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SeaConquest

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Everything posted by SeaConquest

  1. Thank you for this thread. I have been struggling to understand why so many Christians seem obsessed with this issue. Obviously, child trafficking is a problem. But, the amount of "play" this issue gets among Christians seems disproportionate to the number of people affected vs child hunger, poverty, homelessness, or climate change. It's to the point that I see parents being seriously paranoid about their kids getting stolen, affecting what they allow the kids to do, how they play, etc. vs. worrying about mass shootings/child deaths from guns, where the US is a massive outlier, in terms of safety. I guess I am trying to better understand why Christians have latched onto this particular issue in a way that I am not seeing with other demographic groups in American society. ETA: It's especially bizarre to me, living in San Diego, which is not an uber religious area. Among San Diegans generally, I've never heard anyone talk about this issue. But, among religious Christians (which I have more contact with, as a homeschooler, than I generally would living here), it's perceived as a very real threat -- especially living just a few minutes from the border.
  2. Loved it. Andrew does seem like just about the most gracious friend. So many egos could not have handled the shadow cast by George Michael's incredible talent.
  3. Maybe look at PG Retreat or Yunasa/IEA. We joined PGR awhile ago, but never went because of the pandemic. We were booked for the 2020 Summit, but it was canceled. At the time, I didn't realize that my younger DS wouldn't be able to do anything there because he is not a DYS. That doesn't work for us, so I would attend PGR before Summit, if I were to do it again.
  4. We go up a few times each year, so will definitely take you up on that! ❤️ Because he took the AoPS class, he didn't have access to the question bank. He should have just done OHS math last year. I am told their classes are quite good, with a modest workload compared to AoPS. Lesson learned.
  5. This was Sacha's third AP test and the first he did not pass (he got a 2 on Calc BC). Kiddo took it ok; better than I did. I just faxed off the score cancellation request to the College Board, so I am using that occasion and this post to put it out of my mind. I tried to contextualize what happened to my mom, and the exercise was cathartic for me. I summed it up this way: Mom, Sacha took an online class, as a middle schooler, taught entirely via text message, with only one class meeting per week, that was held at 430-6PM our time (ie as kiddo's ADHD meds are wearing off), and covered in *24 weeks* what is generally covered in *2 years* at most US high schools or in the first year of Calc at the university level (the AoPS Calc class also has some intro to linear algebra and other advanced topics). He attempted this class without any outside tutoring from anyone. In tandem with that, he's growing/developing at a faster pace than at any time since toddlerhood, and took a very demanding chem class that left him little time to prep for the exam. So yeah, we were disappointed with his score, but are trying not to compare him with the miniscule number of kids who are able to accomplish such a feat. Unfortunately, he goes to a school where there are a lot of those types of kids, so it appears to him to be less extraordinary than it truly is. We had to email OHS and tell them that Sacha doesn't feel comfortable enough with the material to move onto multivariable next fall (he is already enrolled in the class and we could just not mention the AP score, but Sacha wants to be solid before moving on). So, we are now scrambling with determining placement and fitting it into his existing schedule. I know how much I benefited from taking another pass at Calc in college (I had a fabulous prof and loved the class), as I was truly clueless in AP Calc AB senior year (even though I somehow got a good grade; my school didn't offer the test, but there's no way I would have passed anyway). So, Sacha will take another rigorous course in single variable, with live video classes twice per week at a time that works better for his attention, access to peer tutors, and another year of math maturity under his belt. I have confidence in him.
  6. Buy a huge piece of land some place beautiful, learn to garden, make wine, and open a no-kill shelter/sanctuary for animals of all sorts. In my free time, I would write articles in the New Yorker and the Atlantic about food, wine, travel, and the issues of the day. I would also moonlight as a SCOTUS justice, adjunct professor, and critical care physician, study Torah in Israel, and, during football season, give color commentary from the sidelines of USC games (a la Steel Magnolias). TW: language https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gyJWCrbTTw
  7. I did this quite a bit as a volunteer in the ED and ICU, when I was trying to figure out if I wanted to go to nursing school. I don't know if you have the time/energy for volunteering at a hospital, but it was a wonderful experience for me. Just thinking out loud. ❤️
  8. Why not graduate him from high school early and take a gap year or two to work on the business? The data shows that boys especially have higher GPAs (and likely get more out of the college experience overall) with the benefit of time that a gap year provides. Speaking from my own experience, the time I spent on active duty in the Army after high school helped me to transition to adulthood without the added stress of school layered on top of it. By the time I got to college (18 months later), I had enough practice at the adulting part that I was laser-focused during college (and had a great experience).
