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Frances

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Everything posted by Frances

  1. Yeah, no way would I risk linking bank accounts to any third party software. My credit cards which we use for almost everything and pay off every month automatically categorize things, although I honestly don’t find it very helpful. I still prefer paper and pencil tracking after working in front of a computer all day. There is something soothing about writing it all out. Then again the only budget categories I use are for things we only pay a few times per year like insurance and property tax. But I still track every single penny we spend, a habit leftover from the many years living in poverty during grad and professional school.
  2. I think I could wear sneakers in almost any temps, but no show socks would likely only work for six months out of the year tops.
  3. Are you talking about your own children? Because this is not at all what I’m seeing in my life. I’m regularly in awe of how hard working, motivated, open to challenges, etc most of the young adults I know are. Not to mention that most are far more accepting of a wide variety of people and ways of doing things, compared to the older generations.
  4. With the tightening of mortgage lending that happened after the great recession, I think most people today who qualify for a mortgage, given the combination of high prices and relatively high invested rates, are probably fine buying. At least among people I know, most just bought when they qualified and were generally planning on staying somewhere for awhile. They weren’t looking to experts or influencers for advice or trying to have so much in an emergency fund or savings or whatever. To me the biggest difference today is that right now the housing market is so wonky in some areas that it actually makes more sense to rent, even if one can buy. I mean when less than 10% of household in some areas can qualify to buy the median priced home, rents have to stay low enough for people to be able to afford them.
  5. That’s very surprising given how she was raised that she’s had lots of mental health care, but very good.
  6. Is this for winter? I often find similar pants I like online, but can never figure out what socks/shoes will work for them outside of summer sandals or flats. Even though I live in the temperate PNW, I can’t imagine wearing sneakers and no show socks in the winter or even much of the spring/fall.
  7. Many D3 LACs are going to have 3-2 engineering programs where the student attends the LAC for three years and then transfers (usually to a D1 university) for the last two years. My husband started on this path, but changed his mind about engineering. His freshman roommate continued on the path and ultimately received his engineering degree. While I’m sure there are students who do it successfully, I would think being an engineering major and doing a varsity sport at a D1 school would be very challenging due to the time commitments needed for both.
  8. True, there are limited opportunities, all the more reason why we have to guide our young people strategically. Personally, if I had a young adult who was not both well educated and highly motivated, I wouldn’t be steering them toward any job with a corporation unless it was one specifically known for upward mobility. At least in my state, I believe every government job pays a living wage with excellent benefits and they have tons of openings. Certainly people can make more, often significantly more, in the private sector, but there are often downsides. And people may have to move to where the jobs are. My husband and I moved several times for education and then ultimately 2k miles away from everyone for a job and it sucked for along time, but it eventually really paid off.
  9. Are you saying specifically there is no room for upward mobility for your daughter or speaking more generally? At a holiday gathering I was recently reminded of how far some people go career wise, even without a college education. I met a woman in her 40s who as a young single mom started the lowest level seasonal temp job in a government agency and today manages an entire division in the same agency with a salary in the mid $100ks and great benefits, including eventually a nice pension. I think the more current pressing need is for everyone to be housed, then maybe we can focus on getting people out of crappy living arrangements. I do think lots more shared housing arrangements of all types would help with both loneliness (and the related physical and mental health problems) and making better use of limited $ to address housing needs.
  10. Is she anxious? We are helping a young adult in a somewhat similar situation and while seemingly fairly confident (and she has reason to be, she is gifted in multiple areas), she suffers from pretty extreme anxiety. I think this is very much related to the other current thread on the effects on mental health of extreme parental involvement. I think the moms our two cases are controlling for similar reasons, this young adult is the oldest of three children by three different men and the mom is unmarried and part of an authoritarian religion. All this to say, it’s great your congregation is stepping up to help, but she may also need referral to mental health resources at some point.
  11. It’s great that some places are making more options available for rural students. Although I didn’t appreciate that the time, looking back I realize I actually got a very good education, despite attending such a small, rural school with limited course options, especially when I compare it to what I see happening rurally near me. All of my classmates knew college was going to be different and hard and since it wasn’t a thing to apply to elite schools where I lived, we all ended up at places that challenged us without overwhelming us and for those of us that chose very good, but not elite, LACs, launched us into top grad schools for advanced STEM degrees. Besides those with PhDs, I have high school classmates who are nurses, teachers, lawyers, engineers, doctors, physical therapists, optometrists, judges, managers, business owners, etc. Not having any advanced or even honors classes in high school certainly didn’t hurt our career prospects.
