DavidS, honorarirum? Cool!

(It is hrd for me to spel honororororororarium.)

Shir, new born cousin? Also cool! Noam is an adorable name.

While not impossible, saying "Later, losers," and taking off at 18 can be difficult. If Kat's coworker goes to a community college for two years, she can save some money, make some connections and still probably transfer to UC Berkeley for her last two years. People do that sort of thing in NC all the time (usually for money reasons or to get their GPA up).

Kat, another argument for your student might be the state of the community colleges. My sister and husband are math and chemistry professors at Santa Monica, respectively. This past semester, my sister had 45 seats available in her Calculus section. On day 1, 44 of the 45 students signed up showed up, plus another 60+ asking to be added to the course. She got requests (and saw lots of begging and tears) for the next 2 weeks, but could only offer a lottery for the remaining seat. They anticipate things only getting worse with the economic downturn.

Timelies all!

I have a cat in my lap.

Man, Kat, I feel for you, having to try to remain zen during something like that.

I wanted to go to Berkley in the worst way and got in, but ultimately, couldn't because I would have been out of state and it would have cost a shit ton of money. Also got into Indiana University's music program but couldn't go, again, because of the out-of-state issues. It wouldn't have been a big deal if my father had actually been putting money into my college fund like he was legally obliged to, but didn't.

So I wound up going to Florida State, which turned out to be pretty good (and five hundred miles from Miami), but man, I wanted to go out of state AWAY in the worst way.

I've never lived anywhere I've chosen completely voluntarily in my life-- I've told Lewis after the kids graduate high school, I'm picking somewhere for us to live.

One of the biggest gifts my parents gave us was telling us we could go where ever we got in. The job my mom worked while I was in highschool was solely to cover college expenses and we did without a lot of the stuff my peers had in order for that to happen (no cable, no tvs or phones in the kid's rooms, no extra phone lines or call waiting, no cars for the kids, no expensive jewelry/watches/glasses, mostly clothes on sale, no annual lavish vacations). I hope to be able to give mac the same.

I may have hated BU with a burning passion that still flickers many many years later, but going away to live in Boston, 200+ miles from my NJ suburb, is not a decision I shall ever regret.

Sparky! That's actually the best info about the community college system. I'm going to communicate that to her to relay.

Anyhow today is a new day. I'm taking L shopping for her costume for the school play.

The only limitations my parents put on where I could go to college was geographical. It had to be within 500 miles of where we lived. Still, that got me to Philadelphia and Penn, which was a great decision for me.

Here's her original comment, Kat, from this semester:

This week has been quite exhausting. Not just that I’ve actually had to work more than 2 hours per day, but we’ve had to turn away more students than ever. My Calc II class was full at 45, 44 showed the first day and there were 68 extras trying to crash. That was the worst, but the others all had at least 30 trying to get in. I’ve had emails, calls, tears, tears and more tears and all I can do is add one or two via lottery. It is only going to get worse with the budget cuts.