I remember doing a career test in high school and it sorted kids into whether they were interested in ideas, people, or things. I'd guess that girls orient more to people while boys tend towards things. It may be nurture or innate. Watching how differently even little kids play on average, I'd bet there is some innate tendency in the mix, but nothing deterministic.

I don't see that with math here - we run in homeschool circles, but with science and math there doesn't seem to be a huge sex gap. For algebra classes at co-op, the girls are more often than not the better students. But, early on (middle school) there is a skew of the girls towards bio sci. When kids choose science olympiad events, the girls disproportionately request anatomy, epidemiology, genetics, or cell biology and boys disproportionately request astronomy and circuits. Epidemiology has math (especially at the levels of middle schoolers). but it doesn't seem to be a deterrent. But, the kids that are several years ahead in math (have taken calc 2 or 3 in high school) are disproportionately male. And, as to your other post - I agree. I kind of talked around it, but many scientists and engineers live and breathe work, especially at the PhD level. I know that he's a controversial figure, but I remember a talk where Jordan Peterson said that in counseling lawyers he found that men and women succeed equally at moving up the chain in big law until they turned 30, at which point women were more likely to decide that they wanted their life to be more than work. It wasn't different abilities or overt discrimination, it was different priorities. I think it's true in research, too. Spouse and I both earned PhDs and were successful in our fields. But, at some point I realized that I had no desire to spend the rest of my life absorbed in research. If I could have done it as a 10 hour/week part-time gig when I had little kids, I might have kept at it. But, it's all or nothing, so nothing it is. And, it turns out that I love teaching (which I could do part-time - I taught 1 CC class a semester for several years). And teaching led me to homeschooling, which has led to me volunteering...and it's a bit of 'if you give a mouse a cookie' but seeing what was missing in my college student's education has made me passionate about elementary education and I'm looking for new volunteer work once my older graduates. But all of that is work that can be done part-time (whether paid or volunteer). I realized a long time ago that I would never want to put in the time and mental energy that spouse does - it was fun in our 20s, but isn't a lifestyle that I want. We know women who do, but there are fewer of them than there are men.

I don't tend to think it's a crisis if every field doesn't have equal male-female representation. I don't want artificial barriers to entry for either sex, but even if all things were equal I don't think that there is likely to be an equal division among career paths. All it takes is a few skewing events - if more women choose to be stay-at-home parents than men, and also more women choose careers involving children (such as teachers), then there are fewer women, relative to the number of men, who are left to work in engineering. And there are many fields where women outnumber men. One kid did a lot of speech therapy at a university where students were trained, and females outnumbered males by a wide margin in every class over the years that we were there. I would love to see more part-time opportunities, but there are also fields where I struggle to see how it would work. My college dorm room had 3 of us, and all 3 have STEM PhDs. All of us teach in varying capacities, because the hours are the easiest for working around with a family. When I left academic research after my postdoc, I thought about ways that research jobs could be turned to part-time, and I couldn't really see how it would work in most situations. People work long hours, and the job is hard to share. The physical work is easy enough - I often shared that with undergrads in training - but without somebody to spend time daily to assimilate all of the information into one brain, it would have been challenging to keep the project moving forward and catch all of the observations that need to be made (usually at least 1/4 of my time as a bench scientist was spent thinking and reading, and had I worked 1/2 of the hours and shared the job, we would both need to spend the same amount of time reading and thinking that I was doing). I feel like some areas of engineering tend to be that way, too. Many engineers spend a lot of time working to produce a product ASAP for a customer, and somebody working 1/2 time would take longer to do that. But, it's hard to spread the work out between people because one person has to know all of it to catch mistakes. It's not much different than a household in some ways - for any given 'project' at the house, either spouse and I are in charge of it because otherwise it would be challenging to get it all done. Usually only one of us plans a meal - we may leave directions for the other to put something in the oven at a particular time, but we aren't both just doing things at different times to work towards preparation with neither of us having planned and coordinated it. There may be solutions that work in some situations, but spouse and I have spent a lot of time talking about it in our different fields, and it would be hard. I do wonder if there could be openings for part-time work that is more erratic - hourly or 'by the piece' work, rather than a salaried part-time job. That might allow for part-time to mean 'work on this short-term project and then have a break when it's over' which could work better with the ebb and flow of schedules and also work for an engineering company's priorities. Or an hourly worker whose job didn't have a lot of promotion potential but could do certain parts of a project in a predictable amount of time so that the company could work around it and nobody else would be dependent on daily interactions - they're just waiting for a specific finished product. It also probably depends heavily on the type of engineering that one does. Spouse works on things that tend to be multi-year projects involving teams scattered across the country (and sometimes world). Lots of coordination, lots of travel and/or conference calls at odd hours across time zones, and no real 'end' to a project. On the other hand, a structural engineer can be working over a much shorter time frame. They may work on a big building project, or they may be assessing a house that was damaged by a fire. The fire might involve a day of a local visit and then however long it takes to crunch some numbers and write a report. It would be a lot easier to have that kind of work be part-time than what spouse does.

