<p>Sluggbug: I laughed so hard at your post I fell off my chair. I remember asking my husband once to talk to our daughter about what guys are like. He looked at me with this helpless expression and said: "How am I supposed to know what guys are like?"</p>
<p>kjofkw: Been exactly where you are with our first child. Early in high school, we explained to her that her grades and activities were not about pleasing us or not pleasing us, but that it was our job to give her the information she needed to have choices later about college. One bit of that information was that colleges would expect her to have done something with her time besides hang out. She also had fallen in love with Seattle and mentioned the University of Washington. So, we gave her a catalogue from UW which included the entering gpa. That really removed us from the category of nags and put us more into the category of advisors who knew what they were talking about (at least on the college admissions issue :)
I did find a summer art programs for her, but the main way she processed the info we gave her was to gather a group of her friends and start a mural project. They called around town to see who might want a mural, went to art stores to get the supplies, designed and painted it themselves. It sounds like something your daughter and some artistic friends might think about. The project -- which was done for the children's room in the library downtown -- led to her first afterschool job, working at the library, as well as becoming the basis of her college essay. But at some point we also realized that for this kid, working part time was going to be her main extra curricular. You can lead to a certain extent, but sometimes you also have to follow.</p>