Andrew's Schooling

He's still waiting to hear the verdict as to whether he was accepted to the RN program at our local tech school.  Fantastic program with shockingly low tuition.  (Hey, shockingly high property taxes ... and thus the thing about "every dark cloud has a silver lining.")  I thought Andrew was a shoo-in.  Great entrance-test scores and perfect GPA. 

But then he told me that those factors cannot be considered in the decision-making process for who's admitted to the program.

Really?  I'm dumbfounded.  What DO they use as criteria to make the decision then?  Or maybe they don't make decisions, but just draw names out of a hat?

Well, he's got a good job as a CNA. 
And hopefully, in another week or two, we'll hear good news that invites him to sign up for classes for spring semester.

(Wow.  You can't use performance in pre-nursing classes to determine who's admitted to the nursing program.  Just wow.)

Graduation

Paul being "hooded."

During the ceremony.

Being dismissed.

His medallion is for graduating magna cum laude.

Acceptance

Andrew was accepted into the RN program he applied for. He's in the process of updating his vaccinations. His program planning meeting is middle of next week. They'll have to do a criminal background check -- I think he'll pass. Now we just have to figure out a way to buckle down to the schoolwork again after Thanksgiving, while also making adjustments to having me gone to work so much of the time.

Math for Medical Professionals

It looks to me as though Andrew has been doing well at math. His test grades are great. But he doesn't feel as though he has an adequate grasp of it. We talked to the director of the nursing program at the local college about math. She confirmed what I suspected: it's far more important that he be very comfortable with the arithmetic and pre-algebra that is used extensively in nursing than it is that he graph functions, manipulate matrices, and compute with imaginary numbers.

So it's time to put away the College Algebra book and come up with a math program that better suits his goals.

I began to research what kinds of math we needed to focus on. Graphs. Statistics. Conversions. Metric. Ratios -- lots of ratios and percents. And so much more. As I began to cobble together resources from the library with the books sitting on our basement shelves, it finally crossed my mind that maybe I should sell this program after I put the work into developing it.

And then [light-bulb moment] I wondered if anyone had already created this math course. Some online sleuthing confirmed that someone had! Woo hoo!!!! The book arrived in only six days, and it looks perfect. There is only one thing on my list (understanding a 3-D reality from a series of 2-D pictures, such as in an MRI) that isn't covered in this book.

Flipping through the textbook I see a few topics that aren't explained clearly enough, or where a key point was left out. But if it's something that Andrew hasn't been exposed to elsewhere, I should be able to fill in the gap. The answer key is online, not in the back of the book. That's a little inconvenient; I had to fork over my name and address and all that jazz to create an account where I could access the answer key. I suppose I could have just graded the homework assignments myself. But I didn't want to. :-)

So anyway, I am hyped to have discovered this book that will save me many hours. It will allow Andrew to plug away at teaching himself instead of having to wait on me while I'm making supper instead of developing new lessons. Hooray!

Job Satisfaction

Sometimes it comes up in conversation that Andrew is looking at colleges. A few months ago he was considering what he might want to study, what career he might like. Acquaintances would inquire. And that's when I got the shocker.

Nobody seems to like what they do.

When we said that he was considering law enforcement or security, we were told by cops or ex-cops that that would be a terrible profession to enter. Too dangerous. Too political.

When we said that he was considering computer work or engineering, people told us what was wrong with that.

When we said he thought he might be a nurse, he was told how horrible that was, especially with all the record-keeping that can seem like it takes priority over patient-care.

Teachers and day-care workers have told me how terrible their jobs are. Children are undisciplined and mean; parents are blindly protective of Little Junior who would never do anything wrong.

Small-business owners know the troubles of taxes and regulations and finding good employees. Factory workers are tired of the mundane work and the health repercussions. Pastors are frustrated with the low pay and never-ending needs. Clerical workers develop carpel tunnel syndrome and must tolerate business/marketing lingo. Chefs and cooks put in many years at poverty-level salaries and work late hours and long weekends. Maids clean up after piggy slobs who 'get back at the man' by leaving a bigger mess than would be normal.



I've been trying to figure out why so many people discourage kids from going into their line of work. Is this a societal problem, and nurses and teachers and policemen and maids really are serving a nasty populace? Is this a change in employers, and how they see employees as just another [replaceable] cog in the machinery of creating a product? Or do we all desire vacation and retirement, resenting our work because jobs thwart our fun-time?

Call Day

The majority of my readers probably already know about last month's Call Day. It's when the graduating seminarians to receive their placements. There weren't as many congregations requesting pastors as there were men available. More than one-third of the graduates at Fort Wayne are still wondering where they'll go. Or if they'll go.

Had my son not changed his mind about attending seminary in the final months before college graduation, this would have been his Call Day.

I understand all too well what Pr Curtis says about the reality behind the so-called clergy shortage, and his exhortation for men to have a back-up plan for employment if they desire the office of pastor.

