Glad you're doing well overall!

The research takes forever. Well, less time than the PhD ;-), but I spent one calendar year researching and one calendar year preparing to apply/applying/waiting with bated breath.

Yep, bait and switch, baby.

Were the older girls allowed to change the baby boys' diapers? Do we not think that boys can molest other boys as well, or was that not a concern?

No we don't! We want them to shut up and go away!

My oldest son rents one-third of a three bedroom house. Each one has their own bedroom and they share the living space, kitchen and bathroom.

I think they would.

Plus, some of us think $25,000 for a car is unreasonable also. ;-) $25K is a lot if you can't find a job. And that's the average so a lot have more than that.

Ugh, what an idiot.

I don't know if there's a connection between the Maxwell family and ATI/Gothard, but Teri Maxwell struggled greatly with depression. They follow many of these same teachings and promote them even if they are not ATI. Basically, when Teri was home alone with multiple small children, she was severely depressed. Years later, with her mother living next door, an adult daughter still living with them, and her daughter-in-law across the street, and as they stopped having children because of age, she no longer suffered from depression. I've always thought that a large part of that was that she was not isolated anymore. But, at least as of 10 years ago when I stopped paying attention to anything they said, they were promoting the idea that couples should not have friends and neither should their children. Apparently, the mom should be home alone with all the children with only her dh for support, even though those are the very same conditions under which Teri suffered greatly!

Yes, MIL has also been "very ill" for over 20 years and never seems to get better, despite mainstream and alternative medical care and an increasingly specialized diet. Oh, and the pain is always "horrific."

Dh and I recently discussed this. He's just starting to recognize and accept that his mom is NPD. We had always planned to care for any relatives who need it, but we've changed our minds. I will not do it.

http://www.recoveringgrace.org/2011/09/a-different-kind-of-sexual-abuse/ This is heartbreaking. It's about one boy's experience growing up under this kind of thinking.

Apparently it escapes the attention of the Duggars' defenders that had Josh not molested anyone, there would be nothing to talk about!

This link has been posted on my FB feed a couple of times: http://madworldnews.com/duggar-girls-victimized/ Apparently anyone who talks about this at all is just as bad as Josh. Gag me with a spoon!

Whoops, in a thread below it looks like LSU is having serious financial problems.

I wanted to do my PhD at UW-Madison, but they ran out of funding for me. Later, another grad student told me that I should be grateful that I didn't go there, as all of his friends who had gone there were getting their funding cut left and right and it was a horrible atmosphere.

LucyStoner said, "Yeah, the only Duggar show I think might be palatable now would be some of the daughters pushing off and striking out on their own in the big city." Sects in the City?

OK, I took a look at both those programs, and it's what I thought: Alabama just has most of their languages grouped together under an umbrella program and calls the different languages the "track." Alabama's program looks really good - in fact I am going to look up some of the research by one of their professors because it sounded really interesting. I think the courses required for the major look useful and solid, and the department has lots of opportunities to practice. LSU has a bigger French department, which makes sense, and their site outlines both the French major and the French education major, which is interesting. At Alabama the teacher track must be listed under the School of Education info. If a student has any interest at all in Cajun French and/or other North American varieties of French, it looks like LSU is the place to be! They just got an 8 year grant to continue their work. Both programs look solid, though. For any student wanting to major in languages, I would not recommend only majoring in a language. Either combine the language major with a double major in another field or also do the education track to get certified to teach the language. Options are much more limited if one is not certified. LSU looked like it had really helpful French education courses. HTH!

It's going to be nit-picked because they chose to make their lives public.

Ooh, a French minor! How exciting!

Depends on the school, I would say. They are probably equivalent majors, but one school lumps languages together under an umbrella major. If you tell me specific universities I can take a quick peek. Things to look for in a program: active department, opportunities for the student to practice (coffee hours, study abroad, service learning), variety of practical courses, first/second year courses meet at least 3x per week, at least one of the professors has "Second Language Acquisition" as a research area, emphasis on speaking the language in class, available help (free tutoring), emphasis on communication, with grammar to support..if I think of anything else I'll come back and post again.

Exciting news here! My dd (child number 3), who is only 16, wanted to graduate early and start college. She's been working really hard. She applied to one school - the one I'm attending for my PhD - and GOT ACCEPTED! This college is just about perfect for her and it will be fun to run into her around campus! She didn't apply to any others because we have no money. This way she can live at home and attend college, which is better anyway considering her age (she's not as independent as somebody's child upthread). I don't want to say the name of the school because this is where we live - sorry. It's a flagship state school. If I can manage to finish in 4 more years, we could graduate the same weekend! She wants to major in Germanic studies and learn older Germanic languages. She is planning on grad school also. I guess applying for one college is pretty common. If she hadn't gotten in, she had been working on a plan B of homeschooling college, I think. And the twin stuff upthread...my twins are only 9, but that scares me. The complications and expenses of twins never go away, do they?

I'm not sure why that's so shocking. I started a PhD program last August and I had never written an APA style paper. My MA was in lit and we used MLA style. I find APA annoying and confusing so far, but I'm sure I just need to get used to it. As for the rest of the thread, I'm incredibly cynical about college costs. Poor people have it much harder getting through college than people on here seem to think. There are hidden expenses everywhere even if one has a "full ride." Are you guys aware that taxes must be paid on scholarships that cover room and board? That was an unwelcome bill my oldest's first year of college and caused me a lot of stress as I tried to figure out how to pay it. And it just goes on and on.

The real issue is plagiarism - the only way teachers can determine if the students wrote the papers themselves is to watch them write them! It's too easy to copy and paste from the Internet. At the small high school I just left, where I taught Spanish, I had a class set of textbooks. I HATED THOSE TEXTS! The pages were busy, so busy you couldn't find stuff, and then they would bury important info in a small note. Several times I would ask myself, "When did they explain that to the student?" and start looking and it was in those ridiculous notes. Plus, the books were big and heavy, so I didn't want to make the students carry them around. My biggest headache as the teacher was that they were divided up strangely. Instead of chapters, they had 6 units with 3 sections in each and numbered them like that. For the life of me, I could never remember if we were in 2:3 or 3:2!! And then there was a preliminary section. Hello! They're called chapters - start with the first one and call it 1, and then the next one is two and call it 2, and then continue in like manner! So last year I'd finally had enough and I didn't use them at all, even to supplement. I simply made up my own stuff or printed things off the Internet to use. We had a Chinese teacher at our school and he pointed out that in China, texts are small and inexpensive and the students buys them so that they always have them and are expected to know what's in them because they always have access to them. I think that would be a better system. In my MA program, one of my professors got so absorbed in his work at home that he forgot to come to class. To make it up to us, the next class period he was prepared with his own Top Ten list a la David Letterman - Top Ten Reasons I Missed Class. I still have them in my notes somewhere. They were hilarious. I think one was a hot date with Madonna. I left high school early to go to college, and while I did graduate, I did not attend the graduation. For years I had a recurring dream that I had not finished high school and they were telling me that I had to go back and I would wander around telling people, "But I have a master's degree!"