I remember my first autumn in MN when I marched outside to ask why on earth the maintenance guy was watering the dead grass in the park.... Laying the foundation for the ice rink! I had no idea. Great fun watching the neighborhood kids skate in the winter.

As a former ex-pat in Minneapolis: start thinking about your winter outdoor activities now. You will need to get out of the house. I bought used snowshoes at Midwest Mountaineering on Ceder Ave. I would snowshoe around the local playground, just to get some sun and raise my heart rate. The good news is there are beautiful sunny days in winter. The bad news is these clear winter days are super cold! But if you have the right clothes and gear winter can be wonderful. Minneapolis is fantastic, enjoy!

The College Board is alive and well in the UK. I took the LSAT in London, my sister took the SAT. Testing hours were late afternoon to correspond with the East Coast, and it was a hotel conference room rather than a classroom, but it's totally doable.

Juris Doctorate, for example.

Think fancy school uniform. Lands End has a plaid dress and a cardigan that would look great together.

Apples and honey for everyone!

I refused to consider Midwest schools for UG. Then ended up in Minnesota for law school. 1) I loved the Midwest. 2) my classmates came from a lot of interesting Midwest schools. Who knew? Not my 17 year old self...

I own the History Alive book from TCI, and I think it looks really promising. It follows the California state standards, so for example it nicely weaves in coverage of women and minorities. For a classroom textbook it's beautiful. A nice clean layout without busy graphics or garish colors. I'm surprised the TCI books don't get more attention, I think they are well done.

We used the service in the Book of Common Prayer. I would not want to write my own vows. I think ceremonies should reflect our common experience rather than our individual experience. (This is how you rebel after being raised by hippies in the woods.)

I added my husbands name as a second middle name. So ABDC. It wasn't an option on my marriage license, I had to pay money and go to court, but I'm glad I did. I was able to keep my maiden name professionally, which was a big deal for me. if I had changed my last name I would have had to change my email, and my maiden name would have disappeared from the system. Anyone searching my maiden name would think I had left the organization. Grrr. I also have a unique maiden name I absolutely love. It's rare as a name, but common as a noun, everyone knows how to spell it. My daughters have Dh's last name. I'm thrilled that also carry the name, albeit not as a last name. But it's on my driver's license, passport, etc.

Alice comes from the same name as Adelaide, so that would be a deal breaker for me. Beatrice is lovely. I know one in middle school, it doesn't seem out there or old lady to me. Margaret is classic and will always be a good choice.

There are other ways to be eligible besides approved a-g courses. You can use AP tests, college courses and SAT II's to satisfy a-g requirements. Alternatively you can show eligibility by examination, which requires specific high SAT and SAT II scores. All of this is on the UC website.

We let people customize their marriages through pre-nuptial contracts. State sanctioned marriage is not one size fits all. However, there are limits to what courts are willing to enforce, especially with regards to children. (The best interests of the child standard will usually prevail in a custody dispute, regardless of any contract between the spouses.) Civil marriage is still largely about property rights, and I don't think this is a bad thing. I'm thrilled that I would automatically inherit my husbands assets. And tax free on top of that. That's a huge protection for widows, and one of the main benefits gay couples were fighting for. It's not a cooncidence that Windsor was an estate tax case.

I know fit is a crap shoot, especially with gifted kids. (I grew up in an small affluent school district that despite all the extra arts and teacher's aids didn't really meet my needs.) But I can't complain. Having such a well ranked school as an option? It doesn't suck.

I agree it's silly that the option schools have geographic preferences. I think they should be lottery schools. I'm still glad the option programs exist, even if my kids are unlikely to benefit. We are zoned for a great elementary school and we will probably take full advantage. I'm the first to admit we will benefit from the recent shift to neighborhood schools.

I don't have strong opinions either way about charter schools. But I am impressed that our district in Seattle has a lot of variety even without charters. Language immersion, STEM focus, Montessori, IB... Charters aren't the only way to avoid one size fits all.

My understanding is that the situation in WA is unique in that the WA state constitution has provisions specifically addressing school funding. The 2012 charter law was passed by initiative. Apparently the initiative used standardized language from other states that didn't work with the school funding rules in the WA constitution. This decision is therefore unlikely to impact other states.

You questioned how someone could feel unsafe reading these threads. I tried to explain why *I* have an emotional reaction to these threads. It is absolutely not my intention to suppress your perspectives. My emotional reactions, based on my own childhood trauma, should in no way limit the discussion.

These threads push all kinds of emotional buttons for me. I'd be the first to admit that IQ testing has flaws, and that a single number is woefully inadequate to capture the complicated realities of intellectual gifts. (If you saw my IQ you'd never guess I can struggle with basic arithmetic.) That said, high IQ doesn't exactly feel like a "concept" when you spent your whole childhood feeling like an outsider because of a lack of intellectual peers. IQ feels pretty darn real to me. Questioning the "underlying premises" can feel like a denial of my reality. I'm just trying to explain why these threads can feel hostile, not trying to derail the discussion.

My Dd1, 22 months, is thankfully in full time daycare. Otherwise I'd be reading to her all day long. Mother Goose is a big hit, she has most of the rhymes memorized. This is the age when she's supposed to start forming simple two word sentences, right? Last night she made up a song for herself, "Daddy wears purple shirts all day long." She's also a problem solver. If she catches me nursing Dd2, it's "Put the baby in her bed Mommy." I bought the preschool package from Timberdoodle when she was 18 months. We don't use all of it yet, but it was nice to get a big box of educational books and toys all at once. I put everything away in a cupboard, and I pull things out when she needs something new.

I also wanted to teach, but was consistently discouraged because teachers aren't paid well. (My single mom was very big on self-sufficiency.) I ended up being a tax litigator, which I love, but I still daydream about teaching. But honestly I don't know that K-12 teaching would have been a good fit for me. My job gives me access to intellectual peers, and that is so important to my mental and emotional well being. I look at my high school classmates who became teachers, and while they are great people whom I've always liked, they are not my peers. I'm an IQ outlier and I need others like me to thrive. I've found my tribe in tax law, and I'm incredibly grateful for that.

The idea that some high IQ people don't need/want/like to hang out with other high IQ people is so foreign to my personal experience that it made me sad. But there is so much diversity in high IQ people that I shouldn't project my experience onto others. But I have been thinking about that thread a lot. Thanks for mentioning it Lewelma.

Yes.

I still think this is true, especially for the top schools.

I see you are looking to satisfy the A-G requirements through testing. I initially thought you were considering admission by examination. It requires high scores, but fewer tests. It's what I did in 1997. http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/freshman/minimum-requirements/examination/index.html