Also, if you ARE close to a younger person who has a heart attack post covid, you're not going to know if it wouldn't have happened without covid, and, for a whole lot of people, it's easier to believe that of course it would have happened anyway. Anecdotally, I know of a lot more heart attack deaths in people I'm connected to in some way over the past couple of years than I would have expected....but, I mean, I'm also getting older, as are the people in my circle of friends/acquaintances.

Mine for my last kid was 11 pages of 11 pt type

I just found out that a teacher I love at our homeschool coop will be offering a "physics through astronomy" class next year. I think that might be our winner...taking something in person with a teacher I know is great and kids he already knows is probably going to trump anything online. It might be a little light, but we can add in some Great Courses lectures to round out the credit.

He did, but the way it's worded in the "freshman admission requirements" document is: I know it says "public high school students" but then it also says "Consideration is also given to similar courses for students attending private or out-of-state high schools." I'm assuming they would lump homeschoolers in with private and out of state schools and want to see "similar courses." I mean, maybe not, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of the schools he's applying to want to see a physics class on his transcript. And there's not really any other science he's itching to take anyway, so he might as well take physics.

My in-laws have loaned us the money for our past two house purchases, and they've charged us the going interest rate both times. Sometimes I think it's slightly odd that they've done it that way, but they're very financially generous in other ways, and having them as our mortgage holder has been very helpful logistically (i.e. it let us buy our current house before we had a contract on our last house. And they let us "refinance" when rates were very low by just lowering our payments with no paperwork to deal with). And in our case that logistical part of the puzzle was what they were helping out with; we didn't need help to afford the house itself. Anyway, so I think it depends on the circumstances.

DH's aunt made it very clear that she expected us to ask her daughter (DH's cousin) to be a flower girl. Our small wedding party was one close friend each and everyone was else was siblings and one child of a sibling. I had a whole mess of first cousins close to DH's cousins age (she was around 12 at the time--not flower girl age) none of whom were in the wedding. But we got an impassioned letter about how the kid had ALWAYS WANTED to be a flower girl and how we probably just didn't remember what it was like to be that age and deal with that kind of disappointment (I was 24 at the time, so not really too ancient to remember my childhood). We stood firm, although in retrospect I probably wouldn't have picked that battle and would have just let the kid be in the wedding--particularly since the aunt ended up having health issues so that they couldn't come anyway, and it wouldn't have mattered. At the time I was feeling very stubborn about how it was OUR wedding and it was rude of her to ask. Which it was, but...meh. Says older me. Although it's entirely possible letting her be in the wedding would have caused hurt feelings on my side of the family from left out cousins...or led to a wedding party with a 3 year old ring bearer and a gaggle of 10-12 year old flower girls. The lack of symmetry! Remembering all of this I'm amazed that I actually consented to a wedding at all instead of a courthouse followed by a fun trip somewhere with the money we saved. I hate this kind of stuff!

Thanks for the recommendation! I looked at it and it says 1 optional live session per week...did it seem like most students actually showed up and participated for the live session? Re: colleges....I didn't mean to say that colleges would look at a non-AP physics by an outside provider and say, "well, that's not a REAL physics class!" just that AP and DE is one of the things selective colleges value in admissions, whether I like it or not. So, you know...on one hand I want to find the best physics class for him that I can find, and on the other hand I wonder if he should take the online AP option that I suspect he could handle fine and do with a reasonable time commitment vs. a live class that he might get more out of but also put a lot more time into...particularly given that he's extremely unlikely to wind up in a STEM field no matter how great his physics class is. Time he doesn't spend on science is time he can spend on classes and activities he's more interested in. Like...I'm kind of trying to figure out the best of a few different imperfect options. Self paces physics-prep also has the not insignificant advantage of being hundreds of dollars cheaper than most online options. I also might be completely misjudging the situation and he might have a much tougher time with physics-prep than his brother did, and I'd be kicking myself for not making sure he had a real teacher who could answer questions.

