slowly, but itās going shockingly fast!
Yeah, DD just has two semesters after this, plus internship. Of course this semester just started, so really she has 3 semesterās worth to go, but sheās currently mapping out the courses for just 2 future semesters so it feels really short! And sheās also working on figuring out next yearās housing because many places get claimed in the fall. Racing to the finish!
Same with my D, sheāll graduate in December 2022. She said that because of the credits she already has, sheās now technically a senior, though in practice sheāll still need two semesters after this one to finish her requirements. Speeding by indeed.
Well, she did it- D19 is in Rome! After a long day of travel she got to her apartment yesterday afternoon. The next few days are orientation then classes start Monday. She had meetings this morning and is now on a tour of the area around the school. Her housing assignment got changed at the last minute, she is now right in a popular neighborhood just under a mile from school. I am so excited for her and am still trying to find a way to get over there to visit!