  9. So much this! I was fortunate to meet @Jackie and her 2e DYS through this board. They both helped me to better understand the Es I was seeing in my oldest. After my DS1 started taking meds for one of the Es, he qualified for DYS, which introduced me to more of the many flavors of PG kids. Some get PhDs before they can vote, but many do not, for a variety of reasons. Echoing others, I've also found the DYS FB groups to be most helpful because you really find a tribe of parents who just get what it's like to parent these kids. It is very freeing to not have to explain, excuse, or justify. It's a great community of genenrally kind and helpful folks. Having said that, my son did not have the greatest experience in the Davidson Explore class he took in 5th grade. I was not aware of the course's executive functioning demands or the poor experience that many 2e kids have had in the Explore courses. In hindsight, despite the bad experience, I am glad that he took the class because it was the first serious clue to my DH and I that our son required much more EF support. He still struggles in this area, but because of the DYS community (and this place), I have a much better understanding of how/why he struggles (which, at times, was mindboggling for me, given his intellect) and how my DH and I can better scaffold him. So, on balance, despite the poor fit with the Explore class, I am very thankful that we plugged into the DYS community. Next year will be our 10th year of homeschooling. I've noticed, over time, that these families tend to find each other. Whether here or through DYS, CTY, AoPS, or OHS, we tend to reach out for a supportive community of folks with similar kids. And, while DYS isn't a necessary precondition for PG kids/their parents to find each other, it's a really convenient and useful way to do it. So, if you have the scores, definitely do it! 🙂
  10. I just felt my sheets and there is elastic everywhere.
  11. We have the Luxe Sateen from Brooklinen and they are nice. Not Frette nice (damn, I miss lawyer money), but certainly a step up from normal sheets. Nice enough for homeschool mama money. Lol.
  12. The parajumpers and Coast Guard rescuers that I've known were all very professional and super nonjudgy. If you do dangerous stuff (like rescues) for a living, you know that, being prepared helps, but s**t happens. They also expressed seeing the rescues as keeping their skills sharp. As for my friends, they are wonderful parents, who always give of themselves (both do tons of volunteer work/community service; the Dad is former Navy and volunteers in high-risk, search and rescue himself in the Mammoth area, where they now live). We know them through the sailing/cruising community. We both had our babies in Mexico, a few months apart (Lyra was born in Feb; Ronen in August, 2013 at the same hospital in Puerto Vallarta). They were cleared to leave for the South Pacific by Lyra's doctor. Lyra had been on antibiotics and the doc said she was fine. They got 900 miles from Mexico and Lyra relapsed. They had an offshore medical kit onboard, but nothing was helping. Then, their boat got hit by a rogue wave and when they tried to use their SAT phone, the SAT company had (unknown to them) just changed their SIM card and mailed the new one to their address in San Diego. So, they had no choice but to pull the EPIRB (an emergency beacon), which they knew would likely summon a rescue, but also would require them to sink their home and their dreams of circumnavigation with the girls (you cannot just leave a sailboat out in the middle of the ocean, lest someone run into it, so they had to pull the seacocks on their home and sink it). 😞 ETA: Then, after sinking their home, they get on the Navy ship that picked them up and are told that their entire life has been turned into a media circus and their parenting decisions are now the subject of NYT op-eds. Can you imagine?
  13. Interesting. Do you have a cite? I was thinking about trying liposomal, but now you have me going down the bioavailability rabbit hole. OP, I currently take 500 mg of the HCL version and don't have dry mouth issues. What dose are you taking and what form?
  14. The worst for me is the 19 yr old. An aunt was quoted as saying that he was terrified and only went because it was Father's Day. It would be easy to judge the Dad for putting his kid in harm's way, but from I've read, it doesn't seem that this CEO was being totally upfront with people about the risks -- claiming he had collabs with NASA, Boeing, and the University of WA that likely oversold the safety, especially to the lay public.
  15. My friends were rescued by the US military while at sea. People got seriously bent out of shape over the cost of the rescue and they were just average folks. Rescues are just something that the US military does in our jurisdictional waters. We do it for everyone. Also, no billionaire wealth required for the mob to wish you dead just because you ran into some bad luck. I wish I were exagerrating. The threats people made to them in the aftermath were horrific. Their every parenting decision was a literal national news story for an entire week. But for the grace of Gd, go I. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/us/2-tots-a-sailboat-and-a-storm-over-parenting.html https://www.thisamericanlife.org/525/call-for-help
  16. Such a waste. At least they didn't suffer. May Gd bring peace and healing to their families.
  17. I wish I could figure out how not to sit with the thoughts. They seem to consume me, and I hate it.
  18. My library has free Great Courses on Libby (formely Overdrive). You might check there, too.
  19. I am happy to put her in touch with other lawyers, as well. My biggest advice to people wanting to go into law is to shadow lawyers. See what they really do and how they really live day-to-day, and make an informed decision after due diligence. Neither of my parents have college degrees, so I had no mentoring from them. I should have had my ugrad help me, but I didn't know what I didn't know.
