Thoughts from a Senior Year Survivor

 If you read my last post about your child's senior year of high school, you are now aware that it will be a wild ride. May the odds be ever in your favor.  As promised and in no particular order, here are a few survival tips as you help your pride and joy through this process:

Make sure your child has at least one college application essay COMPLETED by the end of summer.

Since summer is flying by, I put this one first.  This will be difficult.  They will not want to do it.  They will think they have eons of time before the November 1st or 15th or December or February deadline.  They don't.  You will have to nag them endlessly.  But it will be a much more pleasant experience for you both if they get it done before a new school year starts with new academic demands and time constraints.

The Common App website currently has all of the writing prompts for students starting college this fall, but it will give you a general idea of the topics your kid can focus on.  Just make sure you take a look at their top schools' websites to make sure they accept the Common App before they start writing.

Because I'm from the 1900's, we saved all Brynn's essays in several places.  She created them on Google docs on both her account and mine, and we copied and pasted to a word doc and saved them to our desktop's hard drive.

Make a spreadsheet that includes all important information for each school.

For added enjoyment, color code that beautiful beast to reflect each school's colors for easy reference.  Include total cost of attendance, not just tuition and fees.  These numbers are drastically different and are available on every school's website.  This step alone may help narrow down the search, especially when you experience the sticker shock of out of state tuition.  

Include potential majors, minors, and extracurricular activities that would be of interest.  Consider the possibility that the thing your kid swears they want to do for the rest of their life today may change after a semester in college, and figure out if schools have programs to fall back on if Plan A doesn't work out.  

Include important dates and application requirements.  One of the most frustrating things about this process is that every school does whatever they want.  There is no uniformity to deadlines or notifications or what they consider a complete application.  Application deadlines vary from November all the way through February.  Some require several letters of recommendation, others will not even consider them.  Some schools require SATs, others are test optional.  Some require an activity resume that features your extracurriculars, volunteer, and paid work experience...this is actually a great thing to work on over the summer as well, and they can add their senior year activities to it later.  If there's an honors college within the school your child can apply to, there will most likely be additional application requirements involved, like another essay.  Refer to each school's website to get the most accurate information. 

Encourage your child to start thinking about who they will ask for letters of recommendation.

These people should be someone who knows your kid well, who perhaps has seen them exhibit leadership, or maybe someone who has seen them work through hardship and grow as a human.  The best teachers and coaches will most likely be slammed with recommendation requests come October, so timing the ask is critical.  The very beginning of the school year probably isn't the best time as teachers work to establish a new routine with new students, and last minute isn't the best idea either.  Keep in mind they'll probably have to ask for more later in the year when applying for scholarships.  

Scholarships are out there.  Just don't expect to get them.

Everyone tells you there is a ton of scholarship money out there, you just have to apply.  This was not our experience.  Applications were sent to dozens of websites and organizations, both locally and nationwide, beginning right after all of her college applications were sent until the end of April.  I made another spreadsheet with application links, requirements, and deadlines.  Some were broad and probably attracted tens of thousands of candidates, and others were very specific to school, location, or Brynn's field of study.  All but one were a bust.  Despite the weeeeeeeks spent writing and editing essays for each application* and the disappointment of rejection for nearly every single one, I can't say I wouldn't do it all over again.  You just never know, and I thought it was worth the effort to try to slash thousands of dollars off that college price tag.

*Save every version of every essay you write!  Most scholarship applications ask for an essay that is a lot like another essay you've written.  A little cut here, a little paste there, a little change of wording or addition of a paragraph over there and you've saved yourself quite a bit of time.

You'll have to make decisions before you have all the information.

This was one of the most frustrating things about this process for me.  Some schools will give you a merit scholarship right off the bat and include that offer in your acceptance letter.  Other schools wait until your entire financial aid package (including any federal or state aid, work study, or student loan "opportunities") is ready (for us it was in March) before they let you know if you've gotten any additional scholarship money.  Lots of private scholarships don't even notify you of acceptance or denial until AFTER the May 1st deadline to submit your enrollment deposit.  It's like buying a car before you know how much it's going to cost.  Make it make sense.

Hope for the best, prepare for disappointment.

Brynn is not going to her first choice school.  She's not even going to her second choice school.  She was accepted at both of these schools, but going to either of them would have meant taking out sizeable student loans.  Using a college loan repayment calculator spelled it out for us...borrowing some money was ok with us, but borrowing so much she would be making payments of nearly $1000 per month for 30 years after graduation didn't seem to make any financial sense whatsoever.  It was a heartbreaking realization, but we know this was the best decision for Brynn in the long run.

You may find yourself in the same predicament, where cost is the roadblock to what you and your child hoped was their path.  Or they might not get into that dream school and be absolutely devastated.  Save the "God has a plan" talk and just sit in the suck with them.  They don't want to hear that everything will be alright because right now, it's not.  WE know they'll eventually be alright, but they don't.  Not yet.  And that's ok.

