I missed that. What happened?

Here the community college doesn’t teach the intro classes very well. 2 different math classes were all online with Pearson and the teachers in both classes said they a) could not explain the answer format the program wanted and b) couldn’t over ride grades from the program that they couldn’t explain. I’m afraid trying to outsource pre Calc to the community college has ruined math for my kid who loves programming and now doesn’t want to get the CS degree he wanted previously because of the math required. 😞. He could do the work even with the crappy Pearson software but got so frustrated with getting “that answer is correct but in the wrong format” and failing things with teachers who were apparently powerless against their computer overlords. And we have CC that are well regarded.

I was a first gen college student and a class like that would have been helpful. I knew the basics but some things I had to figure out the hard way.

Other than the housing market being crazy I hadn’t noticed anything. I knew about the lumber. Now you guys have me a bit worried!

Why so small? That really makes me lean more towards waiting a few months to see what comes out before we get it for the younger one. I'm thinking as long as we get it done before co-op in Sept.

That would be helpful. I had no problem getting the vaccine for myself or my husband, but helping my 19 year old make his appointment gave me a moment of anxiety. He got it and its fine, but the younger kids make me nervous for no good logical reason. Maybe because the 12-15s don't get as sick? Like I said, not logical. It just feels different giving my kids something so new, where I had no problem sticking my own arm out.

Any idea on the safety data? I've seen reports that the vaccine works well in that age group but haven't seen any safety data.

A high school do over is exactly what some kids need though. Remember that many high schools are really bad, which isn’t really a students fault. Only about 1/3 of high school graduates graduate with proficiency in math and reading. Or kids who for whatever reason didn’t take high school seriously and then decide to turn things around. Not being ready for calculus senior year shouldn’t automatically close doors forever.

It’s a terrible idea IMO. It does “fix” things from a certain mindset though. Marrying the girl off “fixes” the premarital s*x issue, they got married so it’s “acceptable” now, and it motivates the guy to get hitched to make his criminal charge disappear. Shot gun wedding! I don’t agree with it, thats just how some people see it.

Is it crazy that I think my sense of smell was messed up for a few days by the vaccine? Nothing terrible, I never lost my sense of smell or taste but I had a phantom smell for 2 days.

I wanted a new resource for kids with articles to read instead of videos to watch. I thought written ones would be easier to practice summarizing with. We’ve been using newsforkids.net this school year and it’s working pretty well.

I’m curious as well. All I hear in my more liberal groups is “raising “ the age. They would like to eliminate parents signing for 16 year olds to marry. In some states a judge can sign off on children as young as 14 to marry. Marriage is occasionally seen as a way to “fix” a statutory rape charge or a make a teen pregnancy right”.

Thats why I said some. It happened to me last semester so it was on my mind. That was due to a mistake my advisor didn't catch, which added a semester to my graduation. So glad I'm paying extra for that benefit. It does make sense me to that countries with free college don't bother to hand hold. If those kids drop out no harm, no foul, they don't get the degree. People in the US that drop out have thousands in debt and no degree to get the jobs that increasingly require a degree even though they didn't use to.

That was really more of an aside, someone asked if he could have done this by accident. Its possible for a good hacker to put images directly on your hard drive without you doing anything more than clicking a link in an email, just like a virus or through a virus, I have no idea. Just like hackers can get in and get your emails and documents, they can leave documents on it too. Its just an interesting tidbit. I doubt very much that has anything to do with Josh Duggar though. His own previous behavior makes this just part of his pattern.

This I can agree with for sure. I'm taking colleges classes now to finish my degree. The number of students who don't bother to do the work or even ask question until the end is ridiculous. I had a friend that interviewed for a job at a for profit college years ago and was told she wouldn't be allowed to fail anyone. I've thought about that often with regards to regular colleges. They aren't profit driven necessarily, but they are becoming more and more like that. They get less and less state funding so they rely more and more on tuition, which means they can't turn away "customers". I do have a simple explanation for some of the 15% that don't attend class before they withdraw. Way back when I was on scholarship right out of high school, I had to take a minimum of 12 hours each semester. My first or second semester I registered for 12 hours and the school dropped one just a few days before the semester started. I checked and what the school expected me to do was to scramble around and find a replacement that fit my schedule or I would lose my scholarship. After that I hedged every semester by registering for more classes than I planned to take and would drop one during the 100% drop period so I wouldn't have to scramble if the school dropped a class I needed. I figure that was normal.

Since the advising at my college was a complete waste of time, I'd like a refund on my student loans. I had to figure out which classes to register for and all of that mostly for myself and my husband with little input outside of a rubber stamp from the advising department. When I made mistakes the advising department never caught it. I just figured it out. Seems like eliminating that would be one place for US colleges to save money, since it's pretty much useless.

Someone with experience with other countries will have to chime in because I have no idea about most of that. I imagine other “peer” countries don’t need as much remediation in college because their k-12 type schools prepare kids better than ours do. I’m sure there isn’t a complete absence of academic advising in other countries either, the students must have the necessary course of study communicated to them somehow. Advising is a joke in my experience. I would be interested in the tutoring and labs and other helps though. I’d love to hear experiences from other countries.

I’m genuinely curious because I have no idea what you mean here. What safety nets are being given to American students? Kids who don’t finish college get debt and that’s all as far as I can tell.

Nothing says fun like a colonoscopy. All the cool kids are doing it. 🤪

I do wonder if she is actually the one in charge of her children right now though.

What about the oldest one getting sent to the brain washing camp described above?? CPS really needs to be supervising this family at least.

The ease with which skilled people can plant this sort of stuff is pretty scary. It’s been the subject of many fiction books and TV shows. Dean Koontz wrote one years ago about something related but different and I’ve never felt so vicariously helpless and terrified. Almost made me want to run away to live off grid. But given his prior history I think it’s pretty safe to think it was probably something he did on purpose.

I think you’re right about the politics/elections part, but we also didn’t know the future. How fast vaccines would come out, how effective they would be, how the supply and distribution would go. There were a lot of unknowns even a couple of months ago. They needed to plan for the worse and hope for the best. We’d be in a different place if vaccines were less effective or if there had been a supply hiccup. As it is young people just became eligible for the vaccine. I think the Sept end date looks about right right now. We really got incredibly lucky in a lot of ways and are far better off than other countries.

Do we know if his own children were involved or just “children”? Not that one is really better...

There is also the question of competitiveness. How long can our country stay competitive when other countries are investing in their population while we aren’t?? And then what happens to our economy as a whole? We can quibble about details, but other countries are investing in their citizens and we aren’t. That’s not good long term.