I was surprised to see that Gary's former congregation received a convertible vicar. (That's a man who does his vicarage, kind of an internship-year, and then stays in the same place and becomes their pastor.) For decades the congregation has struggled to pay a pastor. Two and a half years ago, the situation grew much worse. Yet here they are, asking for a full-time vicar/pastor again. They received word on Call Day that, yes, they'll be sent a full-time man.

Matt Harrison preached at the seminary shortly after Call Day. His sermon was excellent. The one thing that made me a little uneasy was the seeming message that these uncalled seminarians will receive calls eventually. I kept wondering about those who don't. Or who do, but end up losing their congregations within a year or two. The Luther quote which Pr Harrison posted that week makes a lovely companion to the sermon.

They're Moving

Thursday was Match Day for the fourth-year med-school students all across the country. For those of you who hang out in LCMS circles, it's pretty similar to Call Day for the vicars and pastors. The doctors receive their assignments. Like vicars and unlike pastors, there is no option to say no. The residency will be for 4 or 5 years.

Rachel's blog announcement is here.

As Rachel said today, it was the news we were not ready for. We had pretty good reason to expect that Matt would be placed in Milwaukee. It wasn't until Tuesday afternoon that it finally occurred to me that Milwaukee wasn't a sure thing, and there were several different Midwest metro areas that might become their new home.

Everybody says it's great that Chicago is close. But right now, I'm thinking about how seldom Matt will be able to see his brothers. And they will have to find a new church home. And I suspect that for the next few weeks I'm going to fail at holding back tears when I see little Joseph helping his grandpa usher at church, or when I see Hannah run up to Grandma Louise and give her a hug before choir, or when I hear Barbara and Laura and Cheri talking about babysitting their grandchildren. All the exciting prospects of living in a "world-class city" don't seem quite enough today to compensate for the fact that they're going away from his family, her family, and their church.

But we'll get used to it, and I'll smile again. I'm very proud of Rachel for being cheerful and upbeat for Matt. I'll have to get my act together before I see him tomorrow morning.

Bethany Lutheran College

I love this place! (The price-tag scares the dickens out of me, but that's another issue.)

I can't put my finger on what it is, but the college is just wonderful. The buildings and the landscaping are gorgeous, but that's window-dressing. The bulletins and newsletters are never filled with goofy weirdness (which is something we see altogether too often in some other alumni material that arrives at our house).

Gary and I drove to Mankato this weekend to pick up a bunch of Paul's stuff so that he'd be able to transport himself and his remaining stuff home in a sedan after finals this week. Walking around campus, meeting his friends and some of the staff and profs, I can't get over what great people he's been living with this past year. I am so impressed with the way the adults interact with the kids in the hallways, in chapel, in the cafeteria, etc. The students aren't stick-in-the-muds; they're fun people; but they are also polite and engaged and ... well... really super. Chapel isn't quite what I'd want for it to be --using Matins or some versicles would be really nice-- but nevetheless, chapel is better than might be expected from certain other Lutheran colleges.

Now, if Paul can get through one more year without the student loans getting too large, by 2010-11 he'll probably be getting all sorts of student aid as did his older siblings.

Paul's Clep

And more rejoicing on the clep-front. Paul took the Western Civ I test today, and scored a 68! Wow! With his cleps, a few credits that he took at the local junior college, and taking 16 hours per semester instead of 15, he can knock a semester off his college career. That's a lot of tuition money saved!

Also, since I haven't seen anything on his blog recently, I am taking the liberty to report to grandmas and siblings that his roommate transferred to a different college, and so Paul has his own room now. He is in Choraliers which is the group that puts on the annual musical theatre production. He is also running for student senate.

Too bad homeschooled kids aren't socialized. [snicker giggle guffaw]

He's Leaving

When we took Philip to college, it was a 70-80 minute drive to get there, depending on traffic. He lived in dorms 6 [long] blocks from Wietings (his brothers' godparents). Wietings had been like the local aunt, uncle, and cousins when we were in central Wisconsin far from family. Pastor Wieting had been Philip's pastor from age 3-7. Furthermore, because of Steve's illness and hospice care, we had reason to be going up that way frequently in Philip's first half-semester of college.

When we took Katie to college, it was an 80-85 minute drive to get there, depending on traffic. She was at a Concordia, with friends, one of whom had a car and would assure she would get to church in Sussex and Greenfield, more than once a week.

When Rachel moved away, we knew her "roommate." We knew she and her husband would be attending a good church. We knew they had their young friends nearby and our middle-aged friends nearby. And they were closer than either of the others, only a 45-50 minute drive away.

When we took Katie and Philip "away" to college, we said "Bye, see you Monday" when the Dead Theologians Society would be getting together for the Labor Day party/barbecue. We knew that there were frequent enough trips to Milwaukee that we could easily drop off treats or care packages (with enzyme capsules or raw milk?? what kind of mother puts THAT in a care package?) or items they had forgotten to pack.

