Kid Whirlwind and College

My life has been crazy so I haven't been blogging regularly.
People say, "Oh, too many classes to teach?" But really, most of the craziness comes from my kids.
We knew when Tucker was born (our 3rd) that we had surpassed our limits as parents, but it was too late to go back; we could only go forward. And, we love all of our kids passionately (which might be part of the problem), but their worries and woes frequently weigh on us and take a lot of time.

Famous columns from a building that burned down
years ago on the campus of Mizzou

Problems are working out and in the next few days, I hope to spill the whole story about an incident that made me feel like I was living out an episode of The Sopranos.
For today, I'm enjoying the knowledge that I don't have to go to work today because it is finals week for one of the colleges where I teach.
I also relished a 6-mile run that ended at Starbucks.

This is the indoor water park and giant hot tub at Mizzou

Mostly though,  my happiness comes from the fact that I'm very relieved my youngest son has chosen a college that is within a two-hour drive. He was leaning toward a college eight hours away and I had to beg him to reconsider.
When Spencer's phone broke, it took a tremendous amount of effort and calling in favors from old friends in the area to get him a new phone while he lived 16 hours away and had no way to communicate or get to the store.
When Grace was sick at school 10 hours away, she had to walk herself to the hospital for blood tests and walk herself to the pharmacy for medicine.
Yes, it helps them learn responsibility, but it leaves me a nervous wreck.
Tucker knew these stories and stuck to his plan to attend Mizzou -- the University of Missouri.
When we visited, I didn't even think he like it that much. He was anxious to get back on the road home.
And we have no contacts in Missouri -- no old friends to call on, no family to fall back on.
Finally on Tuesday, I told him the story about leaving his sister and brother at college.
It wasn't as bad with Grace because the college, 10 hours from home, had a plan. They had a convocation, complete with bagpipes and lit candles. Then each dorm broke up into groups to begin activities. Parents were expected to give hugs and move on to the parking lot.
I'll never forget Grace's eyes bright with tears as she stood in a circle of her dorm mates then turned around and gave us a pleading look. We walked out, but that was easier than when we left Spencer.
We moved Spencer into his college dorm room over 1000 miles from home. The school had a convocation
ceremony and then a picnic. We ate. We talked with families around us and then we needed to move on to my parents' house about 90 minutes away. Spencer walked us to our car and we left him there in the parking lot -- alone.
I just couldn't do that with Tucker.
"I know you'll make friends," I told Tucker, "but it's so hard on my to leave you there alone."
Tucker didn't respond to my story so I dropped it.
I had told him he needed to figure out what steps to take next for going to Mizzou. I had to support him.
Two days later, he said he guessed he could go to a college in Ohio. He would room with his best friend Josh and the two of them would have two unknown roommates so they didn't get stuck in a rut with only kids from our hometown.
"You can go to Mizzou," I said. "I don't want  you to choose just for me."
But he had talked it over and they made plans and the relief I felt washed over me. He can catch a bus home for $10. I can be there in two hours if he is hurt or sick. I can drive down a new phone. Or I can go down for lunch if he, or I, feel lonely.
So today is full of paperwork, making sure he accepts the school's offer. I also have to grade papers and get final grades in. Look into changing our insurance company. Deal with some payments to Spencer's schools.
In spite of the busy work, underneath it all, I'm so happy that Tucker won't be going far away.

College Money Makers

I'm not sure why it took until my third child for me to realize the money making schemes that colleges have going on. I'm not talking about the outrageous tuition either. That's another story.
Colleges make money on people who will never attend there. Some of whom will not even get accepted.
Maybe I'm just realizing it because my other kids focused on small colleges. When they applied to college, they usually had fees waived to apply.
Big public schools though don't waive fees. To apply at Ohio State University costs $60. Last year, about 12,000 students applied to attend, which would bring in around $720,000 just in application fees. Of those 12,000, 7,186 new freshman began attending OSU. I don't know how many of them were not accepted and how many of them chose to go to college somewhere else.
One college that Tucker has been thinking about this year is the University of Miami in Florida. Its communications school has a good reputation, so we planned to let him apply there. Then I looked at the information about the average freshman attending U of Miami. The average, average GPA (grade point of average) of incoming freshman was 4.2. Now 4.0 is a perfect GPA. That means the student received straight As throughout high school.  Yet for U of M, the average was 4.2 which means half the students had higher GPAs than that. (Okay, my math skills aren't great but it must be a number of students with higher GPAs).

