I had one appointment booked for my 8 year old last Thursday, but I keep getting e-mails that they're out of vaccine and pushing the appointment back. I guess it's good there's a lot of demand at least. Luckily, I'd heard rumors that this was happening with that place, so I booked a back-up appointment at a walgreens near us on Saturday, and that went super smoothly. He had a bit of a sore arm the next day, but no other reaction. He's happy, and I'm so glad he'll be fully vaccinated before Christmas.

If you think Democrats universally loved Carville/Clintonism in general until a couple of weeks ago then I'm not really sure where you've been for the past 25 years or so. I mean, I've watched The War Room half a dozen times; I'm fascinated by all of it, but criticism of Clinton's brand of moderation/triangulation/all of that is hardly something that first showed up in the wake of George Floyd.

But aren't adults who are vaccinated as kids much less likely to get shingles anyway because of never having had chickenpox?

I was just looking at this the other day (after being surprised to learn the UK doesn't vaccinate for chickenpox), and it doesn't even seem to be working terribly well for adults as a strategy; as far as I can tell there are about 50 shingles deaths in the UK/year compared to "less than 100" in the US, despite the population difference. And there are around 20 chicken pox deaths per year in both countries, again, despite the much larger US population (US deaths down from around 100/year pre-vaccine)

There's also the push to remove books from Texas school libraries: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/02/1051471236/texas-governor-abbott-calls-for-removal-of-obscene-school-library-books It's strange that people keep insisting the CRT panic has nothing to do with banning books when it very clearly does for a great many people.

The left isn't who ran the ad about Beloved. YOU may think that's not what people are objecting to, but someone's spending a lot of money on ads to say that it IS what they're objecting to, and it's not the left. I'm not sure why I shouldn't take the Youngkin campaign at their word.

congrats! Getting that first acceptance is always such a relief!

Beloved presents an unflinching look at the horrors of slavery. It's important to understand that very often when people talk about "banning CRT" this is exactly what they're talking about. The argument is no more complex than that for many people: white children should not have to hear what slavery was like.

I didn't realize it was need blind--great to hear! We got a FA package from Oberlin when my oldest was considering it (college not con), and it was excellent.

This was an AP high school class...but I suspect the same sorts of parents are e-mailing professors once their kids get to college, too!

Do we care what Black parents think about how their kids are taught about race in school? Or nah, because they aren't as likely to be swing voters? I mean, they literally ran an ad saying white kids in college level classes are too fragile to read Beloved. If that's the culture war, then, yeah, I guess you have to fight the culture war.

I'll settle for an actual representative democracy: see above.

I've been struck by how different the financial aid landscape is for music schools, too. Generally speaking, the most selective colleges and universities are the ones with very generous need based aid--the ones that meet 100% of demonstrated need (and very often they're also the colleges that have little to no merit aid; all of their FA is need based). This is very much not the case with conservatories, though. The best stand alone conservatories all seem to be very stingy with need based aid. Juilliard has a two billion dollar endowment and just super crappy need based aid (at least according to their NPC). So when I see those hand-wringing "why isn't classical music more diverse?!" articles....I have some pretty good guesses about why! Of course in practice it probably doesn't matter much for most kids anyway what conservatory FA is like, because it's already so expensive to get a kid to the point where they're competitive for admission at those types of schools. We spend an absurd amount of money on private lessons, orchestra fees, good quality instruments, etc. and it's definitely a financial stretch for us. And then people will casually mention that it's ALSO essential that you drop $8000 or whatever on summers at Interlochen. So, yeah. We'll see what happens to my poor, Interlochen-less kid.

My 10th grader is taking WTM academy chemistry right now, and they just list algebra 1 as a pre-req (and he hasn't taken alg 2 yet and is doing well in it). It's not listed as an honors class, but it seems pretty rigorous.