It's unfortunate that STEM is all lumped together. The bio sciences are heavily female, especially at the undergrad level. Even 30 years ago our starting grad school class in genetics had 3 males and 10 females. Engineering fields tend to be more male. I also think it's somewhat dependent on the community. We are in the middle of Science Olympiad and just tried a Science Bowl (a quiz bowl-like contest but hard core science). On our homeschool teams, the split is usually around 50-50, with just some variation from year to year. At other schools, the teams were sometimes highly skewed male or female, making me think it's mostly group dynamics.

Spouse and I both have STEM degrees (computer engineering with a math minor and biochem). At the time that we studied, I had a fairly high number of English and social science/humanities classes required (at least 2 English 200-level and above, a certain number of 300-level courses). Spouse had fewer hours, but had more specific requirements. There was a university-wide requirement for either tech writing or public speaking. We printed the degree plans for computer engineering at the schools kid is considering, and the requirements are similar between schools but somewhat different than what we took. Many schools require public speaking, and many have a list of courses in each of several categories and students must choose 1 or more from each category - global perspectives, multicultural requirement, etc. Some states require either US History or Western Civ for their public U students. Each prof and course can vary dramatically in how they assess students - 25-50 multiple choice questions, a test with short answers, analysis papers, weekly reflections, etc. The one private school that kid considered didn't require specific classes like Western Civ, but did have a fairly high number of humanities classes that had to be taken on campus (not DE) since they prioritized well-roundedness even though it was an engineering school (Rose-Hulman). My kid found that DE British Lit, Philosophy (ethics) and Psychology would fulfill requirements at some of kid's preferred schools (kid APd out of composition and US History). The classes didn't have huge writing requirements, but there were frequent reflection writings (sometimes posted on message boards) and some 2-3 page papers. British Lit, for example, required compare-contrast between 2 works of lit. Lab reports are very discipline-specific. Physics labs at the schools that we were involved in required more calculations and not a traditional report. Biology only had a handful of lab reports (but, at one school where I taught, the lab was reworked to have every-other-week lab reports). Chemistry (all of it - freshman, organic, quantitative analysis) required weekly lab reports. Biochem (400 level) only had a handful of lab reports each semester, but they could be 10+ pages long. The breakdowns could vary by school and which specific classes you take, but the point is that even within STEM there is a ton of variation. I second the idea of looking specifically at each school to see what supports are offered. We've heard of several schools that seem to focus on providing support for specific student issues - one does a fantastic job with dyslexia, others have great autism support, etc. This makes sense, in that it can be hard for a small school to have the resources to provide extensive help for a variety of needs. I would definitely check out multiple schools and not rule out big schools unless you feel that your student would be overwhelmed. I saw that one of kid's potential big state schools has a section of a dorm set aside for students on the spectrum - I'm not sure how many it can accommodate, but it was on the housing page where it listed other living-learning communities.

