DORMS HANDS DOWN My son commuted to community college this year and last as a high schooler and it is truly a soul-sucking experience to be young and healthy and yet have to sit in traffic for hours every day. When was the last time you had a daily commute? Yes, anyone can get used to anything and given no choice you make things work. But it's really truly awful to sit still in traffic for hours every day. Not only that, but living at college allows him to get to know a lot more people and be MUCH more involved. There is no question for me. Dorms.

Thank you for sharing!! It’s so helpful for us to remember to encourage our kids to Work Hard at Things!

THis is a great thread. At my son's future college, all the parents on the Parent Facebook page talk about Uber. When we visited for orientation I was really confused because you can get around the entire campus on free shuttle busses, and you can walk anywhere on campus and you can walk to a Target and CVS which are literally on the edge of campus, and on the rare occasion you'd need to go truly off campus (maybe specialist doctor, or Walmart trip or shopping somewhere for clothes other than Target), you can take the same bus system for 1.75 round trip! So, why in the world would you uber around all the time? Or taxi for that matter, they're both rarely necessary and definitely a luxury. I've also talked to my son about eating out. He is very tempted by the pizza place downtown, but at 12.00 for a gluten free pizza, that is a lot more expensive than his Meal Plan which is only about 2.75 per meal (and already paid for.) so he will definitely need to say "no" sometimes when other kids with more money are heading downtown to eat out. 🙂 Another idea I had, is to make my son pay for his own textbooks. This will give him incentive to find good deals, shop around, and RETURN the rentals on time! 🙂

Yuck! I just flew across country twice this week and am always so frustrated by the last minute pleas to accept vouchers due to overbooking. Of course, that is much better than bumping some poor soul...but still! I guess if all of the students come anyway, they will have to pursue off campus dorm housing in hotels. Didn't that just happen to CalPoly last year? They ended up renting an entire wing of a hotel! UC San Diego had a completely unexpected jump in applications this year. I wonder how their yield turned out....

I say NOPE and NO WAY. (preface: I am a Bible believing CHristian who was also raised in Catholic Schools. While I am no longer Catholic I do highly value religious education and the love and care that comes at these types of schools and colleges...) BUT someone who is going to be that controlling from the get-go is going to be controlling in other ways too, and there is no telling where it will end. I cannot even imagine my in=laws or parents being able to afford helping for college but then stipulating where the kids would go. NONE of my parent sets (we have three, two religious and one secular set) and NONE of them would ever have pulled this type of control stunt on us. It's one thing to say "It's for college only" (aka it's not for a convertible or a vacation or a condo in Costa Rica) BUT to say "It's for only this type of college" is very controlling. Save your sanity. Steer clear.

Ok, you guys are awesome! Thank you! To answer your questions: Yes here in CA a year long course is 10 credits, and I consider this a quarter course by the number of hours she took, so therefore 2.5 credits. She does not need the credits to graduate. Arcadia, for her Fine Arts Year Long requirement, it'll be a full year of Piano with Theory. 🙂 So...I need to either 1. Give her an A OR 2. List it instead as an extra curricular Thanks!

I need some help with an Art class my dd took. It was a lot less than 80 hours for a semester, so I plan to give her 2.5 credits. It was a legitimate Art course that talked about art history, introduced artists and they talked about design, and really explored those aspects before each project. So, I think it's worthy of some credits and being on her transcript. It was at a local NFP Art School. I don't feel fair giving her a letter grade for it, though. I feel like giving an A when there was no grading criteria would be a little odd. She prepared, gathered extra materials at home, and showed up on time and completed each and every project. I feel like it should be a Pass So, can I give her the 2.5 credits but mark it as Pass so that it doesn't not inflate her GPA?

I've decided to go in a different direction. I'll still be helping out the co-op, which I love and believe in, but in a different capacity which won't tie me down to the school year schedule as much.

They're not assigned- this isn't CC...we have to open a form and choose the hours we are willing to work. 🙂

I really love this community and want to contribute... But there are also issues with being worried about filing as an independent contractor. After reading online, I guess I have to send my estimated taxes 4 times per year, and I have to keep very accurate records of my expenses so that I can correctly claim whatever my actual profits are, since the taxes are based off of that. BUT I am TERRIBLE at keeping receipts and doing book keeping. Truly, it is my nemesis. So I am afraid I would mess something up so bad that we would end up being audited. And that would definitely be a mess.

