Give me a Z
October 22, 2012 4 Comments
Tonight was University open house, recruitment drive night. They come around once a year and each of the local high schools take turns hosting. All the graduating high school students are welcome to attend and you basically walk from table to table asking questions and getting brochures and booklets and free pens.
Buddy-child had a friend with her for moral support and hit up the school she was convinced she wanted to go to first. The recruiter didn’t really have much information to tell her but gave her a brochure and told her to email with more specific questions. I met the girls there just as she was finishing up with the first table.
Number one on buddy’s priority list is small school since she doesn’t think her anxiety can handle a large university. Second is somewhere far enough from home to make it too hard to run home every weekend. With that in mind I dragged her off to three other university tables that had good reputations amongst the parental set for being small, well-run universities. Poor thing is more confused than before but at least now she has lots of options.
This process is really nerve wracking for kids. Even if they think they’re ready to leave home, it’s still scary trying to make plans to move far away by yourself and change everything about your life. I don’t know too many adults that can do that without having a meltdown. Imagine how hard it is when you have no idea what you’re doing! I have no doubt that buddy will do well in the end since she is working hard to get there to start.
I don’t normally post photos of anyone in my life (kids, me, dogs whatever) but since we are on the topic of studious children, this photo was emailed to me so that I could get a good look at my brilliant, soon to be doctor boy-child hard at work.
boy-child at his finest
As I recall, I made that decision based on series of irrational passions for different schools based largely on my mental concept of the schools and the descriptions of the extracurriculars in their brochures. Thankfully I ended up really loving the one I went to, which was, naturally, my latest irrational passion at the moment when I actually had to make a call on where to go. I could pretend it was more thoroughly thought-out than that — but no. It wasn’t really.
The fact that I had no real idea what I was doing didn’t really occur to me until afterward.
You know, I think I made decision on which school to go to based on the picture of the campus… Buddy had pretty much done the same thing until we started asking questions. At least now she has options she didn’t realize before!
Have faith, that lecture slump isn’t just a teen/twenty pose……I’m 43, and whilst I may have disguised my mid lecture naps a little more creatively over the last three years, (zero points for execution of covert sleep move here I’m afraid), I have nodded off on several occasions; when you’re sleep deprived, the lecture is boring, the room is poorly ventilated and your nutritional status is dire, it’s often the smart option to just catch up on the Z’s !!
I’m actually not too worried about him. He does have a tendency to stay up far too late reading novels but overall he’s a pretty good student!