In both my family and my part of the country, old recipes stick around. There are lots of variations on 7-layer salad, but it's one of the dishes that my extended family requests that I bring to Thanksgiving. There was a restaurant nearby that served it as a main dish topped with grilled chicken (the restaurant burned down - otherwise it would still be serving it!). But, we still make deviled eggs, too. 🙂 A local tearoom offers deviled eggs, pear salad (a 1/2 canned pear with goop and a cherry in the divot), and a cherry jello salad among their side options, to accompany your chicken salad croissant or quiche. It's a popular ladies lunch spot.

Some of the kids that I volunteer with are taught this way - if they have 62 x 27 then they make a square that looks something like 60 2 20 7 and then they fill it in like a punnet square. I think it's a useful way for them to see what's happening, but they don't always seem to go back and show them how to do the algorithm and explain how it's the same thing, so kids continue to do this really inefficient method. They can make a bigger square and do hundreds. It is also a way of doing mental math, but the kids that I work with are often using a chart with the multiplication tables written on it to look up each step so definitely no mental math happening. They do something similar for division - each problem takes 1/3 of a page because they draw these big boxes and do something in each box.

I've been involved in several kinds. Sometimes it's just trying to help young kids with homework the same way that a parent might. Sometimes it's pulling kids out to start at the beginning, teaching phonics or arithmetic independent of the school assignment. Sometimes a person would want to work long term with 1-2 kids, helping them manage their algebra. I've seen kids make huge strides in after school programs, but nothing was offered to them in school. Schools say that they want volunteers, but across 2-3 states and 20 years I have not found that to be true.

I would encourage him to get the AS or do something that would earn a certificate so that he has a backup plan in case of injury. But, I wouldn't push a 4-year degree on a student at the end of that. I told both of my kids that I want them to have a plan for how to earn a living, but they don't need a 4-year degree unless the degree is required for the plan. If their choice had a risk of injury, I'd encourage a certificate in a related field. The learning would be useful for what they want to do, and the certificate would be a back-up plan.

In many places, the schools don't seem to want volunteers. When spouse worked at a national lab, there was an office in charge of volunteering. I talked to the person in charge and she said that she had a list of people wanting to help tutor, and the schools wouldn't return their calls. Occasionally an elementary school would ask for somebody to read a book, but nobody wanted tutors. I attended a church that worked hard to set up a tutoring project - the vision with the high school principal was that we'd meet at the high school and be available for all feeder schools (several elementary, 2-3 middle). When a new principal came, they said that the majority of the kids that we helped were elementary kids so the high school didn't need to host it even though a couple of counselors and librarians were volunteering their time to be there and let us in. They suggested that our tutors go to the various schools during the day, which would have spread 10 people across 7-8 schools and eliminated all who had jobs. The program was shut down. I've volunteered for a decade at afterschool programs in our area, and my hope once my younger can drive is that I'll be able to volunteer tutor at a local elementary 1-2 mornings each week. But, I also would guess that I have maybe a 50-50 shot of actually being able to do it. I'm hoping that the supervisor at the Boys and Girls Club where I volunteer will put in a good word for me at a school, because I know that the only way I'll be able to do it is if I find some teacher or admin willing to let it happen. My parents were actively discouraged from volunteering during my high school years - anything outside of athletic/band booster was not wanted.

