I remember the days before seatbelt laws: my mom had a chevette hatchback, and my brother and I called the back of it our "playroom" because we had a bunch of toys back there and would just hang out playing. We lived sort of out in the middle of nowhere, so we spent a lot of time in the car. It was fun--way more fun than being buckled in and having to sit still for a couple of hours a day while we were shuttled back and forth to two different schools/preschools. Then one day my mom lost control of the car somehow and we spun around and went off the road, and after that we always had to wear our seatbelts. That would have been right around 1980, when the traffic fatality rate was nearly double what it is today in the US.

...if your point is more something like, "why don't we TALK as much about how dangerous driving is?" i.e. why aren't there 20 threads about car safety on the front page of the chat board, then I think the explanations are that covid is newer, that it's more dangerous (even with "low" covid numbers, 3x as many people die daily of covid in the US than car accidents, although of course that varies by age), that driving has become much less dangerous over time because of the precautions we DO take, and, probably mainly because the precautions we take both personally and on a structural level around driving and cars are generally not particularly controversial. Thinking people shouldn't wear seatbelts is a very niche position in a way thinking people shouldn't wear masks is very much not. To the extent that risk mitigation having to do with cars and driving IS controversial, it's not at all difficult to find those conversations going on and getting very heated (take a look at any parenting board when someone asks when they should turn their toddler forward facing).

I don't think it's nitpicking to point out that your example of a high risk activity is, in fact, something that we both as a society and as individuals spend a LOT of time and energy trying to mitigate risks around, though. How much time do new parents spend researching the best car seats and fretting about how long kids should stay in them? As just one example. I know that for you wearing a mask is no longer worthwhile and is bad for your mental health, but for a lot of people, me included, deciding to grab and wear a mask when going into a high risk situation is a lot less onerous than the years I spent strapping babies and toddlers into car seats. Like masks, car seats are a way to reduce risk not to eliminate it. Like to me the analogy is not driving=never leaving the house because of covid and taking basic precautions like vaccines and masking=driving defensively, buying a safe car, following the latest research about best car seat practices, etc. ETA: I don't think we worry less about car risks than about covid risks at all; I think it's just that worrying about them is so built in to our daily lives that we don't realize we're worrying about them and taking lots of steps to mitigate them.

The answers to a couple of your questions are related, in that the more math she's had the better she's likely to score on the math section. I'm not having my junior take it until spring because he's finishing up Algebra 2 now and taking pre-calc in the spring. I figured he was unlikely to do as well as he could on the math this semester, so he might as well wait, and then he can take it again fall of senior year if he wants or needs to try for a higher score (he also took it fall of 10th grade to get a score for his dual enrollment application, so we have a bit of a baseline already). I wouldn't sign up for 2 dates at once (I'm not sure what the timing is and whether that would even work); she could score high enough the first time that there's no reason to take it again.

My answer would probably depend on whether they're aiming for very selective colleges or not. There are some situations where there's really just not much advantage to getting a super high SAT score (schools where a lower score is perfectly fine that don't give merit aid based on test scores). If it would be helpful for admissions or scholarships to get as high of a score as possible, then I'd keep going with some fairly light prep (15 minutes/day on Khan or something along those lines). I actually didn't push my kids to do that many full length practice tests (I think each of them only did one before each test), and that worked well for them, but that depends on the kid of course.

sounds to me like you have it covered! (and, yes, I can't access my kids' scores through my educator account; they have to log in themselves to see them since they aren't associated with a school)

Yes...I wasn't counting that because he wasn't traveling with our family and because he wasn't taking many precautions while he was there. He's 21, so he does his own thing at this point, and he's the only one in the immediate family who's had covid. No one has gotten covid while living in my household 😉. But with the other three kids (and that kid at times) we've done two 2 month long summer trips since covid started and numerous shorter trips.

I'm thinking of signing my kid up for a summer session at St. John's College (because he's thinking of applying there, not because he's likely to be a philosophy major, though who knows?)...but might be relevant? https://www.sjc.edu/summer-academy There are in person camps and online sessions

It's not about living in a box, though. It's about having more than you need while other people don't have enough to stay alive. But I certainly have more than I need (I'm pretty sure all of us do, because we're sitting at computers typing these things). I just don't want to lose sight of the fact that every time I relax a little in my precautions, it makes things less safe for someone else who doesn't have the privileges I have. But I still relax some things. I believe this is a major plot point about the nature of modern life in The Good Place. It was also a less well-handled plot point on an (less well-known) episode of Ed. Now I'm getting very obscure because I've stayed up too late.

But if there's an activity that's risky but not AS risky, but that people do way more often than flying (like, again, going to school unmasked) then the overall risk of getting covid is going to be higher for the people who have to do that activity every day. As you know, this is fairly personal for me, as someone who's married to a teacher who takes an immunosuppressive drug and will for the rest of his life. It's nice that people who don't have that kind of exposure on a daily basis can decide to mask on planes and nowhere else, but there are plenty of people who are in hotbeds of sickness every single day.

