<p>I wish I could be there in person to welcome all of you in person. Take pictures and enjoy this first day of a great four years.</p>
<p>D is launched and enjoying every minute of college life so far (as far as we’ve been able to discern). The adventure has begun!</p>
<p>I’m so glad to hear that D of Rayrick is launched and happy. I’m looking carefully at Early Action schools so that I can keep S from the siren-call of Early Decision and keep Olin in the running.</p>
<p>Orientation seems like it’s humming along. They got their Olin laptops this morning and spent the afternoon in Boston doing a scavenger hunt.</p>
<p>My D also seems to be enjoying it. Classes start Thursday!</p>
<p>So P’16s, how are your kids doing? Do they like their laptops? Roommates? Rooms? Classes? Food? Are you adjusting?</p>
<p>My D seems to be doing great. Roomie is great, laptop’s fine, and food is good.</p>
<p>She got her first choice for her AHS elective. She thought their in-class design challenge for the first day of Design Nature was fun (I wish I had gotten to play with lego in college!) and has declared that ModSim will be her favorite class this semester.</p>
<p>She’s looking forward to Club Fair this week and the Babson Dance Ensemble auditions next week.</p>
<p>mathinokc - sounds perfect. If she starts to sound like she is struggling a bit, that is not unusual. First semester is about learning the process, the end result is less significant. NINJAs ae available to help. That is why they are there. Each Olin student has different strengths, varying backgrounds. Some may have done robotics since middle school, some never. Others may have had advanced math or physics. That is ok.</p>
<p>My D is doing well, too. She’s been incredibly busy (White mountains this weekend, checking out various activities, schoolwork, etc). I still haven’t gotten a chance to talk to her much about how classes are going, but the social adjustment seems to be going quite smoothly. I texted her that if she was too busy to call, perhaps she could provide a rating on her overall well-being on a scale of 1 to 10. She responded with a 9. Can’t argue with that :)</p>
<p>No, you definitely can’t argue with a 9 
That is terrific, Rayrick. It does not seem so long ago that your D was sorting through her options. So glad she likes where she landed.</p>
<p>Had a great, newsy skype session with D last night. She’s clearly thriving–liking her friends, liking the classes, liking the various activities, just liking the whole experience. She was grinning through almost the entire call, and seemed vibrant and energized. I asked her whether she was experiencing any frustrations or challenges and, after a lengthy pause, she said “Nope. I can’t think of anything.”</p>
<p>One observation she had that particularly struck me is that she and her peers are so busy and there’s so much going on, she feels like time gets stretched. She can’t believe she’s only been there two weeks. In the evening, stuff that happened in the morning feels like it happened three days ago, because so many things have happened in the intervening hours. I thought that was pretty cool.</p>
<p>It’s early days yet, but so far, things are sounding very positive indeed :)</p>
<p>Rayrick - Thanks for sharing. Hard as it is to believe, it only gets better. DS is starting year two with that same “I’m sooooooooo happy” grin. I’m looking forward to our SSS - Sunday Skype Session.</p>
<p>“Had a great, newsy skype session with D last night” - That’s terrific. I’m jealous </p>
<p>The Olin kids really do seem to bond quickly. They are each very different, yet with a core of similarities too. The work will get hard as the semester goes on, but they survive it happily alongside one another.</p>
<p>Interesting observation about time at Olin. DS was so unbelievably busy during all 4 years that he barely had a chance to breathe (let alone call/message/email:)–now that he’s actually working a 9-5 job, he has LOADS more time!</p>
<p>^ Can you share a little about your DS job and how well (or not well) PGP office did in guiding him thru the process? Does your DS plan to get a grad degree at some point? If so in engineering? If you rather be vague or not answer, I understand.</p>
<p>I don’t want to get specific, so I will PM you. My best advice re: the PGP is “visit early, visit often”. You just never know where the job connection is going to come from, so the more points of contact, the better. Besides, it’s just a good professional habit to get into, in my opinion. I imagine it may also help to be known by the PGP when Oliners are looking to make a job move a couple of years after graduation–we don’t have enough info on this yet, but it just makes sense.</p>
<p>Thanks for that advice.</p>