<p>The point of the module is to encourage safe behavior, discourage students from binge drinking, and offer resources for students who have a drinking problem. There’s no reason to be offended.</p>
<p>After a few modules, D said she had to do a survey about her habits, and then everything was a bit more personalized. I guess the first couple sections were just a bit much for her. “How do I know how I’d react after drinking 3-4 drinks in an hour?!?!” She felt like she would “fail” due to lack of experience. I think after the survey, the modules were more focused.</p>
<p>There is such a thing as “freshman follies.” Most Vandy students had extremely disciplined lives academically and were deeply busy with some kind of extra curriculars. Just saying that great kids with great values sometimes accidentally take that third fourth fifth at a party and need to understand that there is help on campus for their safety. Roommates and friends call for help for friends who can’t get the medical help they need for themselves if they drank too much. (The class is not necessarily about chronic binge drinking or abusive addictive drinking.) Thank heavens for the phone calls made by roommates in situations I know about at Vandy and the close location of an ER. Kids die from vomiting while drunk…they don’t have to have a history of abusing anything for this common judgment error. We had a student at Cornell here…an honors grad from a St. Louis high school who died in his sleep from this exact scenario while visiting a friend at UVA. He had an abusive drinking problem that escaped his parents’ awareness. Cornell students tried to get him to get help. He was disinvited from his frat…and dead within six months of college. Someone at UVA paid a price for providing him alcohol. He posted on CC all the time, arguing with parents about how “unnecessary rules were” regarding drinking and how well he had it all under control. The course at Vandy is also about how to know when to call for help for an aquaintance or friend. And RA is not necessarily on hand to make this decision for you. All colleges make students take this course. Liability concerns are nation wide. There are plenty of largely sober social drinkers at Vandy and plenty of non drinkers as well as a fulsome frat world and night life world where alcohol is available. I didn’t talk to my sons much about drinking because of their disciplined social lives but plenty of their friends in the same high school circles had incidents, arrests, public drunkenness episodes. I should have talked with them more directly about our family values and life experience (yes a couple of our most fun college friends are now alcoholics and yes we have our own philosophy on alcohol to share with our kids, which is basically that it should not be a big reason for their weekends or events but just an aspect of a dinner or party that has sensible limits.)… Have that conversation with your own kid.</p>
<p>Agree with the above. All U’s have this to educate both the drinkers and non drinkers. IMHO universities need to do more to educate their students about alcohol issues and the immediate and long term dangers that arise from binge alcohol use. The immediate concerns are student safety, crime, and assaults. Data show 11% of college age binge drinkers go on the have issues with alcohol addiction and all the misery this brings.
The students are the first to know when their peers are stepping over the line from social to problem drinkers and need to have the awareness of what resources are available to help their friends before its too late. Your non-drinking child can use this information to help a friend in need.</p>
<p>Not that I think anything a parent says will necessarily matter, as their lives are their own, but I did tell both my sons that we very much hoped that their sexual experiences and lives would never be conducted when they were under the influence or with anyone of the opposite sex was under the influence. Lives can be so damaged by that common mistake. </p>
<p>Just registered us for Parents’ Weekend :)</p>
<p>@Sorrento Even more critical, do you have hotel reservations?</p>
<p>This year we are staying for a week so that we can explore Tennessee and Kentucky. We know we won’t be seeing our son that much since he’ll be busy during the week.</p>
<p>@Go9ersjrh, are you making specific plans for your exploration or are you going to just get in the car to see where the spirit takes you? I don’t know how far you are planning to wander from Nashville, but Lexington is my favorite part of Kentucky. I live in another part of the state, but spent 3 years in Lexington as a teenager and then my college years there. You would be too early to see racing at Keeneland, but the September sale will be going on while you are in the area. There is not a prettier setting for horse racing and selling than Keeneland, except for maybe Saratoga. There’s the Bourbon Trail in that area as well, if that appeals, and the Horse Park. </p>
<p>Good morning! Thanks for the update that parents’ weekend reservations are up. @Sorrento – did you get an email? I haven’t received anty further communication about it?</p>