It's different this week. Paul is going to south central Minnesota. That's further away than Katie and Nathan are. That's further away than my parents are. It's a 6-hour drive. I'm not going to say, "Bye, see you on Monday at the barbecue." I don't know what the church is like he'll be attending. (Everybody tells me it's great. But I don't KNOW that for myself.) If he forgets his snow-boots, we'll have to mail them instead of drop them off sometime in the next couple of months. Anything he forgets will have to be purchased there (eeeks! says the tightwad mother) or shipped. I don't know whether we'll see him before Christmas.

This is different.

Cafeteria

Information from Paul's college's cafeteria arrived recently. It touts the healthy food choices available, but the word "healthy" seemed to be used nearly interchangeably with "low fat." I don't agree with that. I think "healthy" and "minimally refined" are more synonymous than "healthy" and "low fat, low calorie."

So I asked the food-service director. He tells me they have whole grain breads. But is that what I call "whole grain"? Or is it the kind of bread that has a little whole grains, just enough for them to legally label it whole-grain bread? I asked about brown rice, and I was told they have it available. But is it real brown rice, or brown Minute Rice? I asked about peanut butter, and was not surprised to find that it's the standard kind, made with hydrogenated fats and high-fructose corn syrup. But when I asked about butter, I was surprised that they don't even have any of that. EEEEEEKS!

Philip, Katie, and Nathan -- none of them did well with cafeteria food. Paul cares more about eating right than any of them did when they headed off on their own. When Gary and I would face 4 days of cafeteria food (oh, say, at FtW sem for symposium, prior to the era when Jane and/or Katie would feed us part of the time while there), a person can get to feeling pretty cruddy in that short amount of time. It's going to take some careful choosing on Paul's part to get enough unrefined foods into him to feel fit.

Wasted

Housing is hard to come by at the local public university. We put down a housing deposit for Paul early last winter, knowing that he stood no chance of getting a dorm room if we didn't, and knowing also that we could (on the off-chance he decided to attend a different college) get the deposit back.

I was sure I had put a note on the calendar for the third week of April to make sure we didn't need the housing deposit refunded.

But I hadn't. And Paul is pretty well settled on Bethany College. Today I remembered that the deadline for retrieving that dorm-deposit was sometime at the start of May. We checked. Deadline was yesterday. It's too late. This is the most expensive forgetfulness I've committed in a long long time (and probably ever).

Internship

Back in the ancient days, when I was in college, back when people programmed computers in Fortran and Cobol, there was a conundrum of how difficult it was to obtain a job without experience, but having a job was the only way to become "experienced."

Today it's worse. Increasingly socialist government policies have made it nearly impossible for employers to fire incompetent and/or dishonest employees. So the bosses --understandably-- want to be extremely careful with regard to whom they're hiring.

Colleges offer internship opportunities -- sometimes as part of coursework, sometimes as a summer job. We thought those would be a nice extra, but we also thought it would be good for kids to come home over summer and be with the family again, saving money over summer instead of spending it on rent, etc. Now I'm wondering if it would've been better to kick the kid out the door, and make sure he was out there in the Real World each summer, in Chicago or New York or London or Tokyo, making his resume look more enticing.

ADHD Kid Goes to College

Learning Outside the Lines is excellent reading for kids with learning disabilities who are headed off to college. The subtitle is "Two Ivy League Students with Learning Disabilities and ADHD Give You the Tools for Academic Success and Education Revolution." The authors' experience and advice is full of helpful advice that left-brain students might find anathema. But for those who are bright and learn well -- but not in the "school way" -- this book will help them cope with the institutional environment and make the most of their college experience. It has practical, nitty-gritty advice on how to decide which assignments can receive the short-shrift, different methods of cramming before tests, and how to highlight passages in a text.

Dorm Choice

More and more colleges are building dorms with suites that consist of four or five tiny bedrooms and a private bathroom and possibly a kitchenette too. There's something very attractive about this arrangement.

One word of caution: if you live in a suite, you will be the one doing the cleaning.

I think that a kid would be really really lucky if he found himself in one of these suite arrangements and did half the cleaning while the other roommates (all put together) shared the other half of the bathroom cleaning.

It's no big deal to clean up after yourself. It's not even too bad to clean up after your siblings, since you know that they have their own chores where they're cleaning up after you. (Besides, there's this Mom-Ogre who doesn't let anybody give themselves over to utterly gross sloppiness.) But it's harder to clean up after roommates who fully believe in Bathroom Fairies and Kitchenette House-Elves who magically take care of all their messes.

Now, that doesn't mean that suites are a bad idea. There are certain huge benefits to that dorm-arrangement. But those who choose it should not anticipate that others will do their share of cleaning, or even participate in what would normally be considered simply picking up after themselves.

Estimated Family Contribution

For those wanting to get a rough idea of how their kid's financial aid forms for college will turn out, check out a couple of these websites. There's the Financial Aid Estimator calculator. But you can also go to a government website that will give you an idea of percentages of parents' income, parents' assets, student's income, and student's assets that are considered fair game for college expenses. Basically, half the student's after-tax income (after an annual allowance of about $2600) is expected to go to tuition, as is 1/3 of his assets. For the parents, it's a little more complicated because it depends on how many children you have, how many in college, how old the parents are, etc.