You should check out the College Essay Journal! I go to a really big public school, and the book has lots of good advising tips that I never would have known about. I’ve only met my counselor a couple times so this has been a huge help.
D26 had fall break last week. All of us (me, DH, D24, D26) took the entire week off and unplugged. It was really nice to have a break.
D26’s classes are going well so far, with probably the exception of spanish. She’s got the grammar down fine, but the vocabulary is what gets her. She’s understanding math a lot better this year…better teacher than last year. She’s got a B in math right now, compared to getting C’s most of last year on math tests.
D26 took PSAT 9 yesterday at school. Took it cold w/no prep, said she didn’t have time to finish each section. But we purposely treated this as practice.
She loves loves LOVES the gov’t & politics class. Eats it up and talks about it almost the whole way home from school. Also likes her AP Computer Science Principles class, said that they started coding stuff this week…they’re talking about variables right now.
D26 said that next year, she’s probably going to not participate in VEX Robotics, wants to join the board games club instead. She also loves it when they have organized debates in history class. I suggested that next year, she consider joining the debate team. She’s very introverted, but loves to debate both sides of different topics and I think it might be a good opportunity for her to build some confidence & come out of her shell.
Hope everybody’s kiddos are doing well. HS is a big adjustment for sure.
D26 also took PSAT 9 yesterday, no prep, just for practice. She thinks she did very well on the editing section, pretty well on the reading comp but a little too slow, and terrible on all math. This would honestly be consistent with our entire family, so she’s probably right. 
But not sweating it at all, just practice.
Wow! That’s great that your schools offer PSAT 9. Do most schools offer this? Ours does not, we only get the one sitting of the PSAT in fall of junior year and they do not even have capacity for the whole class to take it. Last year they had a lottery and S23 didn’t get in. He could have used more practice before taking the SAT, so I have been thinking about if we should try to do things differently for D26.
Son is strongly considering track for college, so we are starting that process now. Fastest in middle school, only 9th grader on Varsity this year but of course, lots of competition out there!
He’s looking to get D1 times this year or next. Is a strong student, taking whatever honors and AP classes his school offers (he’s at a university lab school in the South). Hopefully he can keep up his 4.0 from last year, he had a 4.0 the end of first quarter last week, but he’s already enjoying high school social life, so we shall see if he can juggle all of it, haha:) Great to join this group!
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Meant to add-no PSAT for 9th but it is offered practice for 10th and then the PSAT in 11th. I will have him take the ACT for practice next summer, if he wants.
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Same here, not PSAT 9 or 10. Only the one for Juniors and even that is not advertised or pushed.
S26 is loving HS so far…because he has the easiest schedule ever. They have block schedule, so only four classes per semester and two of his are PE and Quest for Success, a required Freshman life skills class. Next term might be a rude awakening in terms of work load 
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D26 came home today w/a permission slip for a field trip. They’re taking the 9th & 10th graders on a field trip to U of A next month (we’re in the Phoenix area). Field trip will apparently involve a tour of the honors college, lunch in the student union, a regular campus tour, and info session w/current students. If it’s anything like the ASU tour that D24 took in 10th grade last year, the ‘current students’ will be alumni from their HS.
D26 said she wants to go on the field trip for the sole purpose of not having to go to a study hall all day instead. 
D26 got put in an honors level elective that she did not ask for and she lost her mind on the first day of classes. I told her to talk to the school guidance counselor to see what her options were but told her I would not get involved. The school told her she was stuck in that class and she would have to deal with it. She was a MESS for the first few days of class. And now it is her favorite teacher and her favorite class!!!
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That’s awesome!
Hello there! Glad to see 2026 thread.
D26 is our youngest, we have a Senior too.
So far D26 is handling course work well. She joined some clubs and enjoying her highschool life.
Will see you all around for the next few years😊
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Trimester 1 grades came out today at our school. Sheesh, already?! I had D26 create a raise.me account so she can track extracurriculars & courses & grades for micro-scholarships through high school.
D26 & all the other 9th graders are doing a field trip to Univ of Arizona on Thursday of this week (we live in the Phoenix area). She’s looking forward to it and has already been looking up some info about ASU and U of A to compare the 2, but all of the college talk w/her older sister is probably what’s driving that.
D26 said that she’s probably not going to do VEX Robotics again next year in 10th grade. DH is disappointed because he’s always hoped that ONE of our kids would find a passion for engineering, but I told D26 that’s ok and that she will need to pick a different academic sort of club to participate in next year instead. Because, after all, that’s how you learn about what you do and do not like…you try different stuff out, sort of like trying on different pairs of shoes.
To be honest, I think that she should join the debate team next year because I think she’d be good at it. 
One thing at a time though.
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D26’s field trip to U of A was today. Here’s all I got out of her afterwards:
- “We were supposed to be ready to get on the bus at 1:45, but we didn’t get there until 2:00.”
- “Um, good” (answer to my question of ‘How did it go?’)
- “Eh, fine” (answer to my question of ‘What did you think?’)
- “There was a really long line at Chick-Fil-A at the student union, so I’m glad that I brought my lunch.”
- “The bus ride was really long.”
- “Um, yeah, because, ya know, it was a Thursday, not a weekend” (when I asked if there were lots of students on campus)
- “ah…no” (when I asked if they got to see inside a dorm room)
- “they told us some weird story about a guy a long time ago who told the football team to ‘bear down.’” Ok, kiddo, something tells me that you totally missed the point of that.
So there you have it. I got bupkiss out of her.
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Hi fellow parents!
My first time posting in this thread, so here’s the basics: My daughter is a freshman at a small private all-girls boarding school. It was a little bumpy at first, because she was telling us that academically she wasn’t feeling very challenged, but now that the first term has concluded, she is feeling really good about things, the pace has picked up academically, and she’s settled in and happy.
Just starting to think about this summer and what she should do with her time. The last two summers she enrolled in the EXPLO summer programs at Sarah Lawrence, and we may consider that again, but wondering what others are thinking about for this upcoming summer?
Thanks! Hope everyone has had a great Thanksgiving!
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My D26 is going to spend her summer working, doing her athletic workouts at the high school, and enjoying time with friends. We may look into some sort of trip/experience her summer between sophomore and junior year but we’ll see.
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Nice! I wish mine could work, but she won’t turn 15 until the end of the summer and there really are not any employers in our area who take 14 year olds, from what I’ve seen. I’m hoping to find something that will keep her from having her nose in her phone all summer! Even if just for a couple weeks
Look for volunteer opportunities at the library, local hospital, parks & rec or another area of interest. Many summer camps have volunteer junior counselor positions as well.
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My kid will likely spend most of summer doing counselor in training, same as last year. Attended the same camp since first grade so it’s a long-term love. They are a little young for their grade (just turned 14 a month ago) and will do CIT until age 16 when they can become a proper counselor. Wanted to do some animal shelter volunteering too but the age is an issue there too at the places we’ve looked at so far.
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Hello! I just found this page and joined for the first time. My son is a freshman this year. His classes are:
H English
H History
H Chem
Geometry
Spanish
Game Design
Electricity
His main extracurricular is Theater - this takes up most of his free time. He’s a super smart kid but lacks motivation and organization.
I’m looking forward to getting to know some
of you and getting some good information on this site.
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Welcome to the group!