I understand what you're saying, but unless I'm missing something, your evidence for planes being higher risk areas than, say, restaurants or concerts or museums is that you, personally got covid on a plane. My BIL got covid after avoiding it for 2 years eating at a restaurant. He'd flown on a plane a not long before that, but it was clear from the timing that he got it at a restaurant and not on the plane. My nephew got covid during his PE class, which was the only place he was unmasked at school. This was a few weeks after two cross country airplane trips in which he did not get covid. My kid got covid on a train a couple of weeks after not getting it on a transatlantic flight. So I could start threads saying, "hey--based on my family's experiences, gym class and restaurants and trains are more dangerous than planes, and everyone should mask there if they want to avoid covid." I certainly think that's it's EASIER to always mask on planes, given how infrequently most people fly, than to avoid restaurants or to mask at school every day....so...that's something to consider I guess. But I don't think the average person is at greater risk of catching covid on a plane than at school or from someone who goes to school every day.

This is what's a little mysterious to me about this thread. You seem to be suggesting that people should mask on planes based on your personal experience of getting covid on a plane. But at this point MOST people have gotten covid, and we all know people who've gotten it in all kinds of settings, including people who avoided it for a long time and then gotten it. If I avoided being unmasked in every situation where someone I know personally got covid, it would look...very cautious. Which is fine, but doesn't seem to be what you're advocating. I mean, I do know a number of people who've gotten it on planes, but more people who've gotten it because a kid brought it home from unmasked school or indoor sports (which is supported by data that a higher percentage of kids than adults have had covid at this point and that numbers were much higher in schools without mask mandates back when some schools still had mask mandates).

It's so incredibly frustrating that the takeaway from this whole thing for a lot of people seems to be that's it's totally fine to go wherever and cough all over everyone as long as you're at least pretty sure it's not covid. Like...that was NEVER okay!

At the level I'm doing now? Masking in crowded indoor spaces? Sure. I don't have any particular issues that make masking difficult; it's not that big of a deal to me. There are professions where frequent masking was necessary/a good idea long before covid, so to me this question is kind of like asking, "but you won't keep doing landscaping PERMANENTLY, will you?" Sometimes circumstances dictate that we do things that aren't our favorite. If the alternative is a substantially increased risk of death or disability? Sure. People wear uncomfortable things for less important reasons and seem to adapt (like, I personally wouldn't wear heels all day, but plenty of people do for purely aesthetic reasons). I am still hopeful that over time the need for masking will be less....covid will become more mild, or surges less frequent, or long covid will be better understood and treatments more readily available...or even that there will be vaccines that better protect against transmission. But we'll see. It's frustrating; we all wanted to be done with this by now. But that's not where we're at. I imagine people in Europe back in the day were frustrated that the plague kept coming back around, too, but they still shut the theaters down when it did. At least I don't live back then!

But you can do all of those things except eating indoors in a good mask. I know you say you personally will not have your children mask and that you have your reasons, and that's fine, but that IS a way to do all those things and at least greatly reduce one's chance of getting covid. We've traveled a ton since covid started and gone to plenty of concerts and museums and haven't gotten covid. Some of that is luck, but a lot of it is that we wear good masks in crowded indoor spaces. (And those spaces would be a lot safer for kids like yours for whom masking is difficult for whatever reason if the people who could DID wear good masks, so I'm happy to). It's a false dichotomy to suggest that you either have to isolate forever or do nothing to reduce your chances of getting covid. We also do some things that carry risk that we can't mask for that we've decided are worth the risk given how long this has been going on and likely will continue to go on: my kids play wind instruments, we've eaten inside on occasion when numbers are lower, we do small family gatherings inside now...but when it's practical to mask, we mask, and I don't feel like my kids are missing out on much of anything (other than not growing up in the midst of a pandemic that they're likely to spend their adulthoods still dealing with the fallout from...but THAT I can't do anything about).

If that were true, wouldn't you expect the excess deaths to correlate with when vaccines started instead of with waves of covid (including waves of covid pre-vaccine)? https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid

I think the jury's still out on whether post-covid issues will be worse than flu on a per case basis....but covid spreads so much more easily (and less seasonally) than flu and numbers are so much higher that, on a societal level, the burden is much higher even if the effects are exactly the same. I haven't had the flu since I was a kid; I would not be okay with suddenly expecting for it to pass through my family twice a year or so. And if that were to start happening and I could prevent it or make it happen less often by wearing a mask in certain settings, I definitely would.

