Thank you for the kind words ... I just wanted to update this after my interview yesterday. The Center for ESL at UK had a plethora of jobs and I think they had already made up their mind before I walked in the door that unless I hadn't bathed in a year or couldn't speak a coherent sentence, they were going to hire me. We agreed that I would start with two hour-long classes five days a week for the upcoming eight-week session and then go from there. My plan is to try for three or four classes per week in the fall; once my youngest has moved out. I hope this isn't TMI, but I was flabbergasted ... they are paying $41 per hour! Compared to my older son's job at Kroger and my daughter's job at the UK archaeology department, this is way beyond what I expected. If anyone thinks they might be interested in teaching ESL, I strongly encourage you to think about it. It is a booming field, and one that a homeschool parent would find a natural fit. I am so glad now that I found my little volunteer job three years ago to test the waters; not only did I discover how much I liked it, but it also gave me the necessary experience ... they really didn't care whether it was paid or unpaid, just that I'd taught. And I'm glad I invested the money in taking my online classes in TESOL ... I'm not sure whether I'll complete my degree, but again it gave me credibility and I certainly learned a lot of useful information for improving my teaching. Not only that, but it was SO much fun to be a student again!! When one of my kids complained about an upcoming test or paper, I could answer them right back with my own complaint :) Best wishes to all of you ... I know that life is not predictable and sometimes brings us to a point where we wouldn't chose to be. I suppose underlying fears about my own husband were another motivator for wanting to find a job. I think even if he did pass away or get laid off, we would be okay financially, but I would definitely need something to keep me busy and feeling productive.

I've been in and out of this board for many years and I've now reached a point in my life where I'm looking at an honorable retirement from 18 years of homeschooling in just a couple of months. My older son recently proposed that my family throw me a retirement party and I definitely thought I deserved one! :) So, what have you done/are you going to do when you get to this point? I am 58 and my husband is an attorney who doesn't plan to retire himself until the youngest is at least through college. We are fairly comfortable financially but extra income would definitely be helpful, especially for Brown U. which has been very tight-fisted with its financial aid. A year or so ago, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, I thought about the one thing that has given me the most enjoyment in the last few years ... my volunteer job as an ESL teacher of adults. I decided that to make myself more employable I would enroll at one of our state universities that offered an online Masters program in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). Fast forward to this semester ... having worked my butt off to get a 4.0 GPA with the four classes I took online, I found out that our local university is working to establish an accredited TESOL this fall. I went on leave from the online university and enrolled in one "classroom" graduate school class at the University of Kentucky. I asked my professor, director of the new program, for job leads. He suggested I email the director of the Center for ESL at UK. In exactly 35 minutes (on a Saturday afternoon), I received a very enthusiastic reply from her saying it was highly likely that they would need a part-time teacher in March, that she was forwarding my email to the other two decision-makers in the program, and that they wanted me to come in for an interview ASAP. Concurrently, I also applied for a position rating TOEFL writing and speaking submissions with Educational Testing Service. I sent my CV in on Monday and received an email Wednesday morning that they wanted to hire me! Anyway, just wanted to share my experience that we homeschool teachers apparently ARE hireable, and that there IS life after we retire from our profession. I am really thrilled that things seem to be working out so well for me. My hope is to combine the two part-time positions (assuming I get hired by UK as well) so that I can balance some work at home with teaching outside the home, but staying flexible enough so that I can still travel and be with my family as needed. I'm not expecting to earn big bucks, but it's certainly better than sitting at home doing nothing. And if I don't need to actually get a Masters in TESOL to get a job, then I'm not going to finish my degree work unless someone else is paying for it!

Our state, Kentucky, had qualifying scores of 208, 209, 209, 208 for the last four years. Youngest DS got a 211. Do you think he will make the cutoff? My DD missed it by one point when she was eligible (got a 207), and with my older DS, there was no question (got a 235). My youngest DS had a terrible time all last school year struggling with severe OCD. His standardized test scores plummeted. He's doing much better this year, at least psychologically, but I would love for him to qualify because of all his academic issues ... we're not expecting Ivy League for him, maybe just a partial scholarship to our state university. We have two in private colleges, my youngest DS is taking CC classes, and I'm going back to graduate school next semester as well. Our educational bills are killing us!!! Please reassure me there's hope :)

Thanks! I've bookmarked those sites. There's so much useful, free stuff on the web, including French in Action and Livemocha! Wish I'd had all this when *I* was in high school!