I found myself leading middle school youth for a semester. With the constraints that we had - we met for an hour - I found that spending 20 minutes each on social (snack, maybe a game, maybe just social time), Bible lesson, and service project worked pretty well. For service, we made cards, packed food or toiletry bags for the blessing box, braided old shirts for toys for an animal shelter, assembled things needed at the church (VBS decorations, luminaries for the Christmas program). Our church serves several distinct groups and has something of a culture clash (one of my kids quit going to certain things because they were tired of being cursed at - the cursing kids desperately need the influence of the church, but traditional church kids get tired of the behavior...it's a challenge that we are dealing with). But, as we deal with that, part of the conflict is that some kids just want a social time and don't want to have to 'work', and they see Bible study as work. It's kind of settled out so that different activities at the church draw different crowds and have different agendas to accommodate that - some kids only come for Sunday school, which is mostly a lesson, while others come for social time on Wed. Not much service right now, but that will come once we get the behavior under control.

My older struggled with this some. At some point, we had a conversation where kid said 'I always try to do my best work' which is sort of what we'd said when they were younger - do your best. It took time to help kid understand that, especially as you get older, what is really meant is 'do your best with a reasonable amount of effort'. A 5 point reading response does not require the same amount of effort that a college application essay does. We actually talked explicitly about how much time was reasonable for different types of assignments and encouraged kid to try to get them done with that timeline as a guide. It seemed to help - kid still sometimes takes longer than expected, but it's usually reasonable. My younger, on the other hand, gets overwhelmed by the thought of an assignment where it isn't completely clear what to do. We have had meltdowns over coming up with a thesis sentence. This is more of an ADHD/anxiety thing than an academic ability problem. You could be looking at something else, but we've had 2 different possibilities at my house.

Yes, like catz said, it's about loving a school that wants you instead of pining for one that you didn't get in to, or waiting to get off of a waitlist when you have acceptances anywhere. It starts with finding safety and target schools that you like and would be happy to go to. You don't want to feel like 'I'm stuck at Bad College' - you want to be excited about each college that you apply to so that you could be happy at any of them. For my kid, UA-H is a safety. But, their internship opportunities are actually very appealing to my kid, so when kid got that as the first acceptance the thought was 'Yay, I may not end up there but I have an option that I like!'. Some schools are better communicators than others, and it's OK for that to matter, too. Some schools have irritated kid with their process, while others have impressed kid with their efficiency. Kid doesn't care much about swag or VIP events, but kid does appreciate clear and timely communication and a streamlined process. And, things like acceptance for the honors college communicate 'you are one of our top X%' so you may be eligible for money and opportunities. There may be some other advantages for a particular school, but it's useful to consider when narrowing the list.

Those are my kid's stats too - 1590, 4.0UW, a bunch of AP and DE - and kid was also accepted to engineering. There was a last minute SRAR glitch, but it could also be OOS or essays or ?? But kid has divided colleges into categories and Clemson, Auburn, and VT are in the same category. We've heard over and over 'love the school that loves you back' and while none of the schools in that category will give the $ that UAH will, the other 2 have shown more love (although VT definitely has cool buildings!).

I haven't updated in a while...we just got an acceptance from Virginia Tech, which was the last to respond since kid applied early everywhere. Funny enough, we were there last weekend for a Science Olympiad tournament so we got to see it. Neat campus, but, no Honors College - it may have been due to an SRAR issue that popped up at the last minute - but that may have eliminated it even though we enjoyed campus. But, we need some reason to start making choices so that's as good as any. I don't remember what all I've posted, so I'll summarize - we've got acceptances from Auburn, Clemson (with honors college), UA-Huntsville (will apply to honors - it's not crazy competitive), Rose-Hulman, VT, UT-K, and TN Tech. With kid's criteria of not pretentious, not in a city, preferring the south since there's no reason to have to fly if there is someplace reasonable within driving range, that list covered a decent number of schools with engineering. Kid has good stats but admissions has been so crazy that we were afraid not to apply to a bunch of places since most are out of state. We sat down with kid last night and said that it was time to start narrowing it down, and while there is some pondering to do I think it's probably Clemson and UA-H as the top contenders. My kids grew up with Clemson since spouse and I both went there, and kid was very impressed with the research opportunities that the faculty members discussed (it really isn't a fair comparison in some ways -we know people there). Huntsville offers great internship opportunities and great automatic $. For some of the schools, we won't know about merit awards until late because they like to bundle it into a package and FAFSA is so delayed. t's always scary to press buttons, but I think that kid may be ready to start declining some offers next week. With some of the southern schools getting crazy numbers of applicants, hopefully that will free up some spaces on the wait lists. I wish this process wasn't so wonky.