I think that depends on the school and on the individual situation; my son in school in Minnesota has had a cushy library job for his work study all 4 years. Minnesota’s minimum wage is high, so he makes pretty decent money, and has a job that is flexible and works with his school schedule (he tells them when he wants to work every semester once his class schedule is set). They tell him how many hours to work based on his work study award…it comes out to 7-8 hours a week, which is perfect for him. It’s a small college and seems to do a good job working with students so work study works for them (one semester he did a TA type job, and it was no problem splitting the hours just for that semester). For my kid in Tennessee with a much lower minimum wage it’s much less likely to make sense. He has a campus job for just a handful of hours a week right now, and he’s getting almost twice as much hourly as a work study would pay.

Did you have a rollover? That's the main thing I hear about messing up FAFSA (somehow the IRS retrieval tool doesn't know how to handle it). Primary home doesn't matter for FAFSA.

It's no slight against DO; he just doesn't like asynchronous classes.

No, it definitely doesn't have to. That's one of the possibilities. But the online classes are asynchronous, yes? If he's doing an asynchronous class I wonder if he might as well do the physics-prep AP physics 1. Like--all things being equal (as in, he won't like it much because he doesn't like science in general AND he doesn't like asynchronous classes), he might as well take the AP. He's very unlikely to take more physics in college, so it doesn't need to be preparing him for anything later. He might at least grudgingly appreciate a good in person or live online class.

I think the $600 thing is about when companies are required to issue a 1099 for freelance work, etc. (I think that you're supposed to report income less than that, too, but the IRS won't have a record that you received it if there wasn't a 1099 issued). But that has to do with reporting income additional to your regular wages. If you're total income is under a certain threshold, you're not required to file that year. (You might do it anyway to get back any taxes that were withheld from paychecks): https://www.irs.gov/publications/p501#en_US_2021_publink1000270109

I think that's right...it will show up later which colleges want additional documents (some don't use IDOC but want you to send them tax forms a different way. it's a pain).

Just checked and the tech school lists their pre-calc as a prerequisite for physics, too (along with their English 1101?!), so it looks like we'd run into the same issues there.

the college where he does DE will only accept this one option for placement...at least for my homeschooled kid. He's already devoted hours of his life to it and then he didn't pass the proctored pre-calc placement test after the practice test recommended him for calculus, not even pre-calc. He could take it again, but he is super frustrated and I'm annoyed and pretty much done with it because he can take physics elsewhere. I didn't mean that colleges literally wouldn't recognize a non-AP physics as a legitimate class...just that they know what they're getting with an AP or DE class, whereas they'll know nothing about a random outside provider...even if _I_ know it was a more demanding class than Physics 1. So I'm finding myself in a sort of weird position of choosing between a box checking physics or one he'd likely get more out of, but in this case the box checker is the AP option.

Probably? He could do the tech college that's closer to us (I haven't looked into their prerequisites, but I'd guess they're less onerous than the university ones), but I don't want to deal with DE at two different schools. But that's a possibility.

My understanding is that he doesn't need to file taxes if it's under a certain amount (google tells me that it's $12500 for a single filer). I think he'd still need to report it on FAFSA, but he doesn't need to file taxes under that threshold: https://www.hrblock.com/tax-center/income/other-income/how-much-do-you-have-to-make-to-file-taxes/ ETA: https://www.nitrocollege.com/fafsa-guide/student-untaxed-income

You could have them go through the Khan materials and then add in movies, podcasts, etc. We used Khan as our "textbook" for AP government last year; they have a non-AP version, but I think it's about the same material. And then there are SO MANY podcasts that are great...Constitutional, Civics 101, More Perfect...

I was just looking at Derek Owens...do you have personal experience with it? I know it's generally well regarded. GA tech isn't really my benchmark so much as what I looked at to try to get an idea of how valuable the DE class he's taking currently is--from an admissions standpoint more than a transfer standpoint--I'm just assuming that they think of it as a serious science class if they'll give credit for it, if that makes sense (although it would be nice if it would transfer anywhere where he'd otherwise have to take a science class...since he'd rather not). There's really no way to tell in advance what will transfer for most schools he's looking it...IME they evaluate them individually in most cases. But, again, I'm more looking at admissions than credit (which I probably sent mixed signals about by talking about tech transfer equivalency!)

