Okay, I’ve found a way to calm down and not stress so much now, and I really enjoy reading everyone’s comments, so I hope you don’t mind if I rejoin the conversation. I also realize I have more in common with many of you than I originally thought, especially now that D21 is taking in-person classes (two different colleges – two courses at a community college and one course at a four-year state college).
Since no one in our family has been in a classroom for grades since 2002 (that was me for grad school), I was surprised to learn that D21’s assignments need to be turned in online, and not in person in class. She has lots of presentations and group work in class, and of course discussions in class, but papers and quizzes are still done online at home. Which is what she is used to after doing her middle and high school courses online in the past. So it’s more of the same but with one or two in-person classroom times with other students each week for each course. Two of her college courses meet once a week for three hours at a time, and her other college course meets twice a week for an hour and a half each time. She loves meeting the other students and the group discussions, but it is not that much different from what she’s been doing all along. There were Skype or other such virtual meetings instead of in-person, but the discussion is the same kind of thing, so I guess when someone tells you they’ve done online schooling, realize it might not be that much different from the “norm” anymore (at least with high quality online providers that incorporate live meetings each week).
What she gets a real kick out of is the in-person personalities of her professors. One is incredibly strict, which is fine with her…in the syllabus, he stated there would be pop quizzes sometimes during a specific 24-hour period some weeks. D21 was therefore prepared and took the first quiz when it showed up…and then got to class to find out that 75% of the other students hadn’t realized they missed a quiz because they hadn’t read the syllabus. There goes a few percentage points of their grades. The professor expects each student to participate fully, know the material thoroughly before they get to class (questions are fine of course), and will absolutely call on anyone who looks even slightly tired. He has no mercy…and D21 loves this, because she feels like it gives her an extra incentive to be prepared, and she loves diving into discussion about the material anyway. She and her professor seem to get along just fine thus far. D21 has always kind of thrived on stress, and I think she enjoys the sink-or-swim aspect of the class, lol. A different professor spends half the time talking about the subject and then half the time going off on semi-related tangents, which my daughter thinks is funny but also stressful since it means she needs to learn much of the material on her own. Her third professor seems to be standard normal lecturer. Anyway, she’s having a blast and she feels her education thus far has well prepared her for what she’s doing now, so that’s good. She might get her first B in one of these courses from the sink-or-swim professor since he grades HARSHLY…but she’ll learn a ton from him so that’s okay.
Her other three courses are online APs, which take up more of her time than the college classes, but so far she is juggling everything well along with her ECs and volunteer work. She gets between 7-8 hours of sleep a night, and I am hoping that can continue.
She didn’t get as high as she wanted on her SATs in August, but it seems like the curve was difficult this past session, so she’ll try again in March after spending her winter break on more focused study. She’s got the score she needs in reading, but needs/wants a higher score in math.
Her college list is done but needs to be whittled (too many!). If she doesn’t get her math SAT score up, then that will take care of some of the tippy-tops on her list anyway. She has two real safeties she would be happy to attend, so that takes some of the pressure off.
