Commencement

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On Tuesday, I had the honor of attending our school’s Commencement Exercises, the future-oriented euphemism for what the rest of the world calls graduation.  Although there were four kids commencing who I had known for their entire lives, I was not there as a guest, but as a volunteer.  The tradition at our school is for parents of juniors to host the reception for the senior class.  As families of the kids on deck, we were expected to decorate the soccer field and provide freshly-baked cookies and fruit for after the ceremony.

Even though it was not my child commencing, it was surreal and extremely moving to hear grown-up speeches given by CJ’s former T-ball teammates and world-class musical performances by students I have known since birth or kindergarten.  I also had the important assignment of collecting the commencees’ caps and gowns after the ceremony and handing out the real diplomas – to replace the faux scrolls given to them by the headmaster.

(As part of those volunteer duties, I sadly had to tell a few kids that their diplomas were being withheld because they hadn’t returned library books or team uniforms – no excuses accepted…their first real life lesson.)

As I witnessed and participated in this emotional rite of passage, instead of reflecting on what’s in store for these kids for the future, all I could think about was whether there would be enough baked goods at our reception.

The stakes were high, you see, because in 2001, we had hosted a reception for the same class, then fifth graders, when they moved up from elementary to middle school.  And the event that we put on as fourth grade parents was marred by an unforgettable glitch: we had run out of chicken wings.  In fact, there was such a severe h’or deurve shortage, that we had to order pizza for the kids, who were staying at the school for a party.  (Since then the procedure has been simplified – no finger foods, just baked goods.)

Now, seven years later, could we redeem ourselves?

I am pleased to report, with relief, that our reception was lovely. The floral decor – lemons and succulents –  was understated and classy, and there were even several extra trays of cookies.  The only minor issue was that a strong breeze flapped the tablecloths around a bit, but that was hard to avoid because our soccer field is situated in a micro-climate – It often is warm and sunny on all the surrounding streets, while the bleachers are ravaged by gale-force winds.

So, not only is CJ now just about finished with the stress of junior year, but the parents of the class of 2009 are almost done with the stress of having to show off our catering skills to the class of 2008.

Onward, you amazing kids!  May you always have enough chicken wings.

Making the Cut: The Right Preschool = The Right College

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CJ graduated from TI Preschool in 1995.  Last night we had a reunion barbeque with five other TI families, all with sons who had been CJ's best friends when they were three, four and five. 

Our get-together was a celebration of the high school graduation of the three older boys, who were born in the summer of 1990.   (The three younger boys, including CJ, were born in the fall of 1990.  They attended Pre-K and started elementary school a year later than their friends because they missed the cut-off for kindergarten – they now have another year of high school to go.)

One of the families put together a fabulous video of TI highlights, which we watched twice.  Wiping away tears, we saw our wide-eyed sons on a field trip to the fire station and proudly wearing jeweled crowns on their birthdays.  Our boys looked so tiny and adorable in this montage that, as one of the moms pointed out, it was almost impossible to believe that the big, hairy men sprawled out on the couch were the same people.

The evening was not just nostalgic, but also provided hope. The graduates' list of collective college acceptances was so impressive that one would never guess that this is the most difficult year to get into college in the history of the world.  One boy is headed to Tufts, admitted Early Decision II.  Another will be attending UCLA.  And the third has enrolled in Oberlin (after getting into all the schools he applied to, and choosing between Wesleyan, Vassar, Reed, Kenyon and McGill) - but first he is taking an inspirational gap year - part Keroac road trip, part Katrina volunteer. 

Was it a coincidence that these kids all did so well?  Probably not: The parents of the three graduates insisted that all the kids who attended TI Preschool got into phenomenal colleges. 

So what was it about TI Preschool that gave our kids such an impressive head start?  This was a school that offered very little in the way of traditional academics.  There was no counting and I don't even remember the students singing the alphabet.  The teachers were not particularly scholarly – one has been recently sighted working as a bagger at a local supermarket.  What, then, was TI Preschool's secret?  

A preliminary study by the Neurotic Parent Institute sponsored a preliminary study and has discovered that the TI curriculum was primarly comprised of the following:

1. Singing

2. Cooking

3. Sand Play

4. Guinea Pig Care

5. Holiday Celebrations

Sounds like fun, but certainly these were not the learning endeavors that sent our boys to Tufts, UCLA and Oberlin. 

Then, after more intensive research, we discovered the answer: Scissors.

Yes, TI preschool emphasized cutting skills.  So much so, that during one of our parent/teacher conferences, CJ's teacher presented us with a work sheet on which CJ had attempted to cut along a dotted line, but instead had cut a haphazard, zig zag design on the opposite edge of the paper.