We are in a very high tax state in a very high tax bracket, and due to the small class sizes and needing to keep this particular age and subject low cost....my hourly wage will end up being less than $5 per hour. I'm excited to have this opportunity, and I love teaching. I'd like to start building a future for myself after the kids are grown and getting my foot in the door teaching will mean I can take on greater teaching roles later on. But I don't want to end up frustrated and that the frustration is all for nothing. ...

For Chrome ? Or is there another way or method. I could just use paper and planner and then input grades into a spreadsheet but I figure nowadays there might be great programs out there Oh and it needs to be like 15.00 or less 🙂 Thanks !

two full semesters but they are slightly shorter than an average school year so about 32 weeks.

If I had the opportunity to teach this year in our co-op setting I'd like a curriculum for SECULAR history where: student books are not too expensive plenty of assignable homework in the form of whatever - sheets, workbooks, some projects etc. Somewhat Literature - Based Right now I am searching for the right curriculum more than the right time period, although that may have to be narrowed down eventually. SOTW is out of the question because it is really a targeted Middle School age group- advanced, academic 6th graders, and 7th and 8th graders. I'm thinking of doing a few volumes of SOTW with the students each owning their own student guide, me having a teacher guide and assigning some work for them to do on their own and me doing some of the work with them and some read aloud time, and some in class fun projects, etc.

I would try Boy Scouts assuming you have a dh who could go along on camping trips and be at least a little involved. 4H is good Too Furst Lego League ... BUT I say keep him in swimming until he stays with the other new thing at least 6 months and shows. True interest! Some kids are just a bit of home bodies, others are overly negative and it sounds like he might need to just be out there making the best of something. As long as he doesn’t hate it stick with it until/ unless you find something he truly loves because exercizs will Be So good when he hits puberty! Boys who don’t seriously exercise during puberty can be a horror to manage. 🙂

If he is interested in really doing an intensive, community colleges usually offer some math classes during Summer Session. My son took Calc 1 that way and he actually really loved it. She happened to be an absolutely amazing teacher though, with thick packets of logically organized homework packets and study guides, an amazing syllabus, answered emails quickly, and on top of all of that was a great teacher. So....YMMV but my son really loved doing math so intensively. He went four days per week for 7 weeks. 🙂 Just a thought 🙂 Make sure to use Rate my Professor if you go this route.

AGreed- in our experience applying to highly selective universities, they are much more willing to accept and give credit for AP courses than DE, and consider AP to be more impressive as well...Don''t get me wrong, they are impressed by DE, but due to the highly varying quality as well as content of DE courses, they're not as highly valued as AP, overall.

We finally got my dd dX'd and she has the ADD plus an LD though she is gifted above 130 IQ, so an interesting cookie 🙂 ...we went to the community college to ask for accommodations with our paperwork and they were AMAZING! For the ADD they offered her a digital recorder, time and a half, proctoring, and on and on. But yes, the student still actually has to use the services. It sounds like you've done so many great things! ((hugs)) keep up the good work. you can black list websites on the ipad as well as shutting down gaming time....Apple parental controls are amazing. BUT at 16-17 it's probably not that helpful at this point.

Due to every single member of my family that has tried ADD meds, including me, having horrible long term side effects and no true lasting benefit, we are not encouraging our daughter to pursue medication for her ADD... We did find the book FInally Focused and it has made an AMAZING difference. It turns out that ALL people with ADD are literally starved of the same vitamins, over and over and over again. When you add those back in and also balance the brain with other nutrients that specifically help focus, concentration and calmness, you have a winning combo. We follow 100% of the advice in this book (we chose not to pursue Nutritional Lithium but even the book says that is optional and only shoulld be done alongside your primary physician) and we have seen amazing results. Avoid all colors, dyes, junk food, even gluten....give the body proper vitamins, antioxidants, green tea and dark chocolate, expensive high quality probiotics, fish oils, etc....get proper sleep, avoid video games, TV and get exercise...it's a VERY easy thing to implement, one by one... Maybe worth a try before medication.