It looks like *I* am going to be taking the French language CLEP exam!!! I'm going to be going to graduate school to get certified as a TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) instructor, and one of the requirements is to demonstrate fluency in another language. So I'm madly trying to brush up on my French, which I never took in college (but had in high school for four years and studied on and off for many years afterwards). If you've had a child take the French CLEP, how would they assess the difficulty? What materials helped in preparation? My DD took the French AP as a junior and scored a 5, so I'm familiar with what she used, but I wonder how the CLEP compares to the AP. I really want to do well, as it's fairly expensive AND you can only take it once every six months. My goal is to take it in January, although my grad school may allow me more time if I feel I need it.

Somehow, it's comforting to know that there's someone else with standards as low as ours :) Thanks so much for the input, all!! I will be perusing the threads with interest!

I would like my 17 yo son (junior) to read excerpts of the Canterbury Tales. It's been about 40 years since I read this. Which are the "best" stories? The most bawdy, risque, interesting, and funny would be the ones he would prefer :)

Sharon, I think he wants to try living farther away from home, especially now that Caroline has been in France since January. He was able to meet with one of the piano teachers at Brown and play for her, and she was very impressed. Music majors have to audition first and they only take about 35 a year ... she said that she's the one who makes the decisions and that there was no doubt that he would be accepted. So that was a huge plus for him. Having a Steinway concert grand to perform on was an attraction as well. Because there are no required courses except for your major, he actually has a better chance of double-majoring in music and biology. And the chem labs are awesome; so much equipment that each student gets his/her own work station and doesn't need a lab partner. Brown students seem to have the reputation of being pretty laid-back and happy, which is also an attraction. There is a Campus Crusade for Christ type organization that he's interested in and I guess it's a pretty easy place to be a vegetarian. Just a lot of things coming together that made it seem like the right place for him :)

Last week, while I was in France with my daughter, we found out that my son had gotten off the wait list and been accepted at Brown (my alma mater). They wanted a decision before my return date, but DH asked them for an extension given that he couldn't travel up there until I returned (not wanting to leave younger son at home by himself). DH and my son toured the campus and returned home yesterday. It's been a really tough time these past few days ... my son was all set to go to the same college as my daughter, here in Lexington, and suddenly we all had to regroup and think about a school he had never actually visited and that is not exactly close! However, the visit went really well, the financial aid offer, although not breathtaking, was not a deal-breaker either, and it looks like that's where he'll be going. I think it's very hard on students to have to make these decisions so quickly, compared to regular- or early-decision applicants who've been admitted ... and they miss out on the admitted student events that give them a better opportunity to assess the campus and their prospective classmates. I only hope he's made the right decision!

Okie, you ARE a lifesaver! My son and I are using the workbook to review two to three chapters a day before his final exam, and I was dying without an answer key after the first few chapters!! I haven't gotten a response from the publisher either, but now I don't care!

My son took AP Calculus BC yesterday, and has Chemistry and English Language next week. He thought at least one of the free-response questions was very different than anything he'd encountered during his practice tests and was glad to hear at College Confidential that other students found it challenging as well. Apparently, during the last few minutes of the test, one of the students near him started to cry quietly, which must have been rather disconcerting for the rest of them! He says at other tests students have quit in the middle and laid their heads down on their desks ... I feel so sorry for those kids!

I have used almost all of those courses this year with my 15YO son. If I had to choose just one, I'd go with History of Ancient Rome because it would serve best as a "spine" ... covering the history of Rome from Etruscan times to Constantine in chrono order while also devoting some lectures to specific Roman institutions and cultural issues, like public baths, the position of women, and pagan religion. Emperors of Rome is by the same professor, and covers some of the same topics, but in greater detail since it focuses just on the different emperors. Professor Fagan most definitely has a speech issue. He relied more on his notes in History and I think did better with his stuttering. In Emperors he lectured "without a net" and really did pretty well, but I think it had a negative impact on his stuttering. For me and my son, it was not an issue ... it did not detract from the content of his lectures. But it was most definitely not the eloquent delivery that we have come to expect from other TC lecturers. Experiencing Rome is a new course and was quite interesting ... however, it does not cover Roman history in depth. The professor was very entertaining, I thought, but the focus of the course was on how Romans made "public statements" through architecture, interior design, victory parades, etc. We are almost through Famous Romans right now. Prof. Fears is a marvellous storyteller and I think I would choose this course as my backup to the History. My reservation with this course is that he's basing his stories on Plutarch and much of that material is rather suspect in terms of its veracity. They are certainly very entertaining stories, but I wouldn't take them as the gospel truth. They would be nicely balanced out with Prof. Fagan's constant lament about how poor the source material is for much of Roman history.