One of my kids would have chosen homeschooling even if minimal social contact were available. As it is, daily ball practice, weekly co-op, some sort of academic team practice most weeks, and the weekly things like scouts and church and some workouts seem to be plenty for this kid. He seems to be liked by peers, fits in fine, has a good time if there is a planned outing (a meal or travel in conjunction with an activity) and sometimes texts with people but doesn't hang out at a friend's house like I did as a teen. It feels like a good level of people time for this kid, who doesn't enjoy things that feel like a 'waste of time' like watching movies or playing video games. Kid is always up for a practice (or, in college, likely a study group), a pickup game, or a workout and will probably join in on a meal outing but otherwise would rather read or go for a run. For my younger, I've considered school in part because this kid loves being around people. But, younger likes the people that are already in their activities. And the activities are numerous - a sport (club and a homeschool team that plays schools), a homeschool martial arts class, music lessons, some academic competition team stuff, and co-op. When we aren't busy on weekends, kid likes to have friends over or go to their houses. I sometimes drop off kids to roller skate, and kid frequently texts or interacts with GroupMes for various groups. The lists for both kids look similar, but the level of social that younger gets from the activities is much higher. If we were in an area that didn't have these things, older would probably still prefer being homeschooled, but younger would be in a school setting of some sort. We are really fortunate to be in an area where there are lots of activities either for homeschoolers or that are homeschool-friendly. And it is great that people here, at least in my circles, have never acted like homeschooling was weird - it's treated as another school option so it's easy to join rec/club teams. We get curiosity questions, but nothing negative. I think it would be really hard to be trying to do this in an area without these resources - I have no idea where friends would come from. Many of the homeschool kids that I know are heavily involved in something - dance, 4H, sports, a part-time job as they get older, etc, and I think that is part of where their social outlet comes from.

When I left the academic pathway (I was a postdoc) to stay home and have kids, spouse immediately started planning how to make it easier should I need to function independently financially. Our IRAs are funded equally, my name is on everything, he made sure he had good life insurance, and he always supports my part-time teaching and volunteering which I love but which also gives me a current resume. I would possibly need to downsize-im not sure that I could manage the 3 acres on my own while working-but I could get a house if I sold this one. He's tried to plan for the fact that the sorts of jobs that I could easily get - teacher at a private school, tutor, lab tech- would put food on the table but wouldn't come close to what an engineer in his field earns.

In our area of East TN the interstates are mostly OK but the back roads and neighborhoods are still a mess in many places. It's probably less of an issue for through traffic than for people who live here - locals are Ok if they can make it to a main road, but many can't get out of their neighborhoods.

I know kids who have taken lessons to learn and then play for fun. I know kids who are on their middle and high school teams, which is busy during the competition season (as with any school sport) but otherwise they just play. I don't think anybody does indoor things except as a fun thing. Golf is one of the few sports where you actually can play just by yourself because you are trying to lower your score, but most kids prefer to play with somebody or at least have somebody with them. I do know a few moms who just go walk the course with their kid as he plays. But, these are also moms of high school boys...there comes a point where you look for anything that you can do together during those last few years that you have with them at home (says the mom of a senior, who rides in the car with him every chance that she has). My kid has never expressed an interest, but a lot of kids that we know have. It may be something that he tries this summer since, through an odd series of events, he was randomly given a set of golf clubs. 🙂 A lot of my male relatives like to play a round when they get together on vacation and a couple play regularly.

