Ds has gotten into three: Messiah, Calvin and Clark Univ (in Mass). He’s working on Honors program and scholarship applications as we speak. Some are due this weekend. He had an interview with the Honors Program at Messiah. He did get offered a scholarship at Clark, athough not enough to make it a great financial fit for him yet. The bigger ones are the ones with applications. He’s also planning on swimming. It will be D3 so no money but it does add a layer of recruiting and coaches to talk to and such. It is really a sigh of relief to have acceptances.

Mine has gotten two acceptances as well. It is such a relief...kind of “Ok, I didn’t totally fail him.” 🙂 Not that I really thought that was true but still...it’s nice to feel validated a bit.

Thanks!

Thanks!

If your high schoolers would be willing to fill out this quick survey to help my son with his statistics project that would be great! He needs it by next Friday and it should take no more than 10 minutes. (If they know their Myers-Briggs personality type it’s about 2 minutes, if they don’t know it they can follow a link to a quick test and it takes about 10-15 minutes to complete). Link for the survey is below. Thanks! https://www.google.com/url?q=https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdu75eXfeVNB_Oi7AEVO_6VQW5eCd3m61C6jgn7XVEDYUmReg/viewform&sa=D&source=hangouts&ust=1604779843714000&usg=AFQjCNE9NeTnp4A2WqbM859_yCLkFHq7Gg

If your high schoolers would be willing to fill out this quick survey to help my son with his statistics project that would be great! He needs it by next Friday and it should take no more than 10 minutes. (If they know their Myers-Briggs personality type it’s about 2 minutes, if they don’t know it they can follow a link to a quick test and it takes about 10-15 minutes to complete). Link for the survey is below. Thanks! https://www.google.com/url?q=https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdu75eXfeVNB_Oi7AEVO_6VQW5eCd3m61C6jgn7XVEDYUmReg/viewform&sa=D&source=hangouts&ust=1604779843714000&usg=AFQjCNE9NeTnp4A2WqbM859_yCLkFHq7Gg

If your high schoolers would be willing to fill out this quick survey to help my son with his statistics project that would be great! He needs it by next Friday and it should take no more than 10 minutes. (If they know their Myers-Briggs personality type it’s about 2 minutes, if they don’t know it they can follow a link to a quick test and it takes about 10-15 minutes to complete). Link for the survey is below. Thanks! https://www.google.com/url?q=https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdu75eXfeVNB_Oi7AEVO_6VQW5eCd3m61C6jgn7XVEDYUmReg/viewform&sa=D&source=hangouts&ust=1604779843714000&usg=AFQjCNE9NeTnp4A2WqbM859_yCLkFHq7Gg

We have a hoverboard. I don’t think it’s inherently more dangerous than a bike or a skateboard or anything with wheels. A favorite uncle gave it to the kids. The kids loved it, but I made it stay indoors so it wasn’t really something they did for exercise. My middle son could vacuum while riding it and usually did that when it was his turn. It made chores more fun for sure. We also have rip-sticks, bikes, skateboards, unicycles, and scooters. They all used to get a lot of use when the boys were in middle school. The rip-sticks in particular were beloved.

I did what EKS said, and used the simple system with no pluses or minuses. I did include a weighted GPA as all the schools around here do that. I know a lot of colleges then unweight it, but I figure at first glance it looks better to be similar to others. I added 0.5 for Honors classes and 1.0 for AP classes, that is also what the local school system does. So an A in an AP class becomes a 5, a A in an Honors class becomes a 4.5 I put a brief explanation in my school profile about the system I used.

Kids are much more likely to break than sprain compared to adults. (Weak bones, strong ligaments compared to adults with strong bones, weak ligaments). Fractures can be a bigger deal if they involved the growth plate. I’d take him unless he is almost back to normal tomorrow. My daughter broke her foot a few hears ago and I kind of blew if off for a few days (that’s the downside to being the kid of a pediatrician). But it was indeed broken.