<p>Secondly, I’m sure this has been discussed before but I don’t have the stamina today to go through old pages, what’s the best way to purchase/rent textbooks economically? Any advice? Do students resell their books at the end of the year? Can you annotate in rented textbooks? </p>
<p>Thanks in advance for all the help.</p>
<p>My D has been having good luck with used textbooks at BetterWorldBooks. She also likes that the profits go to fighting illiteracy around the world. There are also some sites that will compare prices (older D used bigwords, but I know there are others…). </p>
<p>Older D bought some used books with guaranteed buyback options - so she could easily sell at the end of the semester, or keep if she decided it would be useful in the future. Or students can just resell the books on their own.</p>
<p>Sorry, no info about rented textbooks.</p>
<p>S has used predominately Amazon to buy new, buy used, rent and sell back. He has also used the Vanderbilt bookstore to purchase the access cards for classes with online homework and books. I haven’t figured out a way to purchase the online stuff any cheaper. It all seems to be the same price.</p>
<p>He has rented his math books since he only needed them for 1 semester. He bought his chemistry book new since he used it two semesters and then sold it back. In the end, the chemistry book cost about $30 much less than if we had rented it. You do take a risk that the sell back price could drop significantly though. Books less than $75, he usually buys and then plans to sell back.</p>
<p>This upcoming semester, he needs 2 books for a total of $80. Unfortunately he needs 2 online accounts for over $300 with no opportunity to sell anything back.</p>
<p>@2VU0609 I’m not a horse person so I know we won’t be going to Kentucky to look at horses. Now the Bourbon trail sounds interesting. I can compare it to the wine tasting we do in California. : ) We are thinking of doing some touring of civil war sites around Bowling Green. We are also looking at a kayaking trip through the Lost Caves since it’s near Bowling Green. Last year we went to Mammoth Cave. There is still a lot that we haven’t done in Nashville - Country Music Hall of Fame, Bluebird Cafe, Bel Meade Plantation, Belmont Mansion.</p>
<p>I will make some plans for a few days and the rest we will just figure out. The condo we are staying at for the first part of the week has a pool so I’m sure we’ll enjoy sometime there. I am hoping to get out in the evening to here some live music.</p>
<p>It’s a great opportunity for us to explore an area we have spent very little time in.</p>
<p>@Go9ersjrh, I hope you are all enjoying the summer! It’s going really fast…</p>
<p>How does your son return the books? Does he bring them home with him and then ship them back or does he ship them back from school? I don’t think my son would ship them back from school and I can’t see him bringing them home on the plane with him so we just use Barnes and Nobles at school which is definitely not the most economical.</p>
<p>The talk of parents weekend got me thinking of fall so I just booked son’s Thanksgiving and Christmas flights home.</p>
<p>@Momthreeboys I have family in Atlanta so we picked S up in Nashville and helped him move out. I took the books back to Atlanta and mailed them from there. It would have been hard for S to do it in Nashville since he did not have any boxes to pack them in.</p>
<p>I’ve had the Thanksgiving flights booked since February. I’m holding off on Christmas until he confirms he has a finally on the last day of finals. I’d like to fly him home sooner if I could.</p>
<p>@Go9ersjrh – Yes, thank you for checking, but that was one of the first crazy things I did once D was accepted (right after making reservations for move-in, of course)! We have also booked flights for those weekends, plus Fall Break, Tgiving and Christmas – all via SW, so changeable. (And I’ve made some restaurant reservations 
Yes, got a little carried away.) You all have no idea how much help each of your posts on CC provides. I have learned so much (including that I needed to register for the Athenian Sing asap, which I did). Thank you, dear Vandy parents who post here.</p>
<p>And, @go2mom: no, I did not get a recent email about it, but I had it noted on my own calendar that registration would open up on Monday morning. If I don’t calendar things, I forget. Was just trying to pass along the heads up.</p>
<p>Now, if only we could get housing assignments….</p>
<p>@Sorrento Check August 1 when the tuitiion bills get posted. It should have the room assignment. At least it did last year.</p>
<p>The Vandy post office has free USPS boxes in a number of sizes that are great for shipping books. You can basically just walk to the post office with the book and the shipping address and take care of it all right there.</p>
<p>How much/often does it snow? Do I need to buy boots and warm clothes, or would a hoodie and jeans suffice (from southern TX, so not used to cold weather)?</p>
<p>^^Snow rarely, but frequent temps in the 30’s and even 20’s at night in Jan / Feb so maybe add a coat and hat and even gloves.</p>
<p>^^A Goretex like shell over a hoody for a moving student probably takes care of 95% of the situations you’d confront.</p>