THere is a sense in which for us, a Catholic U would be a better fit than some of the Protestant colleges which have legalistic requirements about attending chapel and taking Bible classes. The watered down and yet legalistic version of Protestantism strikes us as being worse than the fact that to most Catholics, their religion is like a lifetime club more than a personal thing.... I am truly rambling but my point is that how people practice and live out their Christian faith is so variable that I personally would rather see my daughter at many Catholic Us than at many other Christian Us. As it is we cant' afford the Catholic U that is close to where she wants to attend school, so she will end up at Christian or even public U. But for you, it sounds like your dh is more than adamant so unless your kid is really bugging you about it, then I'd let the matter drop. There are a lot of other things spouses can find to disagree over and a thousand and one other good colleges (in TX and beyond.)

Correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding that all of this outsourcing also means, that if you DO get an IT job in say, Cybersecurity, you will be working your tail off and feel like a factory worker for a huge corporation that does exactly that one thing, and not likely to be involved in a lot of creative projects and launches, like you would with programming/engineering....I asked my son about it once and he laughed a maniacal laugh and said only if he wanted to lose his soul would he consider that... It's a good paying job, but the facts are that it is generally not where you'll see employees getting free lunch, celebrating exciting launches and colorful hats and tee shirts... that's where engineering and programming will take you. 🙂 If you want to be hands on in the field, your son could consider networking which is kind of cool because then at least you get to travel a lot and physically do stuff. 🙂 And not much math like CS/CS Eng...

This was EXACTLY why we changed courses for our son!! He, and we, were sitting here thinking, does he really want to be working full time in Silicon Valley (his goal) at age 20 with college done and completely behind him? Those jobs are exciting and rewarding but they're also very stressful, requiring a lot of people-skills that take time to learn, and maturity- when to hold your tongue, how to speak to designers with respect when they're asking you to make pigs fly, how to handle long nights and weekends and manage down-time so you don't burn out. These are things that just take plain old TIME to learn. And, not only that, but what about the time during college that you'd have for internships...you could end up with two or even three internships during college, but if you speed through college and go straight into the workworld with only one, or no, internships, you're just jumping in at a very young age. AND I want my son to also just experience the college life of whatever the college life is. Obviously I hope an dpray that the stupidity that sometimes encompasses college life will never be part of it, but I also don't want to take away the opportunities to be part of the young Libertarian club, or the hiking club or the robotic club or whatever it is that strikes his interest.... I am so thankful we got a clue.

Where is my post?? It has been quoted twice and yet it's gone... edited to add. maybe I'm crazy because I went to the little bell at the top, clicked from there to the Likes and then suddenly it reappeared. Strange.....

I would just use Khan, since it’s free 🙂 my dd probably needs some Algebra review but I don’t know how I’ll convince her to do it ...however Khan is definitely perfect for this kind of thing

In our state all the public Us take all the CC credits seamlessly. So we were encouraged to have our son start CC full time at 15 and then transfer at 17. It all seemed like such a great idea until we realized that that’s not necessarily a feasible and age appropriate situation, campus housing was greatly affected and all but two of the UCs said he could not live on campus with freshman. Thankfully around October we got a clue and had him start applying out of state and private universities as a freshman. We called our state U and asked their advice, should da apply as freshman or transfer ? They said he could do either and recommended transfer, citing the slightly increased acceptance rate for transfer students. It was really bad advice! Due to housing situations and my sons (understandable) desire to finally have a chance to shine among his peers we really would have been better off having him apply as a freshman and they still would have granted all the 59 credits he earned! Applying as a transfer student is a VERY specific path and each UC has VERY different classes they want you to take. So, at PennState my son’s credits are kind of meh. They gave him 12 humanities which is great, he won’t have to re-do those. For the math and engineering and Science they’re awarding all the credits as Gen Ed which is nice because it’ll help him graduate on time. But he will have to re-take all of the STEM course at PennState. We are fine with this because we feel like he got an affordable high school education and really learned a lot about college and the Big World and responsibility, taking to Profs, office hours etc. so him going to an absolutely gigantic college 2000 miles away isn’t scary to us since we have seen him handle himself in an adult world with aplomb. HOWEVER he didn’t really get that far ahead or save tons of money. 🙂 and there were other intrinsic things that might have been better, had we enrolled him in the super academic three day Classical school. So if someone asked me if we would do it again I really don’t know.