I first responded to this with a laughing emoji, but then I read the whole post and it seemed mean to laugh. I laughed because the old lady friend of yours reminded me of my Grandmother. She was Catholic but my Mom didn't grow up Catholic. To make a long story short, my grandmother grew up in Paris during WWII and then moved to a tobacco farm in Virginia after meeting my grandfather who was a soldier. There was no Catholic Church for miles and miles so she sent my Mom and aunt to church with their paternal grandmother, a Baptist. But my Grandmother remained a devout Catholic and when there was finally a church in their town she became a regular attendee and my grandfather converted. Anyway...she used to tell me all the time that I "was really Catholic because we're all Catholic at heart" and she had baptized me Catholic in the kitchen sink as a baby. I would tell her that I didn't think that was accepted by the church and she said it was an emergency so it was ok. I asked what the emergency was and it was that no-one else was going to do it. 🙂

Our co-op is sponsored by a Baptist church. It's very large and probably about 50% Catholic or more. Or maybe it's just the people I know happen to be Catholic. There is a SOF but you don't have to sign it to attend or to teach. You do have to promise not to teach anything directly opposed to the statement of faith, which is the same SOF as the one for the church. So a Catholic can teach pretty much anything but Apologetics. The SOF is young-earth creationism so I don't have my kids take Biology there and although I've been asked to teach it multiple times, I've made it clear that I can't teach it from their perspective. I do teach Anatomy there and don't have a problem with that. I taught Bioethics there and it was a good discussion with a mix of kids from Catholic and Protestant backgrounds. I have many very good friends who go to a private school that is associated with the same group that ACB is associated with (and I think it's a branch/relative of the school her kids go to). I know the school very much embraces the idea of bridging the historic gap between Catholics and Protestants. It's sort of one of the things they are proud of and known for. It's actually a school that a lot of homeschoolers here end up at for high school. I do think the "Catholics aren't Christians" idea within the evangelical community is very real and very sad.

I’m a pediatrician. Dh and I have never isolated from each other or the kids. In all honesty, I worry much less about catching Covid at work in a professional setting than I would at the grocery store or out in public somewhere where people are walking around unmasked and I have no idea if they have symptoms and what their level of safety is. We see people sick all the time in my office but I’m wearing proper PPE when I do so. And our patients all have masks on. None of the nurses/docs in our office distance from loved ones at home. Dh does have pre-existing conditions that make him higher risk. Two of my kids have asthma, which isn’t really a major risk factor even though it seems it should be. That doesn’t really answer your question, I know. Just another perspective.

Ha! My two boys are about to paint their room dark purple. They just really wanted something very unexpected.

Derek Owens is working well for my current 9th grade son who is not really a Math kid. I like that he can self-pace and really take the time to learn it. I also have been very impressed with the feedback. For example, on a problem set that my son did poorly on, Mr. Owens sent extra help to make sure he got it and then had him redo that homework. Which gives him the chance to improve his grade but also focuses on mastery rather than just getting through it. He’s taking longer than a year to do it and I also like that he max you pay for is 9 months, no matter how long it takes to do. I’m considering using him for my daughter who will likely get to Algebra next year in 7th grade. She’s a strong Math student but is not at all going to want to do AOPS (I also have an older kid who is a senior and who has self-taught himself with AOPS all the way through). She can do Math but it’s not really her thing. DO seems like it might be a good fit her.

You probably know this, but you don’t have to register if you are going to do D3 sports. Makes life a lot easier. 🙂

So far, it looks ok for us. We live in a big county though with a lot of options. One thing I didn’t know if others realized was that the fees are refundable this year. I was really glad to see that, because ds is signing up for 6 exams. If they are all online again, he might change his mind about taking them. Makes it a little less annoying to write that check.

Ds is a swimmer and wants to swim D3 in college, so that has impacted his search. He’s looking at small liberal arts schools with swimming that are strong in Math/Science. He has a list of about 12 places he’s still interested in and where he’s been talking to the coaches. We visited two colleges in early August. We’ve done virtual visits at others and because of the swimming angle he’s been able to get more of a feel for some places- either through talking to coaches or virtual sessions with the team (and other applicants). He’s also had a couple of places set up calls for him with swimming math majors, which is nice. So our search has ben a little different. He emphatically does not want to go anywhere in state and many of the places are fairly far away. Several are in states with mandatory quarantines so we can’t visit. So the plan right now is to just apply and then to see where he gets in and what the financial packages are. We’ve been very open with him about which places we anticipate will not be financially doable. Hopefully, that will narrow it down to a few and then we can visit in the spring, after he is accepted. I know it’s highly likely there won’t even be classes going on then and the campuses will be closed...but it’s the best we can do at this point. He has enough good scores from the SAT and ACT that he doesn’t have to take it again, so we’re ok there. He’s signed up to take the SAT in October, but I don’t know if that will happen. The last time he took it was in 9th grade so he’d like to do it one more time and hopefully score higher to help with some potential scholarships.