  12. I think there is so much variation in the public school education system in the US, not just among states, but even within states and at times even within districts, that it’s almost possible to make comparisons across schools and time unless using national data and research. Just anecdotally, my small rural high school had no AP, IB, honors, or DE classes, only taught math through pre-Calc, and very few parents had a college degree. Yet a significant portion of my graduating class received a college degree and everyone who attended finished their four year degree. And several of us went on to receive degrees from top grad and professional schools.
  13. Would someone be willing to gift the article in the series about the homeschooling researcher, Brian Ray? I’d really like to read it but don’t have a subscription. Thank you!
  14. I don’t think it’s the freak out about how we compare to other countries that make our schools, not just high schools, developmentally inappropriate for many students. Because unlike the US, many other countries do follow research proven best practices when it comes to education and they also have much more educational uniformity across the country. In the US, that’s more likely to be the exception, not the norm. Many of these other countries are tracking students and offering viable alternative paths for those not college bound. Many are not pushing developmentally inappropriate academics in the early grades and have actual math teachers teach math from the early grades, not to mention starting foreign language instruction much earlier. There are lots of lessons we could learn from other counties when it comes to education.
  15. At my son’s school, the only departmental scholarships available to incoming students required that the student qualify for financial aid, so my son wasn’t allowed to apply. In some ways it made sense because in addition to $, the students got extra advising and help with getting research positions. In general, I think they were really targeting first generation college students and they used qualifying for FA as a proxy. Later, much smaller ones were available to upperclassmen.
  16. If you liked DC and NY, have you done Vancouver and Victoria BC? We did them separately and loved both trips, so much to see and do, both cultural and outdoors. You could easily fill 8-9 days. I would recommend September or early October. There is also Montreal and Quebec City which I haven’t done but want to some day.
  17. Personally I don’t see whether someone allows sleepovers or not as some gauge of how much independence a parent allows. My son did them with his very closest friends whose families were also friends of ours. As for babysitting, I would never allow my son to do it after reading horror stories about teen boys being falsely accused of improper behavior. There are plenty of other ways for kids to practice independence. I did some babysitting growing up, but never really liked it. I far preferred my paper route and lawn mowing. Lawn mowing was way more lucrative than babysitting. My son taught a variety of classes to kids through adults across various settings (frequently without any supervision), was a summer camp leader that took groups of younger kids around town for filming, was part of ten/adult TV production crews that travelled to various sites, produced his own shows, etc. He didn’t need babysitting to practice independence.
  18. All of this also happens with most people I know. The hyper involvement and micromanagement mainly revolves around education and ECs, not going places independently or walking alone to school.
  19. I guess we all live in a bubble to some degree, mine is an upper middle class one where these types of parents are likely far more common. But the article also spoke to broader societal trends that likely cut across different socioeconomic classes.
  20. Are people even reading the article? It’s not contrasting active parenting with free range parenting. Parents can be actively involved in their children’s lives without being hyper vigilant and micromanaging. They can be actively parenting and still allow plenty of opportunities for risk taking, mistakes, failures, independence, etc.
  21. I think we are saying the same thing. The ability to easily communicate with others is the one overall positive aspect of technology and the internet age. Of course it’s not a substitute for in person community. At least where I live, volunteering is a place to get free community across ages and many of the arts organizations offer free or reduced price access to space, materials, and community. Also, we have lots of wonderful parks that are great gathering places for people of all ages. When we were at one near downtown and the river this summer, I turned to my husband and said, “It’s become like a big backyard for the city.” They keep adding new features and more and more people are gathering there. That night there were bike riders and walker, exercise classes, young adults playing volleyball, people taking prom pictures, families and couples picnicking, lots of dog walkers and runners, people setting up for an outdoor movie night, lots of music playing, carousel rides, boat rides, etc. Those at the park represented a very diverse cross section of our community.
  22. I’d say the biggest issue here is a school awards ceremony for first graders!?! That’s crazy and very inappropriate. We didn’t even get letter grades until fourth grade and there were no awards ceremonies until middle school.
  23. My community and neighborhood must be very different than yours because here teens are welcome and encouraged to use public transportation on their own and go the YMCA and teen drop in center, teen center at the library, numerous volunteer opportunities on their own, etc. These are all centrally located and all of the outlying lower income neighborhoods have Boy’s and Girl’s Clubs which are specifically designed for children to visit alone. I was just volunteering at a week long holiday event and numerous teens were there volunteering on their own and I even met a few young adults who were reminiscing about their times volunteering as a teen at the same event. Many of the elementary aged kids in my neighborhood walk together to school and we know every child of every age by name in our neighborhood. I do see and hear about the reduction in recess and I honestly think there should be laws against it. I’m so sick of our public schools regularly going against what research shows is best for children.
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