I just checked and Georgia Tech gives transfer credit as a lab science for his weather and climate class, so that reassures me a little and makes me a little less worried about doing the wrong thing next year. Not that he's going to Tech, but I sometimes use that as shorthand to figure out whether colleges will consider something a "real" science class (they don't give any credit for the algebra based physics he was going to take DE next year).

physics or physical science is a graduation requirement for admission to our state university system, so I'm not comfortable forgoing it altogether (he's not likely to end up at a public in-state, but I definitely don't want to close off that possibility).

I guess I'm doomed to show up here every few years asking what to do about high school science because my plans to outsource science never work out the way they're supposed to! Background: 11th grade DS was supposed to be taking DE physics next year, but owing to extreme frustration with the university's placement test system (basically, he needs their pre-calc to take their physics. He has the SAT math score (from a full year ago) and GPA to place into pre-calc, but they won't take his homeschool GPA, and the placement test has been nothing but a giant obnoxious time suck that I think we're giving up on now). So! He'll do pre-calc at home next semester instead with his math teacher dad and do AB calc next year (also at home). But now I need a new science plan. Science so far: biology at home in 9th grade (Pandia press, so nothing very rigorous, but he made a very pretty model of a cell 🙂), WTMA chemistry and lab in 10th grade, and this year he's taking weather and climate DE at local university (it's listed as geography in the course catalog, but our state lists it as a dual enrollment science course for high schoolers). All the classes had labs. Not a STEM kid--likely a humanities major of some sort in his future. But he will likely be applying to some very selective schools, which are generally our best option financially. Next year: he should take physics, right? But what physics? His brother did AP Physics 1 using materials from physics-prep, and that was...fine. I think he'd be able to handle it fine, but he definitely wouldn't love it, and I don't know that he'd get a ton out of it (I don't care much about credit transferring; he's mostly looking at LACs with very vague requirements; he's likely both to have more credit than wherever he ends up will accept AND not to need to take science...or at least not any particular science). I think he'd be miserable trying to do Physics 1 and 2 in one year, so probably not that. There's the PA Homeschoolers Physics 1 that's the same material as physics-prep...but it doesn't look like there's that much of a live component to it, so I'm not sure it's worth the extra $600 (generally speaking, he prefers a live class to asynchronous). I'm also eyeing the WTMA Physics because the chemistry was a good experience for him (and seemed to be geared well for a humanities kid; there was plenty of math, but he also wrote 2 research papers and seemed to learn a ton about the history of chemistry/famous scientists/etc). But I'm also thinking it would be more work (again, based on his chem experience), and it's not AP, so I worry that work he'd put in wouldn't be as recognized for college admission purposes and that perhaps the time would be better spent on subjects he's more interested in. Thoughts?

I'd ask the elective teachers or the science coop teachers--whoever you think will write the best letter--and then give them a copy of his transcript and an activities resume so they can put what he did in their classes in context.

Yes. He hasn't had much reaction to any of the other doses, and the rest of us had flu/covid together and were fine with it.

This is an interesting conversation. No, I've never lived without indoor plumbing. We certainly didn't have a lot of money when I was young; my Dad and grandfather built the house I grew up in themselves and the area was rural enough at the time that we couldn't get city water. But we had a well...with pipes that brought water into the house. My quick googling tells me that there are about a million people in the US without "connection to piped water" and about 34 million who are food insecure. So that's--what? more than 99.5% of Americans who have running water but about 10% lack consistent access to enough food. I don't think lack of indoor plumbing is a useful proxy for poverty in the US. Like...you're not doing okay as long as you have indoor plumbing. Not that anyone's arguing that, I don't think...just sort of thinking aloud (or, you know, silently typing whatever stuff comes into my head).