U of M was giving Tucker a pretty hard press to apply and when I saw the average GPA, I pointed out that he did not have a GPA nearly high enough to get into the school. The application fee was $70. So the schools work very hard sending out letters, emails, making phone calls to get students to apply even when they can never be accepted into the school.
Then I looked at the U of M statistics and they will receive 28,900 applications. At 70 bucks per student, that's over $2 million in application fees. Only 2000 students will be accepted.

So that's when I began to realize that college applications are a scam too.
One friend told me that her son decided to apply at colleges that don't have an application fee then to go visit the places where he was accepted.
Tucker wants to attend a large college though, so I suppose there isn't a way to avoid paying fees. I am trying to limit the fees to schools I think might be a good fit.

Grace's Dilemma -- Hollywood or New York?

One of my friends (Phyllis) complained that I never blog anymore -- not about the interesting stuff like embarrassing situations or my kids getting into trouble, etc... All I ever write about is books and book reviews and France. Of course, I am obsessed with books and France, but my kids are still a major part of my life. So here's a blog about one of my kids...
In January, Grace stayed home rather than going back to her college in far away New York. I want her to finish college, but having her home was so nice. She took classes at the local community college -- theater, ballet, communications, nothing too strenuous. She got a job at a local French restaurant and has learned that she gets bigger tips if she speaks English with a French accent. The tight black skirt also improves tips. She performed in the chorus of a local community theater production.
As April bloomed, it was time to find another college where she could attend and finish. She applied to four colleges and was accepted at all of them. We visited Ohio State where she could continue with her French and languages major. The campus and the program just didn't win her over.
She and I together visited one of the campuses about 15 minutes from home. As we walked onto campus, I commented that it reminded me a lot of her college in New York. She agreed.
"Why didn't we look here?" she asked.
Mostly, cause they don't have a swim team and at the time, Grace was planning to swim in college.
Grace, now 21, has decided to change her major to theater. That has been a big struggle for me -- not that I have that much say in it. But I think majoring in theater is like sowing dandelions in your green lawn. It's going to be a lot of work for something you may or may not succeed at. I have no idea whether Grace is a good actress. I have no idea whether she can succeed on Broadway or in Hollywood. But who am I to say don't go for your dreams?
I always wanted to be a writer, but  I can write after the bloom of youth has faded. For actors, youth is pretty much a necessity. So I gave Grace my blessing to major in theater but asked her to pick another major too, like communications. She agreed.
 My cousin, who was a successful actor, appearing in movies like Oh Brother Where Art Thou, and  television shows like Seinfeld and Malcolm in the Middle, cautioned that having a back up means that you won't throw your heart into acting.
I didn't change my mind about the double major though.
So as we toured the campus, they said the tour didn't include the Communications building which was a little way down the road. We said we'd like to see the building and they called ahead to alert the secretary we were coming.
The secretary took one look at Grace, 5-foot, 10-inches before her platform pumps, an insouciant scarf draped around her neck, her brown hair falling in a curtain down her back, and said, "Oh, I see you're here for Broadcast."
Grace and I both looked at each other.
Grace said afterwards that she felt like saying, "Well, I am now."
The chair of the department came out into the hallway to talk to Grace and was explaining some classes then said, "But that's really for the writing side of things, not Broadcast."
"Grace is a pretty good writer too," I threw in there. After all, Earl and I are both writers and pride ourselves on the fact that we may not have passed along math skills but our kids can write.
Then as we continued on the tour, one of the broadcast professors came into the hallway to meet us.
"I'll take over from here," he told the secretary. "I can see she's here for broadcast."
After we walked out of the building, we looked at each other and said, "Why didn't we ever think about this before?"
Theater and broadcast journalism seem like a perfect match. Grace will have to learn how to operate the cameras, to edit, to direct, to read the news, to covers sports and other stories. Hopefully she can find a fabulous internship in New York City that allows her to work on news during the day and try out for shows in the evening. The auditions alone would be hugely helpful.
So now Grace is registered to attend a new college only 15 minutes away and even closer to her work. She's still debating whether she'll live on campus or get an apartment for the school year. She's taking some more classes at the community college this summer, and I'm praying she can finish by the end of next summer, but in the fall of 2014, I'll have another kid headed off to college.

