There are a lot of kids doing that at our school. Mine included. My ‘24 did that and as a bonus rocked the PSAT.
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It’s full on marching band season and in school music classes are in full swing. My D had some dental work and it agitated her TMJ terribly. She’s a woodwind player who’s considering a conservatory for college and she can’t play her instrument for the foreseeable future. She needs PT as the first step. She’s so sad right now. For marching band competition her director told her to pretend to play while marching. He’s been very supportive and has her playing percussion in school even though her only experience was a percussion club last school year. The classes are the advanced ensembles with high expectations for performance, hopefully she picks it up quickly. I feel so bad for her, this was supposed to be her year. The school instrument literally fell apart last year during a performance. The grandparents and us parents went in together and invested in a beautiful instrument so she wouldn’t have that problem. Now she might not get the chance to even audition. She starts treatment next week and much of the pain has subsided but risk of reinjury is there. On a happier note a foreign exchange student is coming in a couple weeks to stay with us for 2 weeks. They’ve been in touch and seem to already get along great.
I feel that. Our oldest son was at a HS with a very competitive band program and getting braces really screwed up his embouchure at the wrong time for auditioning (all band placements require annual auditions and there is no tenure security if you previously were in a certain level of band).
Glad to hear her music director is so supportive.
That’s so disappointing! Has she considered E-stim for the TMJ? My daughter is a clarinet major and has gone through bouts of TMJ where she’s barely able to open her mouth. It usually comes on at peak stress periods. A night guard has helped. The dentist said it’s very common among female patients and often goes away as they get into their mid-20’s. If she isn’t ready to audition, it’s always an option to go to a college that offers a non-audition music BA and then audition in to the studio when she’s ready. She can start on theory, music history, gen ed classes.
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I just ordered the e-stim device from Amazon thanks for the suggestion. I have TMJ and years ago got the mouth guard and did PT but forgot they started therapy with a tens. I didn’t even know she had TMJ she didn’t complain about pain and maybe mentioned jaw clicking once a long time ago. After looking online I see it’s really common with clarinet players. I’m glad your daughter doesn’t have much issue with it anymore and has good treatment when she does.
Jaw pain was the one and only time I tried botox. It did help for awhile (along with my night guard).
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I’m so sorry. That is rough! I hope the PT helps quickly so she can still play.
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D25 just took a practice PSAT. If the actual PSAT is similar, then it is significantly easier than the paper version. However, the scoring is weird. D25 got 3 wrong on the 2nd writing section and 3 wrong on the 2nd math section and her score was 1430 out of 1520. So I would think that since it’s decently easy it might be harder to get National Merrit but also the scoring might be weird so maybe not. I don’t know if we’ll be able to go on past indexes to try to predict if our kids will be NMSF.
This whole thing is a big ? to me at this point.
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What is weird about the scoring? Does she have a paper score to compare it to? What did you expect her score to be?
I agree that we will have to wait and see on the indexes - I think compass will probably be able to get their hands on some general numbers once score come out and the commended cut off will likely indicate a shift or not.
Yes. With her SAT she took in August it was roughly 10 points off per wrong answer ( slightly less because of the curve) but she got 6 total wrong on the PSAT practice and it was 90 points off. Just seems weighted differently. She got the hardest 2nd section (100% on both 1st English and Math sections) for both English and Math. I know not all questions are weighted the same like the paper test is.
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@MistySteel27
You may already have a PT lined up, but if not, I’m happy to talk to your daughter in the interim. (I’m a PT who treats outpatient ortho, including TMJ.) Feel free to PM me if that would be helpful. I’m a firm believer in it takes a village, and since you all will be hearing from me for the foreseeable future, happy to be an ear for your kid.
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Got it. Yes - I believe it’s on a completely different scale. From what I understand there was significant testing done - something like 15000 took both versions of the test within 30 days and scored roughly the same, as intended.
Also, there is no gotcha in the module step up. According to the overview I listened to the bar for getting the harder module is the equivalent of around 600, ensuring that no high achiever is shut out of a high score because they slipped on a question in module 1.
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My son tells me some questions are worth 10 points and some are worth 20 so that adds up. (3 were 10 and 3 were 20)
Is the NMSQT test next month digital or paper?
Digital
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I’m not a big believer in a lot of chiropractic treatment (apologies to all of the chiropractors out there).
HOWEVER, my son was suffering quite a bit from TMJ. Doctor, dentist and Orthodontist all tried to push it off as someone else’s problem and none were helpful. I happened to see a chiropractor I know socially at a wedding, and somehow it came up. He said that he had some luck in the past with it. One of my knocks on chiropractors is that I feel like many claim to be able to fix things that aren’t really fixable by them, and they also put people on semi-permanent treatment plans. But he said either it will be a ton better after 2 or 3 visits, and my son could probably stop treatment, or it wouldn’t be better at all, in which case my son should stop treatment because if he couldn’t make significant improvement immediately futher treatment was unlikely to be successful.
We figured we had nothing to lose, so my son went in. After the first treatment he was not happy, because the adjustment was pretty painful. He went back in a couple days later, same thing. BUT once the soreness from the adjustment wore off, it was night and day difference. Something was misaligned, and though realignment was painful it was what was needed. That was several years ago, I think he has gone in one other time to get it adjusted when something threw it off again.
Like I said, I’m not a big believer in chiropractor treatment generally, especially when they claim to be able to fix anything other than getting a neck or back back in alignment. But this was a life changer for my son.
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My D25 will take the digital PSAT in October. She has been doing the regular paper SAT practice since she is taking that in November. Where did you find the digital PSAT practice test? Is it on Khan academy? I think it might be good for her to do a practice digital test before she does the real one. She did very well on the PSAT10 so we are hoping to good PSAT and SAT results!
You can take it in the BlueBook app. There are also 4 SAT tests available.
That’s a really kind offer, thank you so much! We’ll see how her appointment goes this week and if I have any questions not addressed by the therapist I’ll definitely reach out. I really appreciate how helpful the people are on here, it really is like a village.
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Late to the game here, but can she utilize any UMASS Dining Halls?
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