Phew-he is graduating from engineering school next week!!!

[Nan in Mass]

Phew phew phew! Grades are in and he didn't flunk anything at the last minute. It was a near thing. He was borderline in biofluids then flunked the final then stayed up for two days straight studying and got a 94 on the retake and messed up the grading curve. The prof had warned him he would just flunk again and was flabbergasted. Just as well he did the retake in her office with her right there. Phew. I will put a few more in here. Phew phew phew. Maybe it will reduce the migraine that built up yesterday. He also wrote a 10 page music paper in 2 1/2 hours to turn in at the last minute. Thank goodness he chose a school that focuses on whether the student can apply the material rather than whether the student has mastered learning in a classroom.

 

We are not die-hard homeschoolers. Homeschooling was a mutual yearly decision. The children chose to homeschool each year. I refused to homeschool anyone unwilling. Somehow, we wound up homeschooling youngest 1-12, with some help from the community college at the end. When he called tme a minute ago to say he was graduating, I asked whether he was glad he had homeschooled. He said he has thought a lot about that this week, and that homeschooling has its advantages and disadvantages, he is glad he did. (More phews. ) Among other things, he said that having watched his classmates solve so many problems and do so much math the hard way, he is very grateful for having done Singapore math. He says that he also seems to write better and more easily. He wrote a 10 page music paper this week to turn in at the last minute in 2 1/2 hours. (The research was done earlier.)(More phews. I feel like I spent a good half of high school teaching him plain technical writing. ) And use tools. His team just built a large 3d color printer for their big senior project.

 

And more major phews because he has a job lined up already and began working two weeks ago doing some CAD work and buying and assembling test equipment. A nice unintimidating hands-on beginning.

 

Can you tell I am massively relieved grin?

 

A huge thank you to everyone here in the hive. I would hate to have had to do it without you. I thought some of you might want to hear where this child that you all helped me with so much ended up.

 

Middle one has one semester and 2 coops left until he graduates.

 

: )

 

Who else has a graduation this spring?

 

Nan

[Julie of KY]

Congratulations on his graduating!!!

It's been fun to follow your journey though homeschooling. Over the years I've gained a lot of wisdom from reading your posts. It helps me to realize that it's okay to school however is best for my kids and my family.

My oldest is graduating high school (homeschool) and moving on to college next year.

[Miss Mousie]

Three cheers!

 

:hurray:    :hurray:     :hurray:

 

Hearty congratulations to both of you!  I especially love that he is already working.  That's worth at least a phew or two of its own!

 

 

 

 

[swimmermom3]

Phew phew phew! Grades are in and he didn't flunk anything at the last minute. It was a near thing. He was borderline in biofluids then flunked the final then stayed up for two days straight studying and got a 94 on the retake and messed up the grading curve. The prof had warned him he would just flunk again and was flabbergasted. Just as well he did the retake in her office with her right there. Phew. I will put a few more in here. Phew phew phew. Maybe it will reduce the migraine that built up yesterday. He also wrote a 10 page music paper in 2 1/2 hours to turn in at the last minute. Thank goodness he chose a school that focuses on whether the student can apply the material rather than whether the student has mastered learning in a classroom.

 

We are not die-hard homeschoolers. Homeschooling was a mutual yearly decision. The children chose to homeschool each year. I refused to homeschool anyone unwilling. Somehow, we wound up homeschooling youngest 1-12, with some help from the community college at the end. When he called tme a minute ago to say he was graduating, I asked whether he was glad he had homeschooled. He said he has thought a lot about that this week, and that homeschooling has its advantages and disadvantages, he is glad he did. (More phews. ) Among other things, he said that having watched his classmates solve so many problems and do so much math the hard way, he is very grateful for having done Singapore math. He says that he also seems to write better and more easily. He wrote a 10 page music paper this week to turn in at the last minute in 2 1/2 hours. (The research was done earlier.)(More phews. I feel like I spent a good half of high school teaching him plain technical writing. ) And use tools. His team just built a large 3d color printer for their big senior project.

 

And more major phews because he has a job lined up already and began working two weeks ago doing some CAD work and buying and assembling test equipment. A nice unintimidating hands-on beginning.

 

Can you tell I am massively relieved grin?

 

A huge thank you to everyone here in the hive. I would hate to have had to do it without you. I thought some of you might want to hear where this child that you all helped me with so much ended up.

 

Middle one has one semester and 2 coops left until he graduates.

 

: )

 

Who else has a graduation this spring?

 

Nan

 

Oh my gosh, Nan!  Is this your moving target boy?   I am so doing the happy dance for you!!!

 

:party: :party: :party:  Your posts about your guys always gave me hope, because they seemed so real, like the morning your woke up to the sound of chainsaws.  Or when you went out of town and the guys bought hairspray and potatoes, I think it was.

 

Fantastic job, Nan!  Plan B to Z children are both rewarding and tremendous pains in the backside to homeschool. I always hoped mine learned even half of what I learned. :tongue_smilie:

 

 

[MomsintheGarden]

Congratulations, Nan!  Way to go Nan's youngest!  Graduating from engineering school is a huge accomplishment.