Parents and Kids

When the kids were little, they were my territory. I staked them out.
I nursed them. I took care of them when they were sick, when they were scared, when they were tired.
Earl worked a lot of hours and I stayed home with the kids, setting the rules and the expectations. Of course, I also bore the brunt of that -- the exhaustion, the feeling that I never wanted to be touched by anyone because I was so tired of clingy hands grasping onto me.
When he was home, Earl helped -- giving me a break but I wasn't really good at letting him take control. I felt everything was carefully balanced and one misstep could send everything sliding.
Now that that the kids are young adults venturing off into the world, I'm working a lot of hours, so when the kids need something Earl is the one to step in.
What does that mean?
Well, so far, that means that he travels to New York and Paris and Florida to help them.
I know. I'm sitting here thinking that I kind of grabbed the wrong end of this.
Earl is the one who traveled with Grace to visit the college in the Adirondack Mountains that she eventually chose. 

Earl has made close friends at a bed and breakfast in Grace's college town. He stays there for free now, playing with the grandkids and chopping wood before heading to campus to relax in adirondack chairs. Just last weekend he went there again to visit her for family weekend.

Then the two of them drove across the bridge to Canada and stayed for the night.
Last year at this time, he traveled to France with Grace to deposit her with some friends. I tease him about what sacrifices he has to make for the kids each time he gets his passport stamped. Sometimes I think he helped them choose their colleges based on places he wants to visit.
Last spring, Earl and Spencer ventured down to St. Petersburg, Florida to look at a college. Guess where Spencer ended up going?
Both of us took off work in August to get Spencer settled into college, leaving him there in the humidity and the sandy soil with crazy Dr. Seuss trees growing all around him.
And I didn't think either of us would be making the trip back to Florida any time soon. It is a 16-hour drive. I just thought Spencer would fly home for holidays or go to my parents' house a few hours away if he couldn't fly home.
But Earl has 8 vacation days left and my parents are buying a new house. They've offered to give us some furniture if Earl wants to drive down and get it. (I figured we were stuck with our old furniture for the next 6 years until all the kids finished college.) Earl is lured not just by the offer of a better mattress for our rickety bed, but he could be in Florida for Spencer's 19th birthday at the end of the month.
So once again, he is willing to make the sacrifice, to set off in the car alone, leaving behind the crisp autumn air to drive through the love bugs that hover over the heated highways in Florida during the fall. He'll stop in St. Petersburg to pick up Spencer and spend a long weekend with him at my parents' new house -- screen-enclosed pool along the golf course.
That's just the kind of guy he is -- willing to sacrifice for the kids, whether it's France, Canada or Florida, he'll go the distance for them.
I tease Earl about "the sacrifices" he makes for the kids, but I do feel fortunate that he's in a job where he can take time off and go to the kids. That's part of the price I pay for staying home with them when they were little. I'm now working two jobs that don't pay me if I don't show up. So I stay and work while he travels.
But there's more to it than that. I know when Grace is homesick and talks of missing her bed, her cats, her parents, that if I went, it would be hard for me to leave her and hard for her to let me leave. Earl takes a more no-nonsense approach. He's there to comfort her, to make sure she gets some sleep and eats healthy for a few days. Then he leaves her to the business of studying hard and finishing college.
With one kid up north and the other far south, who knows where Tucker will end up when he graduates in two years. He just asked me to RSVP for a college reception for the University of Alabama that's being held here in Columbus. I know one thing though, he and Earl are not going on a road trip to California or Hawaii to look at colleges next year.