Is Hershel still popular with college kids? My older son has this one, and I’m wondering if I should just get the same for #2.
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I don’t really know! We just like the look of them - more sleek and less sporty looking. I don’t know what D21 will want. I mentioned that we could get her a new backpack and she asked why. Her NorthFace has held up well so we might just send her with that and then re-evaluate after first semester.
I feel like we might be doing that with a lot of things. I’m not buying her a super warm coat or boots until she sees what kids generally wear. We did it that way with S19 too. Send him with what he had until second semester. Bought what he wanted in early Jan to take back.
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S21 backpack is falling apart lol so we will send him with a new one. He also doesn’t have appropriate clothing for super cold winters. Sigh.
Fascinated by the no tech comments! Do you see that as a trend in some schools- encouraging or requiring kids to write out their notes? I have read that retention is better that route, but wonder if some kids have gotten reliant on on everything being digital.
Same here. His backpack fell apart right when covid hit so we didn’t get another and he has no fall or winter clothes.
Happy Memorial Day!! A special shout-out of thanks to service members… current and past.
We’ve started our dorm shopping with the sales this weekend. Thank you for all the suggestions and advice. It’s been fun but also starting to make this “real”. I stayed upbeat (unexpectedly) through the end of year events and graduation because I was just so grateful it was happening in person, but now it is starting to sink in.
My D connected with her roommate through virtual events and the incoming class Discord. I hope it’s a good fit. They seem to have a lot in common… both premed, same merit scholarship, etc. They have a general plan for the dorm decor… each doing her own thing but with coordinated color scheme, cat stuff (but not too much, mom, we can’t be crazy cat ladies with no friends), a few plants a must. They each chose a basic value pak of bedding, bath, storage stuff from a site the school recommended (sale this weekend). We spent money on a good Therapeutic mattress topper (sale this weekend). They are sharing the cost of the micro/fridge rental. Additional details TBD later in the summer. I’m encouraging a less is more approach as we can always ship more stuff later. We’re holding off on new clothes and such until she gets there and sees what other kids are wearing.
We’ve had unusually cool weather the past few days but today is great pool weather at the club. I’m enjoying it because the past 5 days have been non-stop with family responsibilities… helping my parents (Dad has Parkinson’s and post-covid complications and mom has “complications” of taking care of Dad) and entertaining my D’s friend visiting from Cali. Today I get some me time with my friends !
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Back from outlet mall. I think the outlet store has a “sale” virtually always. Northface backpacks are 50% off, which makes the Borealis $45 and the Jester $35. I’m almost certain that D has the Jester, which is smaller. In real life, it doesn’t look like the online pics because it’s never fully stuffed like the ones the models try on. Now to figure out what the S21s want, size and color - wild guess that they will want to start out with the Borealis for now because they don’t know how much or little they’ll be carrying daily, though I think the Jester would be fine.
Stores seem to be a bit low on merchandise generally - anyone else feel that way? There are no (hardly any) swimsuits to be found in-person; Target’s swim section is much smaller than usual. Accordingly, it seems to me that if we want good choices for dorm shopping, we should be ordering/buying soon.
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Wow, that is amazing. In our SF Bay Area high school, they were mostly on ebooks by middle school, so they only carried around notebooks and a few paperback books on a daily basis. But I remember those heavy backpacks from my school days!
Yes. Stores have slim pickings right now. Must still be a Covid thing. I’m looking for a dress for an upcoming wedding and there’s just zero out there. Woman at Nordstrom told me they just haven’t had shipments because they weren’t sure if anyone would be looking for formal wear.
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When classes are small and discussion based, no one is opening a laptop to take notes. Class is interactive. Even in S19’s largest class which we attended during parents weekend (a physics class with 35 kids or so), we didn’t see one laptop.
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My D switched from laptop to an iPad with pen junior year and loved it. I’m hoping that continues to work for college because something about writing her notes rather than typing helped her with retention. Hopefully we can reduce the backpack size if most required books have electronic versions. Like someone else mentioned, her upper school backpack basically weighed 1/4 of her weight. They have lockers but in such an inconvenient location no one used them. 
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I’ve mentioned this here before I think, but both of my college kids have said that some of their professors do not allow electronics, including laptops, in the classroom.
S21 has been using an ipad since middle school for taking notes but I’ve already warned him he may have to handwrite his notes in some classes unless he gets an accommodation (he has a processing delay and a slow writer; typing is much easier for him).
S sang for the town Memorial Day ceremony and BOTH times I hit Photo instead of Video! 
So my tech advice may be questionable, but I have a Rocketbook we’re going to try out. You get the tactile note taking but then have to scan it. Looking forward to learning what others will be doing. May end up with just pencil and paper!