Some classes had labs a separate courses. Others didn't. It was the usual setup with lab reports or lab practicals, but that grade was 20% of the course, which would be worth more credits. It seemed to vary by department.

It's fascinating how different people's experiences are. I only had 1 class that was 2 tests, but I had several that were just 3-5 tests averaged together. Sometimes the lab would be the equivalent of one test. I was a STEM student and almost never had homework as part of a grade. It was the same for undergrad and grad for the most part. When I taught at a CC, I taught the bio class that nurses and other health professionals took. As part of the transfer agreement, at least 85% of the grade had to be from closed-book assessment (tests or quizzes), although we could divide those up however we wanted (a few big tests, many small quizzes, etc). For bio and biochem classes, we never had homework of any kind. We took copious notes and studied a lot. Our tests were usually a mix of recall and more complex thinking about the material. It was hard to study for because you felt like you could never know the material well enough, as opposed to something like physics where if you could solve the homework problems then you were fine. By sophomore year we had questions that involved interpreting data and saying what had gone wrong in the experiment. It stretched the brain, to be sure. Some of the professors put old tests on reserve in the library and we could work through the problems from those as part of our studying.

I think that the hard thing about diets is that almost any diet probably helps somebody, but won't do much for most people. There are all sorts of allergens and weird interactions that we can't test for because we don't understand them. For her, an all-meat diet for a week might be good, or not. And the same with the vegan diet listed above. Or it could be that either would help because she's got some weird allergy to something present in trace amounts in something that other diets allow. Or neither of them could do her any good and actually make her worse. But, if she treats them as a short-term elimination diet then she should know quickly - if there's no change she can ditch it and if there is, they Yay!, and she can start adding back other things as she's able. I do understand the concern about quacks making money off of bad advice, but I'm not sure what money there is to make off of her eating a particular diet. And, I'd be more frustrated if there was medical help that worked that she was refusing to use. But, in cases where regular doctors seem to have thrown up their hands, I can understand being willing to try anything that has ever helped everybody.

My kid took Calc 3 and Physics with Calc I DE last semester and said that they were told that between 17-20 hours was expected for each. Kid said that some weeks didn't take that long, but some weeks did. Those are both challenging classes, and taking them online was brutal despite kid being a very capable student who is used to self-teaching. Kid is taking the next physics class this semester in person so we'll see what they are told next week when classes start. On the other hand, DE psych, lit, etc were nowhere near that many hours. I do wonder if instructors are having to be more explicit about the time commitment because more students are expecting to put in little work. I've been teaching at the same homeschool co-op for over a decade and I've always had a mix of average students, overachievers, and slackers - generally lovely kids with different attitudes towards academics. But, this year several teachers, including me, are struggling with students who seem shocked that they have to work. I was repeatedly asked in the first few weeks if they needed to write down everything that I wrote on the board. I've had several student comment that the class is really hard because they don't know the information after coming to class. They don't think it's reasonable that I present the information and often provide ways to model or use the information, but the work of actually incorporating it into their memory is going to take work outside of the 2 hours that I spend with them each week. Almost 1/2 of the class doesn't take notes, they just take pictures of the board. They are really nice kids. We are not in an area that had schools that were closed for an extended time. The students have a mix of public school and homeschool background. The kids that I had last year were not like this. It could just be an unusual group - the group that is graduating has an inordinate number of overachievers, and this group could be equally atypical. But, based on what my senior reports from public school kids on the ball team, this is widespread and far more common than in years past. I could imagine that college instructors are having to shock kids into understanding that these classes are going to take a lot of work.

In some ways, syllabi are less useful in a canvas class since assignments have deadlines, instructions, and rubrics attached when they are posted. If an instructor lists a general course flow somewhere (number of tests, half of points come from projects, etc) then students can just do the next thing, especially if the class has a weekly schedule (homework posted Monday, quiz Friday). Some instructors use announcements or messages and some just post things.