[Nan in Mass]

Yes, Lisa. That one. The one you had to keep telling me not to panic about. The one who built the laser pointer that had to be kept locked up so nobody would mistake it for an ordinary laser pointer and start a fire with it. The one who turned off our refrigerator in an experiment to see if bacteria can hear and didn't remember to turn it on again until he happened to overhear me complaining about the milk going sour faster than usual a MONTH later. (Refrigeration is obviously overrated.) (Corraleno-I blame you for that and various other scientific misadventures. It was you who told me that he needed to do real science, not a textbook.) This is the one who had history textbooks from France that I had to read with a French dictionary. (Thank you Joan.) This is the one who panicked a few weeks before his community college physics class and asked my father to teach him high school physics while we were on a sailing vacation. Dad did it, but told me that next time youngest asked him to do something like that, he was going to refuse unless youngest came with a textbook. It was a wild ride.

 

Nan

[FaithManor]

Resounding applause!!!I am on my kindle and do not have the emoticon.

 

😀

[Nan in Mass]

Congratulations on his graduating!!!

It's been fun to follow your journey though homeschooling. Over the years I've gained a lot of wisdom from reading your posts. It helps me to realize that it's okay to school however is best for my kids and my family.

My oldest is graduating high school (homeschool) and moving on to college next year.

Congratulations, Juie!

I remember my grief at the end of 8th grade as I thought about how much education we were going to have to give up in order to jump through hoops for college admission, and my panic as I thought about how to fit my brightish but not very academic minded, lopsided, atypical children through those hoops. Eventually, I realized that giving up a good education just to keep all their university options open did not make sense and I gave up on that strategy. It was scary to apply to college with an undated, ungraded transcript with natural history and other dubious classes on it, minimal standardized testing, and cc classes instead of AP classes, but it worked out in the end. The relief when they graduated!!!

 

I am so glad nothing I said messed anything up for you grin.

 

Nan

[swimmermom3]

Congratulations, Juie!

I remember my grief at the end of 8th grade as I thought about how much education we were going to have to give up in order to jump through hoops for college admission, and my panic as I thought about how to fit my brightish but not very academic minded, lopsided, atypical children through those hoops. Eventually, I realized that giving up a good education just to keep all their university options open did not make sense and I gave up on that strategy. It was scary to apply to college with an undated, ungraded transcript with natural history and other dubious classes on it, minimal standardized testing, and cc classes instead of AP classes, but it worked out in the end. The relief when they graduated!!!

 

I am so glad nothing I said messed anything up for you grin.

 

Nan

 

Good lord, Nan!  The insanity at your place, helped keep all the rest of us sane! :lol: :D 

 

What I always loved was your ability to take a deep breath, readjust direction and meet the student where they were at even if you had to stand on your head to do it.  That gave me the courage to color way outside the lines at times. I remember the summer of the physics class, I just didn't realize your poor dad had to do it without a text.

 

[Twigs]

:hurray:  :hurray:  :hurray:

[Corraleno]

Congratulations!   :party:

 

Mine will be graduating high school in a few weeks. He's eagerly planning his gap year, and has offers from several schools for the year after. It's been an amazing adventure, and I wouldn't trade for anything. "Phew" is right!     :cheers2:

Edited May 7, 2017 by Corraleno

[Nan in Mass]

Congratulations! :party:

 

Mine will be graduating high school in a few weeks. He's eagerly planning his gap year, and has offers from several schools for the year after. It's been an amazing adventure, and I wouldn't trade for anything. "Phew" is right! :cheers2:

Congratulations!!! I hope he has a fabulous gap year. Gap years are great. Oldest did a gap triyear and I wanted the younger two to wait a year as well, but they both were summer birthdays and had started kindergarten later and didn't want to wait. Both would have benefited from a gap year, being late bloomers even with delayed kindergarten. Some of the things their friends could manage at 19 or 20 didn't click for mine until 25. (Me, too, so it wasn't exactly a surprise. ) Best of luck to your son in all his endeavors. May his path through college be interesting but so interesting that all your hair falls out. Good interesting. : )

 

Nan

[wintermom]

So glad your homeschool journey through to college completion is finished successfully! I'm still deep in the trenches trying to navigate through high school. It's overwhelming, to say the least. I have 3 or 4 potential engineering kids, so hearing your son graduated from engineering and has a job lined-up is very exciting to hear. It gives me some hope that it can definitely be done. 

 

What area of engineering did he finish in, and is it the same one he started in?

[DawnM]

Congrats!

[Nan in Mass]

So glad your homeschool journey through to college completion is finished successfully! I'm still deep in the trenches trying to navigate through high school. It's overwhelming, to say the least. I have 3 or 4 potential engineering kids, so hearing your son graduated from engineering and has a job lined-up is very exciting to hear. It gives me some hope that it can definitely be done. 