DS did an online info session with Peabody at JHU today and she offered him an application fee waiver...the application fee is $120, so if he ends up applying that will cancel out a lot of the cost of the sample lesson anyway! It would have a lot more a of a real conservatory feel than anywhere else he's applying, I think...they have an affiliation with Johns Hopkins, but the campuses are 2 miles apart, so not the same kind of connection to the main college he'd have at Oberlin or Lawrence, though he'd be able to take classes there. Interestingly, the other one that would have similar separation is his in-state option at Columbus State--the music school there has a separate downtown campus, while most of the campus is a bus ride away.

yay--congratulations to her!!

Disclaimer: I don't really know what I'm doing with the whole music school thing. My understanding is that the biggest reason to do sample lessons is that the individual professor is hugely important for music majors (and in DS's case in particular, as a clarinetist looking mostly at smaller programs, there's generally only one clarinet professor), so it's very important to see whether you'll work well with that person. Secondarily I've heard it can be an advantage to have established some kind of connection with the professor in advance of the audition. My DS has definitely found them helpful, both for trying to figure out what schools would be the best fit and just for getting to have lessons with some great clarinet teachers. And we'll see how well this holds up when he gets decisions from schools, but he also feels like he gets a good idea as to whether he's on the right track applying to a particular program. He's mostly gotten a lot of good feedback and encouragement, but there have been one or two lessons where the professors have maybe politely signaled that the school isn't a good match: "it's really hard to get in here as an undergraduate..." etc. Which is nice information to have.

One other thought--are you thinking he'll prep for AP exams during his senior year? If he's prepping for APs on his own as a senior, that won't necessarily mean much to colleges when he applies since they won't actually see scores until after he graduates. Even if he's prepping on his own, you can get a course approved so that you can label a course AP on the transcript, but I'm not sure how colleges would view them without scores or a history of AP scores.

Thanks! He's doing this lesson online; I'm not sure if they're offering in person or not yet, but I don't think we'd be able to get up there anyway. He's had all except for one of his sample lessons online, which is not ideal in a lot of ways...but also saved us a ton of money and probably meant he could do more of them than he would have been able to do if we'd had to travel for all of them. Thank for the hotel suggestion; I need to start thinking about all that!

nope--super lightweight, soft wool. I have 2 of the Rowenas (blue and black) and one Maggie

Wool& dresses

I was told by an admissions rep at Emory a few years ago that they preferred AP to DE because it was more standardized and they knew exactly what they were looking at. I think that sentiment is still out there to a certain extent at selective colleges, but I also think it's changing as more and more people do DE, that it's different for homeschoolers, and that not all DE is created equal. Selective colleges want to see that students took advantage of whatever rigourous courses were available to them, and I think that in general they don't assume that AP classes are readily available to homeschoolers and are used to seeing DE in place of AP on homeschool transcripts. My kids have had/will have a mix of DE and AP, but I like doing AP at home and am pretty comfortable teaching it for certain subjects. We also have access to lots of good, free DE options, so we take advantage of those, too. I've made sure to emphasize in my homeschool profile on the common app that my kids' DE classes are regular college classes at a university, not CC classes or classes taught at high schools (not that those don't have their place, too, but I think that in general classes taken at a 4 year college or university will be viewed as more rigorous).

According to this, UGA is way below the national average at relying on adjuncts: https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-georgia/academic-life/faculty-composition/ At the non-flagships it might not make much difference in practice, but I do think it will make it much harder for UGA and Tech in particular to hire and retain highly regarded profs. Georgia has made so much progress with its university system since I graduated from UGA in the 90s...both UGA and Tech are top 50 national universities now (according to the USNWR rankings). It's a shame to see them go backwards.

Our neighborhood is only about 30 houses, so we have a Halloween parade every year where everyone gets together at the same time and walks around, and people sit at the end of their driveways handing out candy. That happens at 5:30, and then we head down the street to a friend's neighborhood. She has a Halloween party every year and usually (in non-covid times) sets up a haunted house in her garage. Big kids hang out with friends there these days and our youngest TOTs in the neighborhood.

I know someone in their 40s who died (unvaccinated) of covid recently, leaving behind two teenaged kids. All the comments on facebook were about how they just didn't understand why God decided it was their time. I was like, "I can't believe y'all are trying to pin this on God."