No, not as a precaution. I’m a pediatrician so I can’t work at home.

Oh my goodness, this explains so much! I LOVED Organic Chemistry, it was one of my favorite classes. It was hard but it just made so much sense to me. I actually got asked to tutor someone a year or two later and I was a terrible tutor for her because I couldn’t figure out why she couldn’t “see” the reactions that just seemed so obvious. (Don’t worry, I realized how bad I was and got her a new tutor quickly.) I actually also took it in the summer which I kind of loved...I basically spent 8 hours a day doing Chemistry and it was fantastic. I was a Bio/Chem double major (my school didn’t have Biochem as a major but that would have been what I did if we had it). I also went to med school. For me, Physics and P. Chem were the really challenging classes. Biology classes weren’t hard as I’m very good at memorizing but I didn’t find them fun. Med school (and I would guess PA school) are much more like Biology...it’s a ton of memorization. Also, for med school in general, I often hear people say they aren’t sure if they want to go to school that long or if they want to put in that much work. And it is a lot of work and people should be sure they really want to do it. On the other hand, it’s not really like undergraduate work. The first few years is a lot of book learning and memorization but if you are interested in medicine it’s all really cool stuff that you are excited to learn. Then you get to the more hands-on clinical years and those are also a lot of work but even though it’s very intense and hard, it’s very exciting. Basically, yes, there will be classes as hard as O. Chem. But it will probably be way more fun than taking a really tough class online and alone. 🙂

Thanks everyone! I found that as I wrote out my question I kind of reassured myself. 🤣 I don’t know if that happens to anyone else here, but it’s often the case for me. It’s like the act of processing the question or issue by writing it out then helps me figure it out. But I also appreciate all the input. I also remembered the wonderful old thread by Nan (I think) that talks about how your 9th grader is not a college freshman. I realize I did the same thing with my oldest for different issues...projecting that he wasn’t ready for college yet when he was entering 9th grade and forgetting that I have four years to get him ready. I think part of my concerns was feeling like that he needs to be prepared for a heavier reading load...even if he can use audiobooks, they may not be available for everything in college. But then I talked myself off the ledge and repeated the mantra from Nan that a 9th grader is not a 12th grader. And a 12th grader isn’t even a college freshman. Big deep breaths, and I’m ok again. I think I’ll mostly leave it up to him. Some of the things we are going to use don’t have audiobooks as options so he we have to use the print version. But if there is one available and he wants to use it, we can do that.

No fee. We listen through Apple podcasts. There are a few ads, but not a ton. I think there are apps you can listen to that are a fee and have no ads but I haven’t used them. There are other podcast apps but we just use Apple because we have iphones and it’s easy.

I tried to search this but couldn’t find anything, so sorry if it’s been asked and answered before. I’m wondering about using audiobooks for a high schooler for his school reading. My rising 9th grader greatly prefers audiobooks over reading. I have a strong bias against audiobooks, I will admit. I tend to be a little bit of a snob about it where I feel like “it’s not really reading”. I think that is because I am personally way more of a visual learner. I would always choose a book over a lecture in order to learn. So audiobooks have always seemed to me to be somehow lesser, probably because I don’t retain information from them as well. I admit my bias fully and realize that it’s not really fair. Ds would be happy if I let him listen to all assigned reading instead of requiring him to read the print. He can read well and I don’t think he has any kind of reading learning disability. He definitely is a more auditory and kinetic learner. He listens to Ted talks and various Podcasts all the time and retains a fair amount of information. He likes to draw or do something with his hands while he listens. He does has ADHD and I think that is part of the issue. He gets bored and distracted while reading and is a very slow reader most of the time. Occasionally he’ll find a book that grabs him an he’ll devour it, but that is rare. On the one hand, I want him to have a successful 9th grade year and I know if he can listen to books we can cover a lot more material without it being torture for him. On the other hand, part of me feels like this is cheating. (I think that’s just my bias...?) Anyone used audiobooks primarily with a high schooler?

We started listening to a great podcast last year for Government and are still working our way through it. It’s called Wicked Game and it’s covering every US election, one week at a time. It’s due to wrap up in November with the 2020 election.

Not this year but we’re using your GPS 1 curriculum this coming year for my 9th and 12th graders. I’ve been pre-reading the books the past few weeks and I’m really excited. I’m so glad to see there is a second year! Now I know what to do for 10th grade for my second son. 😁