Y'all, I'm going clothes shopping with my teenage nephews, mom & SIL. I'm gonna need alcohol.

Happy Solstice, people!

sarameg, clothes shopping with family is a two-flask task!

College, surprisingly, wasn't my thing either. I finished anyway, but I was miserable the whole time. Partly it was because I was academically unprepared, partly because my mental health issues were never diagnosed or supported, and partly because I went to a very conservative college and I felt stifled. The joy of collaborative learning that I was expecting from college just wasn't there. I probably would've been better off if I'd defied my mother's wishes and gone to Berkeley. I'm still sad that college was such a disappointing and unhappy experience for me.

Happy Solstice!

J got into Pratt, but we couldn't afford it, and we kind of feel she's never forgiven us for that. She decided upon Mass College of Art & Design, hated her roommates, didn't like the school, but did fine academically her freshman year. She decided to transfer to UMass Amherst, where she spent her sophomore year mostly sleeping in.

She told us in May she didn't want to go back (not that I'm sure it was an option anyhow). Over the summer, she did nothing, but she'd been struggling with a few things so we just let her coast. This fall, she started part-time at a community college, one day a week, mostly to put off when her student loans would come due. She did fine, but just doesn't want to go back right now, because she doesn't know what she wants.

I feel like my mother would have "made" me keep going somewhere, but honestly, I don't have that in me. I was also a pretty compliant kid. This kid is not -- she's more like my mother, funnily enough.

I just want her to be happy. She's both bright and talented. I also feel like I'm going to make the wrong choices, no matter what I do.

So, I thought Petunia kitten was leaving the tree alone because there were not ornaments all over the floor around the tree anymore.

I discovered, when I went to clean my bathtub, that she has been bringing them to the bathtub and using it like some sort of pinball machine.

I picked out two plastic hello kitty ornaments, and the remains of two glass balls!!!! And now that I look, my tree looks suspiciously bare.....

Cindy it sounds to me like J might have been equally unhappy at Pratt with bigger bills to pay off for her one sad semester -- but it takes a good deal of distance and life experience before one might be able to admit that to oneself.

(Just getting in, in this uber-competitive college ecosystem, is a confirmation of her talent, seriously. Yet it might not have been the right choice when she was emotionally fragile, being even more competitive/cutthroat/critical than her subsequent colleges.)

I can say truly that it was a blast coming back to a college-level school as an adult secure in myself.

Happy Solstice! I am so ready for the days to get longer. I know my days are longer than most of you, but I am so tired of thinking it is bedtime at 6:30.

I am so ready for the days to get longer.

Co-signed.

Sounds like you are letting her find her way, Cindy, and that seems right to me. My nephew took a couple of years off from college to work and decide what he really wanted to be doing. He's finishing his bachelor's in May (at the same school he started at) and intends to go to law school. Its been harder for my family (me included) to accept this lawyer idea than the leaving school idea, but it really does make sense for him. My niece went to a new and sort of experimental college right out of high school and didn't even finish a semester. I think she came home in October, she just hated it so much. She went to community college and worked for a couple of years and now she's at Sarah Lawrence in a program she's really excited about.

Anyone going to law school, I have opinions about how it should beWe done. Unsurprisingly. If he's already accepted a place somewhere, I am happy to take a look at the offer/school and help plan the exit strategy. If he hasn't I am happy to walk through the offers and discuss what he will be dealing with because of them three years in. It's ugly math still.

We are in New Zealand, currently at my cousin's. (Hippocampus's sister.). My daughter has said more than once that she's peeved we waited 10 years to bring her here.

~ma to Tim and everyone who needs it.

OMG, I just got a flower deliver with $100 Amazon gift card from Nigel!!! I mean, I am sure he had Katie actually arrange it! If I had known that quitting would give me so much more respect and attendtion, I would have done it years ago!