Celebrate every task completed.

This process is a marathon, not a sprint, and sometimes it feels like people keep moving the damn finish line.  There will be a lot of dragging of the feet, and even more cracking of the whip.  Make sure you don't forget to sprinkle in the praise when they bang out a tough essay after a long day or click submit on their last scholarship application.  Go out for ice cream when responses start coming in, good or bad.  Remind them of how awesome they are, even if some putz reading their application puts it aside in favor of another.  Curse that putz out together if it helps (I find swearing always helps).  Remember your incredible kid is your incredible kid, no matter where their path takes them after high school.  And remember it's not your job to figure it all out for them right now.  

Bittersweet Symphony

 I need one of those status updates that reads "Marked safe from her firstborn's senior year of high school."  There were several times during this past school year that I thought to myself, "I need to write a blog post about this."  Our experience with the college application and selection process was ours alone, but I definitely learned a lot along the way and know how helpful it is to hear stories from people who have made it to the other side.  In a perfect world, I would have written it long before mid-July, but if you are now a parent of a rising high school senior, you'll understand in about a year from now.  This is not a carefully curated list of lessons learned, but a mosaic of muddled memories my mind is actually allowing me to recall.  Here goes.

Senior year goes by SO FUCKING FAST.

I knew it would fly by.  But I wasn't expecting to be in Ludicrous Speed from start to finish.  I knew once the school year started at the end of August, it was a runaway train until the last stop of graduation in June.  I wanted to throw myself off a time or two, but you really just need to hold on for dear life and try to enjoy the ride a little yourself.

Senior year is SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE.

And its starts in July.  Senior portraits, where prints are literally FOUR TIMES the cost of your sophomore's prints.  Parking spot permit.  Permit to paint said parking spot.  Paint to paint said parking spot.  AP exams.  College applications (FYI, some states quietly have a week in the fall where they waive application fees, typically it's after your child has submitted all of their applications at $50+ a pop).  College visits.  College acceptance deposits.  College housing deposits.  Printer ink, paper, envelopes, and postage to send scholarship applications to organizations stuck in the 1900s.  Yearbook.  Senior night festivities for sports team.  Prom tickets.  Prom outfit.  Dinner before prom.  Cap and gown.  Honors stole.  Post-graduation party.  And lots of little things you simply can't say no to because senior year has your poor little mama heart by the balls.

Your child's senior year will age you in dog years.

Maybe it's just me though.  We went into Brynn's senior year in the midst of some challenging times for our family...the death of a parent and the endless tasks that follow, the other parent needing more assistance than you realized because you were focused on the one with Parkinson's, a brother who had a stroke in his 40s.  While these circumstances may be specific to me, if you have an 18 year old child, chances are you also have parents who are getting older.  "The Sandwich Generation" is the euphemism someone coined for this delightful time in a middle aged person's life.  A shit sandwich if I've ever eaten one.  I don't say this to be alarmist.  I say this to say you will want to give your graduating child 100% because a) they deserve it, and b) you have suddenly realized they'll be gone way sooner than you'll ever be ready to let them go.  But if you are unable to give them that 100% because you're spread thin in the middle of that shit sandwich, give yourself some grace.  What you're doing is SO HARD.

Expect unexpected attacks of overwhelming emotion.

Thankfully mine usually occurred when I was alone in the car or in the shower.  But sometimes the mere mention of graduation in casual conversation was enough to open the tear ducts. It can come out of nowhere, and sometimes there's no discernable trigger you can pinpoint, but there are plenty of events throughout the year where you know you're going to struggle and you can prepare yourself, if even just a little bit.  My go-to prep for these occasions was always listening to Metallica.  A little headbanging clears those feels out pretty good and toughens you up to face whatever "last" you're about to experience with your kid.

You can do this.

You'll wonder how you can keep this pace until June.  You'll be more physically and mentally and emotionally exhausted than you've ever been...and you've had a newborn, remember?!  Try to see this year through your senior's excited eyes instead of your drooping, exhausted eyelids.  To say this year is bittersweet is a gross understatement, but try to focus mostly on the sweet and not so much on the bitter.  Allow yourself to feel the feels, big and small.  Commiserate with your fellow senior parents who are in it with you, and reach out to those who have been through it already.  They are a great resource, not only for tips and tricks on the process, but they can also provide perspective.  When our spotlight is focused on our own kid, hearing other people's experiences can be the floodlight that helps us see a much bigger picture, and sometimes lights a path we didn't know was an option.  You will cross the finish line.  You may not be upright.  If you're lucky, you'll have people dragging you across, but you will cross the finish line.  And you will be so proud of your graduate that the heart you've spent 18 years toughening up will just explode.