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@srparent15 That’s great that she loved it. Hopefully being on a quieter campus this summer will be just as good for her 
@islaygirl Thank you! It just had to be said
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After your comment I asked her if it’s a McCombs policy or a BHP (her program) policy. BHP (her program) only have about 30 students in each class while McCombs has bigger college classes. She said it’s a McCombs policy and it’s all devices. They can have their phones but no one uses their phones. She said it’s exactly for the reason that research shows. That you retain more information by taking notes and are more engaged. She said she’s gotten so used to taking notes on her ipad/computer and highlighting things this past semester, that it is going to be a hard transition back to notes. And this is a kid who takes notes on everything!
Even in her MIS course last Spring they couldn’t bring their laptops to class and that class used a lot of excel for their assignments.
Personally I think it’s great. I see it when I’m teaching how robotic computers have become and have seen it for years. This is one reason why I’m generally ok with buying the hard copies of books for my kids to use even though they are so expensive.
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Oh, we’ve had ebooks for years at least. I know my sophomores in college had them in 5th grade for math because they printed out every math page, lol. The beginning of my knowing they preferred hard copies.
Middle school didn’t have many books other than math as the rest was online, math was the standard Algebra and Geometry books.
But in high school, it wasn’t so much the books that were the issue but that every teacher required a 2 to 3 inch binder for their courses, some had course packs (remember those from Kinkos?) that they had to carry around. So like Physics C they didn’t have a book, they used a huge course pack. But then some classes they did need books, the CS courses, APush, Math, etc. which for my son that just graduated now are all online so he didn’t have the books other than a hard copy of the online book we kept at home. Just the stupid course pack for every class, his own binder and whatever English book they were reading! But, he is almost twice the size of my girls so carrying 25lb is nothing for him. My oldest had back surgery after sophomore year so he actually used a bag with wheels for the rest of high school. That’s what they all should’ve used as @homerdog is correct, no one uses lockers. They have no time to go there and get to class and the lockers also were always in random areas.
In addition to the lack of distractions, notetaking by hand encourages processing of information in a way that typing notes doesn’t. Because of speed limitations, people are forced to summarize the information rather than typing verbatim. I do think writing by hand with a stylus on a tablet would achieve the same thing though if a student could avoid device distractions.
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That’s how my D takes her notes - with a stylus on a 2 in 1. Definitely different processing to write vs type.
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Yes agree with you and @momofboiler1 the stylus and that should be one change they start to make as opposed to kids typing on laptops, etc. since one clearly cannot write as fast as they type when using a stylus which is essentially a pen and that’s why my daughter was talking about last night when she said her dad just got her a new iPad and she’s gotten used to using that this past semester.
You make a good point that students are writing verbatim when typing as much as they can from what the professor/instructor is saying.
One thing that a lot of kids don’t learn seems to be how to properly take notes as well as how to properly annotate. You have kids that literally annotate or highlight every word on a page and then kids that annotate nothing. My twins have literally been identical in every single thing, same scores even while they were in different classes in elementary school same curriculum etc. It wasn’t until middle school that we noticed that one’s writing was a lot better than the other and I attribute that back to elementary school and one having significantly worse teachers in 4th and 5th grade than the other one and not teaching the correct basic writing styles. They had the same teachers in middle school again but it was those 2 years in elementary school that made such a difference and I know the one had the crap teacher. Her writing today is way weaker. So, learning to write, take notes, and annotate are all skills these kids need to be taught early on. Hah nothing to do with electronic devices but I do wonder how well they’re teaching that stuff if they’re relying on them so heavily today.
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Nm, just whining about car rental stuff. Strongly advise reserving asap. But reservation systems are glitchy. Doggone it, I was just getting estimates for my spreadsheet, cars there, I saw them, now cars gone. What the heck. It makes it appear that I can’t return a car on a Sunday afternoon to the airport, but if I change the return to Monday, OR change the pickup date to the day before returning Sunday, cars are there. Not understanding.
So H is looking forward to the adventure of driving 12 hours to first college, drop off, 12 hours back, and make some other stops in the area of first college, for fun. I will be staying home with the younger kids, who will be in school by then. Then he would drive 17 hours in the other direction and 17 hours back, beautiful drive, but we are not in our 20s any more. I think this is unrealistic and am pricing out flying and renting car vs driving - costs are similar unless he stays longer to see more stuff.
Avis preferred price is cheaper than the Costco reservation system shows, for some cars, but more for others.
What doesn’t work well is renting one-way, more pricey. Flying both ways is cheaper.
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