I SOOOO understand! :glare: My brother's son, who's the same age as my older son, was accepted at Harvard a few weeks ago. MY son, who applied to only one Ivy (Brown) was waitlisted. And he's decided to enroll in a very small college, Transylvania here in Lexington, which practically no one has heard of except locals. But, I have been working on getting a better mindset about all this. First off, my brother went to Harvard and has accomplished very little in life (although he has tons of ability and I love him a lot) ... and has been unemployed (and not looking for a job) for more than two years. His Harvard education did very little "practical" good for him, and I truly believe he would have done better at a different school. *I* went to Brown and, while I had a good education, I feel that I would have probably profited from going to a much smaller school. I was just thinking today about how a combination of arrogant professors, uninterested TA's, and not-very-good freshman classes got me off-track from my original career goal of writing and illustrating ... and look where I've ended up ... a homeschool mom :lol: Seriously, though, I chose Brown because it was the most selective school I was accepted at, not because it was the best fit for me. Same with my brother. Hopefully our children will make wiser decisions. Secondly, our son's college will cost 13K per year (and he is still in the running for a scholarship which would reduce this cost by about 10K). My brother will be paying about 50K per year (they didn't apply for financial aid, thinking that this would increase the odds of my nephew being accepted, despite Harvard's need-blind policy). He has one child; I have three. My son is interested in medical school; my daughter (who will be graduating from college in two years) is also interested in a graduate degree. Realistically speaking, it makes sense for us to choose a quality education at a lesser-known school ... Transy has an excellent record of placing its graduates in medical school and we will have some money to help our children out when the need comes. Finally, I would probably feel differently if we still lived in the Northeast. I was very ambivalent about my son going off to a school that was a plane ride away. My nephew will be a train ride away from his parents. We are a very close family and a separation like this would be hard for everyone. And my son is a fabulous pianist and wants to be near his piano ... since we can't move it into a college dorm, having him here in town will be the next best thing. Oh, and one final thought ... a few years ago, my husband was interviewing candidates for a position at his law firm. One guy was a Harvard graduate, and my husband said that every time he could, he would work Harvard into the conversation. Instead of saying "in college, I did so and so" he would say, "Well, at HARVARD ...." The other candidate was a graduate from Eastern Kentucky University. In every way, my husband and the other partner who were interviewing these two fellows were more impressed with the EKU grad. Just a small example, but I believe a person's accomplishments, character and personality will shine through in the end, no matter where they went to college, and in the long run it's more important WHAT you did in college, than WHAT college you went to.

Wow!! And they didn't make you wait very long to hear either, Sharon! What great news for you and Alex! It obviously was just meant to be. Now ... if you could just keep praying for Alec's Young Scholarship, okay? :) A month of waiting as an alternate, and we're STILL waiting ... sigh.

My youngest, the ninth grader, took it today for the first time. I was really surprised at how well it went. We have had great difficulty getting him out of bed in the morning for several months now. Thankfully, my DH and I have found some techniques that seem to be working well, and so even though my son had to get up at 6:30, he got to the test on time. He also has OCD and is currently off his medication, but didn't seem to get unduly stressed. I have been having him work in practice books for a few months, so the actual test didn't seem to present a big problem. Neither of my older kids took the ACT in ninth grade, but I decided that it would be a good alternative to the Stanford achievement test that our homeschool group gives. That's three mornings of testing, versus the one morning for the ACT, and I think the ACT scores will be more meaningful if we pursue outside classes. Good luck to everyone who took it today! I know for us it was a big relief to have it over!