We watch Keep Your Daydream and also Less Junk More Journey on YouTube. and then the RV Atlas podcast is also great. And RV Miles podcast.

well, yes, definitely don't spend that! FWIW--we spent $8000 on a used van that's taken us all over the country (it'd be more now, but not THAT much more) and $16000 on a used trailer (much bigger than what the OP is talking about getting) to start. Still using the van, and we paid just under $30,000 for our newest (brand new) trailer in 2021; I think we'd likely get back what we paid for it if we needed to sell right now, but that's because we got a good deal and the market is still a little nuts. But it's true--people get in over their heads a lot of the time. But you don't have to spend that much to start RVing (or to continue RVing).

I think that's absolutely fine! The essay doesn't need to have anything to do with academics and doesn't need to be about something "serious." If you take a look at sample essays that selective colleges put up, they're very often about something that might, on the surface, seem fluffy. At Johns Hopkins, they have one essay "about" crochet and one "about" playing solitaire...which then go on to tie the opening anecdote to some sort of life lesson/important personal quality or whatever: https://apply.jhu.edu/application-process/essays-that-worked/ ...with the caveat that I have never been on an admissions committee, I think those guys read SO MANY essays about travel/sports/academic interests that it pays to stand out and be memorable in some way. You can write a very good and very sincere essay about a "fluffy" topic.

He reports back that it was a lot easier....especially the math because they let them use desmos. Of course, I'm sure they're still calibrating and all that.

My college freshman got paid by the college board to take a digital SAT a few weeks ago, so it's in the testing phase right now, I gather. I just texted him to ask what the experience was like--if it was much different. They won't tell him his score, I don't think (and it wouldn't be that informative anyway, probably, since he didn't do any prep for this one and was definitely out of practice with math at least).

I think you just put most demanding. (I remember looking at this guide when I was doing the common app and thinking it was sort of funny that there's not even any discussion about it; she just says to put "most demanding" no matter what: https://fearlesshomeschoolers.com/blog/common-app-for-homeschoolers ). In practice, I doubt schools put much stock in how you, as the parent, rank the curriculum and are just going to look at what classes they've taken and attempt to put that in context.

Just to offer a counterpoint to some of the posts above...we've been RVing for 7 years now, and it's been an amazing experience that I wouldn't trade for anything. We mostly use it for long summer trips (DH is a teacher, so summers off), and we've done 2 cross country trips with tons of national parks, 1 long trip to Atlantic Canada, and a couple more east coast/midwest trips, plus a lot of shorter trips during the school year. We're planning a big Newfoundland trip next summer. We have three dogs and 4 kids (though our days of having all 4 of them with us for whole summers are probably behind us now), so for us it's very much a cost issue--we couldn't touch places that would hold 6 people and 3 dogs for what we pay using the trailer, even taking into account the cost of ownership and more gas. Yes, there's always something going wrong (although I'll say we've only had one flat trailer tire in 7 years and many, many thousands of miles--and that was on tires we knew were probably due for replacement--so it sounds like Lori had exceptionally bad luck in that department!), and it definitely helps to be at least a little handy so you don't have to find someone else for every tiny thing that goes wrong. In my experience, though, there's always something going wrong with travel in general, no matter how you do it. But you're essentially adding an extra house, with all the accompanying issues, to your life. But every time I stay in a hotel or airbnb, I miss having my own bed and bathroom, my own kitchen (with a fridge that doesn't have to be unloaded after every stop), great outdoor space at campgrounds, etc. I also miss how easy it is to leave a hotel in the morning when I'm staying in the trailer 😉 It really is all about trade-offs. For us, it's the only way we can afford to travel as much as we want to. It would be very difficult for us to justify if we were just doing an occasional week or two long trip and some weekends (although people who want to do very frequent local weekend trips might also find it makes sense financially). The dogs are the part that stops me every time I think maybe it would be less trouble to ditch the trailer and go back to hotels/airbnbs. We don't want to leave them behind for as long as our trips are, it's often very tough to find hotels or rentals that will take them, especially all three of them, and they're very comfortable in the trailer--it's their home, and even my anxious little terrier feels completely safe there.

I don't think your wish list is unreasonable (except, as others have said, for the w/d, which are usually only going to found in bigger and more expensive fifth wheels and the like). It sounds like you want to stay in an SUV? That will limit you a fair amount--you have to look not just at tow capacity but at payload, which is generally where you'll hit the limit first with an SUV. But it can certainly be done if you're sticking with a smaller trailer. But you really want to think about the tow vehicle and how that's going to limit you before you start thinking about floor plans; you don't want to get into a situation where you have too much trailer for your tow vehicle and feel unsafe. Going to an RV show and actually getting inside some RVs is really the best way to figure out what will work best. There are also tons of channels on YouTube that do RV walkthroughs. Here's one I'm familiar with: https://www.youtube.com/c/joshthervnerdatbishsrv