My D arrived at SFO this am. Any CC parents with kids doing the trip? 5 days with no communication will be a test of my patience.
Parent of a member of the Class of 2018 here. Do y’all have a parents’ FB page? Might get more info and commiseration) there. 
I’m sure your dd will do great!
@Hoggirl. Didn’t even think to look. Thanks for the reminder.
I dropped my daughter off at SPOT this afternoon. The staff was very welcoming and helpful. Tonight, everybody (about 300+ incoming freshmen) is sleeping together on Sand Hill Field. Tomorrow morning, they’ll drive to their respective locations. My daughter’s basecamp is a camp site in Lassen National Park (Mt. Shasta area). Everybody will return Monday morning to civilization at Stanford. Take heart. The kids look like they are having a great time and appear to be in good hands. Congrats to your daughter and parents!
@slushy, thank you. After I wrote the post, D did send me a photo of the paper they handed out to parents. It helped me breath a bit easier. Great to hear from you that they already looked like they were having fun. Congrats to you and yours as well!!
Not a parent, but a recent grad here. You and your D will be very happy that she did choose to sign up for a SPOT trip–in all four years I was there, I didn’t hear of a single person who didn’t enjoy SPOT, and most absolutely loved it. Many groups will have periodic reunions through the year over meals, and a number of lasting friendships are made even though they often don’t end up living in the same dorms. They’re in great hands too, because the students who volunteer to be trip leaders are excellent; the ones that I knew were awesome resources for Frosh to talk to for insider info, aside from just generally being awesome people!
I will just briefly comment on an observation as a former Frosh dorm RA (and as a Frosh myself): When it came to initial expectations about frequency of parental contact, we saw the entire spectrum, running from independent Frosh who really didn’t feel the need to be calling their families much at all to Frosh whose parents expected a phone call and multiple texts every day for all four years.
Without exception, everyone drifted soon towards a happy medium. Not surprisingly, students and parents in the latter group ended up accepting that multiple points of contact daily was simply not realistic over four years, and it eventually became once or twice weekly instead. On the other hand, students in the first group pretty much always ended up calling their parents for the important moments–including how to do laundry for the first time, picking classes, getting excited about new friends and new relationships, how their first midterms/final exams went, declaring their major, first major job/graduate school/professional school interview, and, finally, figuring out family celebration plans for graduation. I imagine those would be the moments parents most want to hear about in the end, so it always seemed to work out nicely. 
Your D chose a great school, in my completely unbiased opinion I think that my own decision to attend Stanford was easily one of the top three decisions I’ve made in my life. I’m confident that she’ll absolutely love her next four years there, and that you’ll absolutely love hearing about them.
@Era991 thank you for your lovely response. What I found interesting while trying to research SPOT was that I could only find info on the Stanford site. Nothing I googled could give me any insight. In the world of 24/7 social media it was odd to me that I could not find anything outside the school site.
When it comes to parental contact we are giving her the reigns. Mind you, if a week or so happens to go by without any, I will say something. She’s a rather independent kid but I do feel she’ll do her best to appease me.
It is great to know that the student volunteers can also give them helpful info prior to the start of the year.
I cannot wait to see her and hear about this week.
Thanks again!!
@cardinal2020mom - we let ds drive the amount of contact for the most part other than we wanted a phone call once a week, which we usually do on Sunday afternoons. I initially let him decide frequency of texting. I didn’t want to “bug” him too much in the beginning, in particular. After awhile, I would initiate texting some, too. I saw something (I believe here on CC) that I really liked:
For items that require a response, begin the text with a ?. This cues ds that I expect a reply within a reasonable period of time. Only one? at a time.
EX: ? We are booking Christmas air. Would you rather fly out at 8:00 am or noon when you come home?
For items of interest that require no response, precede the text with “FYI.” This cues ds that I don’t expect an answer. Of course he can respond if he likes!
EX: FYI - Susie Q got homecoming queen!
POL - When you have neither seen nor heard from her (or observed her presence on social media) text “POL.”
This stands for “proof of life,” and requires a response of some sort within a reasonable period of time. Just an emoticon or something. Fortunately, I’ve never had to resort to that one!!!
I know it sounds rather contrived, but my ds is really independent and not super-communicative, so sharing these expectations ahead of time helped us. Especially the FYI bit. It let me share things I wanted to share without ds feeling obligated to respond.
@Hoggirl I love that!!! I think I’ll follow suit. Thanks!