 

What area of engineering did he finish in, and is it the same one he started in?

 

He went into engineering as a mechanical engineering student and finished up in the same place.  He was interested in inventing things and he was interested in biotech and he was interested in chemistry and materials, but the other engineers in the family persuaded him that he was better off getting his undergrad degree in plain old mechanical engineering rather than trying to specialize too soon.  They said that way he would have more options and be more versatile when it came to job hunting, and they said that they had noticed that the specialized degrees sometimes skimped a bit on the basic groundwork in order to fit in the specialized classes.  His school has a policy of having older students in the same major help the new freshmen to sign up for classes.  (You can do it online by yourself if you are from afar, but many of the students are local and actually go to the campus spring of their senior year to sign up for classes.)  Youngest's mentor managed to get youngest signed up for a machining class first term, thinking (rightly) that he would be happier if he had an exciting, hands-on class right away, and youngest continued to build on that through other classes and his summer internships.

 

Youngest took math and science at the community college junior and senior year.  He had:

Precalc 1

Precalc 2

Calc 1

Calc 2

Intro chem 1

Intro chem 2

Intro bio 1

Engineering physics 1

Engineering physics 2

Speech

Comp 1

Drawing 1

 

His cc grades ranged from C's to A's.  He had an interesting-but-ungraded-undated high school transcript with a bunch of projects on it from me and pretty minimal testing - an SAT score and a DELF (a European French-for-foreigners exam).  The test scores were average for college bound students in our area, not stellar.  I think the community college classes, despite the number of C's, were what got him into engineering school. Youngest's engineering school wanted to see his first semester community college grades in calculus and physics before they accepted him.  He was accepted into the engineering school at three state schools (two flagships with offers of doing the honours program), two private polytechnics, and two private universities (one honours program), most with some scholarship money.  We all have some questions about whether he could have completed the more boring of those programs.  Studying engineering is at times a boring slog through endless math problems. I am dead positive he could have finished any of the programs if he had DECIDED to, but nobody is sure whether he would have continued to want to complete the programs that were less hands-on every single week of every single semester, which is pretty much what it takes to get through engineering school.  He chose one of the two very hands-on programs and muddled his way through it while exploring other areas of life, like girls and sports.  (We aren't the most academic of families.  We muddled through college ourselves and told our children that it was fine to do the same thing - that college was about much more than just grades and there are lots of non-classroom opportunities that they should take advantage of.  As far as we can tell, nobody is headed for med school or something that requires the college grades to be perfect.  They just had to get good enough grades each year that they didn't lose their scholarships.  (WARNING - If you have a choice, don't pick a school that requires you to maintain a 3.5 average to hang on to your scholarship.  A bad cold, a bad roommate, a bad professor, a bad breakup, the death of the family dog or a grandparent can all cause you to focus on something else for a week or two, long enough to blow your grade average in engineering classes and make you lose your scholarship.) 

 

The key to getting his job was internships.  Internships or coops are important.  They lead to contacts in the field who can help you find a job or write recommendations.  When you apply for a job after college, you have experience.  Youngest paid attention to what sort of classes and experience would lead to the sort of job he found interesting and took those classes and worked on getting that experience.  The other important thing is to be realistic about your job prospects.  Where are the companies with those jobs located?  If they are all located in a high cost of living area where you will need a car and where you have no family who will let you sleep on a sofa, you might not be able to take that interesting job in a startup or research project without much money in their budget.  Especially if you have student loans.  If you want to live near family but all the jobs in your field are in a different state, you have a problem.  If you have high student loans but jobs in your field are typically low paying or scarce, then you have a problem.  You also have to plan carefully if you want to live in a particular part of the country, or you want to live in a rural area, or what have you.  These are some of the problems that youngest's friends are facing in their job searches.  A lot of this depends on luck, but you can at least take a realistic look at what your prospects are and try to prepare yourself with the right classes and experience.

 

Good luck!

Nan

[*LC]

I'm so glad he was able to re-take the final and that he was able to finish as planned.

 

How was graduation?

[Nan in Mass]

I'm so glad he was able to re-take the final and that he was able to finish as planned.

 

How was graduation?

 

Wonderful!  Well, cold but wonderful!  The rain held off.  I managed to find great seats for the two walk-slowly-with-cane grandmothers.  I managed to find my husband and sons after they parked cars and get them seats nearby.  We managed to find youngest and tell him where we were.  Two of the speakers were good.  We managed to find all the other aunts and uncles immediately afterwards.  It was all very celebratory.  We had a great combined niece's-21st-birthday, mothers-day, youngest's-graduation party afterwards.  A relative gave youngest a really nice small stainless steel fidget and after he'd managed to retrieve it from the rest of us, he spun it madly the rest of the party grin.  How well he knows him!    We got some great pictures of all three sons together, something that doesn't happen very often.  Youngest very sweetly gave me his diploma as a mother's day present and said that anything that happens from now on is either bad luck or his fault, not mine.  So sweet of him!

 

Nan