  20. This is a very important point! Another friend of mine turned down Chicago (!!!) to attend Loyola Marymount on scholarship to be with her boyfriend (eyeroll). He turned out to be abusive, she got sick with mono, her grades at LMU tanked, and she lost her scholarship. It was a disaster all around!
  21. I was that same motivated young woman. Nothing could stop me. I did it all on my own, my way. And that big fat acceptance made all the sacrifice feel like it was worth it. So, I get it. The problem is: that shine from the validation of a fancy law school pedigree tends to dim over time; the stress of loan burdens don't seem to fade quite as fast IME. If she wants to chat offline, I am happy to talk to her anytime.
  22. I routinely worked 80-100 hours/week in investment banking and 60-80 as a securities litigator. I never took vacation, even though we had unlimited vacation time, because I couldn't ever get away from work and our bonuses were tied to billable hours (so every hour away from work I quantified to the point of driving myself insane -- I couldn't event stand in line at CVS without losing my shit because I felt under so much pressure to spend my very expensive time efficiently). It was a horrific existence.
  23. TLDR: This is a no-brainer. Take the full ride. I chose my school based on prestige/networking/job and clerkship placement/location, with the understanding that the school's public interest loan repayment program would enable me to work in the public interest (I wanted to be a federal prosecutor). Once I was actually at the school, the details of the loan repayment program became clear, and I realized that I could not afford my loans on a public interest salary (my loans were 185k+ in total at graduation -- my parents did not pay any money for college, I financed 7 years of private ugrad + law from grants, working almost FT throughout ugrad/summers in law school, military benefits, and loans). I went to a T3 law school. Even in the bottom half of my class, I had my pick of T25 law firms with the exception of places like Cravath or Wachtell, where my SCOTUS/feeder Circuit-clerking classmates went. I was active in the Republican Party back then (I assume part of my hook was that I was a conservative woman), so I spent my first summer clerking in the scorched earth litigation department for a rather infamous (in political/legal circles) conservative law firm. I was even on a trial team (BIGLAW cases seldom go to trial). However, for a variety of reasons too numerous to list here, I soon realized that I had zero desire to work in BIGLAW. I fell into a severe depression and wanted to drop out of law school, but I was already 85K down in loans (35K left from ugrad + the 50k I just added 1L year) and my ex-husband convinced me to press on. I decided that, if I couldn't work in public interest after school, I would adopt a quick exit strategy and make as much money as possible. I quickly realized that the real money was on Wall Street, so instead of working at a law firm during my second summer, I worked as a summer associate in a major investment bank. Unfortunately, a few weeks after I left New York, psychos with boxcutters flew two airplanes into the buildings across the street, Wall Street was decimated (technology stocks, especially), and my graduation prospects for an associate position in tech m&a quickly evaporated with the market contraction. I moved home to So Cal, pivoted back to law, worked in securities litigation for a large firm, and hated it. I was trapped by loans and although I was a good lawyer, I was a miserable person. My doctor eventually convinced me to walk away from my job, but I have so much anxiety from the experience, I never practiced law again. I literally got an entire other degree in nursing vs practicing law again. But, that is just one story about the impact debt had on me. I have another friend from law school who trained with Olympic hunter-jumpers in college. She quit BIGLAW within a few years for the same reasons and now owns a business selling high-end saddles. Most of the rest quit because the lifestyle can be punishing and not very friendly to families. But several of my classmates are now judges, law/finance/consulting partners, professors, politicians, government officials, and writers -- many even happily so. But, I have noticed that many of those classmates tended to come from generational wealth (expensive boarding school --> Ivy --> HYS) and have more support (from wives, nannies, housekeepers, tutors, etc.) than those who were burdened by school debt + mortages + child/healthcare costs + retirement, and left the law over time (usually after burning out in BIGLAW). I have a friend from ugrad who turned down my law school because she got a full ride at UVA. I thought she was insane at the time. How could she turn down the offer? But, she was the valedictorian of our ugrad, and so much smarter than me! She had a lovely experience at UVA, graduated debt free with an awesome clerkship, has had a great career as a public interest lawyer, and has 2 lovely kids (one in HS and one at an Ivy). She currently helps place other students into clerkships at UVA. In hindsight, based on my anecdotal life experience, she made the better choice. Given your daughter's situation, being 2e and having to take on a ton of debt to attend GULC, I strongly recommend she attend UCI.
  24. I am heartbroken to read this news. I am so very sorry for the loss of your beautiful son. Sending you so much love and prayers for peace.
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