We were horrified, but it only got worse.  For comparison, the teacher showed us an sample of CJ's friend's cutting: perfect – right on the line.  (That expert cutter was the one who is now bound for Tufts.) 

Then the teacher sternly asked if we owned scissors and instructed us to go home and start CJ on an intensive practice regime.  At first we contemplated hiring a cutting tutor, but fortunately we had both remembered enough about shears from our own preschool days to help our son on our own. 

CJ worked so hard perfecting his scissors skills that by the time he started kindergarten, he was cutting right on, or at least near, the dotted line – You never would have guessed that he had overcome such a severe disability.

And I guess that by next year, we will find out if that early cutting intervention paid off.

Waitlist Donor Bank

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Recently, the Neurotic Parent received the following comments from readers:

I have a niece who got into Middlebury off the waitlist and gave up her slot at Hamilton and her brother got into Emerson off the waitlist, which opens up a slot at Northeastern.  How long do you think it will be before you know who got their spots?

and

It was actually our Oberlin-bound DGC (Dylan-Ginsberg Clone) who happily gave up his Vassar space for the Santa Barbara girl.

These comments reflect a new trend that is unfolding for students who are admitted to their dream colleges from waitlists.  Mere acceptance was once cause enough for celebration.  But now many waitlist recipients feel a need to know the identity of the anonymous donors who made it possible for them to enroll at their reach schools.

With this in mind, the Neurotic Parent Institute has started a new foundation, Waitlist Donor Trace.  Using cutting-edge research methods, we will locate the girl or boy who gave your child the gift of matriculation.  And for a nominal fee, you can receive periodic updates about how your donor is faring at the better school that let him or her in at the last moment. 

We are also starting a Waitlist Donor Bank.  Top students can now be proactive in giving a lucky girl or boy their hand-me-down acceptances.  

So, if you are someone like Mr. 2400, CJ's friend who just achieved a perfect score on the SAT, here's a simple strategy that could potentially touch the lives of thousands of students all over the world:  Apply to eighteen colleges.  You will probably be accepted at sixteen.  Send in deposits to every college that accepts you.  Then, when you get the call from Harvard or Princeton, you can provide places to sixteen lucky waitlist recipients.  Not only do you get to go to a prestigious school, but you can also help other human beings in limbo, like the Middlebury and Emerson kids mentioned above.  

This act of selflessness will take much less effort than going to Namibia to work with the baboons, and will give you the incomporable satisfaction of having made a difference in the life of an eleventh grader who has had to overcome the misfortune of having been born in 1990 or 1991.

 

Shocking Waitlist News

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This is Waitlist Week on my blog, so I must extend a big thank you to the four readers who sent me the link to this piece from the Wall Street Journal – "Elite Colleges Reach Deeper into Wait Lists":

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB121132542836108695-lMyQjAxMDI4MTIxMjMyMjI1Wj.html

This article reiterates the "heightened waitlist activity" theory discussed yesterday, and I must confess that at first it did not seem blog-worthy.  But after reading just a few sentences, I uncovered a truly surprising development: I've been spelling "wait list" incorrectly for the entire history of this blog. 

Here is the final paragraph of the article:

To be sure, not all schools are seeing increases in their numbers of wait-list offers. Stanford University, for instance has taken zero students from the wait list so far this year, the same as last year. "We are keeping a small number on the wait list just to respond to other wait list activity around the nation," says Rick Shaw, dean of undergraduate admission and financial aid.

 
As you can see, wait list as a noun is written as two words.  (I had suspected this whenever I spell checked, but assumed that typepad was not on the cutting edge of college vernacular.)  And wait-list as an adjective is hyphenated.  So what is the deal in the last sentence, where wait list is missing a hyphen before the word activity?  Even a high school junior could tell you that it's an adjective there. 
 
Did the WSJ spell "waitlist" incorrectly just to distract readers from the Stanford dean's weird logic – that they're maintaining a waitlist just to keep up with the activity back east?  Do they really think that students who have sent in their money to Stanford would give it up to spend four frigid long winters at a university that kept them hanging?  I don't think so. 
 
I guess I should write an email to the Journal to find out the answer to the wait list/wait-list mystery.  But I am afraid that they will think I'm one of those people who has too much time on her hands – I can imagine the editors laughing about my query: "That crazy neurotic parent – She should be reading about our hedge fund picks instead of worrying about missing hyphens".
 
So if you are a copy editor, I am waiting to hear from you.  And, until I have definitive information, I will continue to spell "waitlist" as one anxiety-provoking hyphenless word.