Don't Ruin Thanksgiving Before the Turkey...

 

I love Thanksgiving: it’s about family and food, without the trappings of the presents at Christmas. That’s good news and bad news, as Patrick O’Connor laid out here.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I have a request for colleges: PLEASE… for the love of all things good in the world… don’t release decisions on Thanksgiving!

Don’t think this happens? Allow me to relate:

Thanksgiving, 2020. It was already an odd day: do we go somewhere or not? Capacity limits? Masks? Darwinism?

We were getting ready to go to my sister’s, and I was making the sweet potato casserole my daughters are both completely in awe of and request every holiday. As I took care of one task, I felt my phone buzz. Thinking it was my sister reminding me to bring something or another, I checked. 

It was an email from my daughter’s top choice school: “Your decision is available in your portal.”

Suddenly, I lost track of the vanilla and butter in the sweet potatoes; I could have added jalapenos for all I knew. It was Thanksgiving morning, before noon, things were good and calm, and we were getting ready to see family for the first time in a while.

And now a college decision was looming.

My hope that my daughter didn’t notice the email was dashed when I heard “DAAAAAADDDDD!” from down the hall. She came into the kitchen, no color in her face. “What do I do?”

My wife and I traded confused looks, unsure how to answer. “What do you want to do?” I asked, trading on my re-phrasing and questioning learned in counseling school.

“I want to know, but I also want to enjoy Aunt Deb’s. I don’t know. But if I don’t open it, I will spend the whole day wondering.”

We looked at each other, and then said to her the words that I always told parents to say to kids: “OK… remember that this decision isn’t an indication of your self-worth. We love you no matter what.”

“Whatever… I need to find my password.”

We were fortunate: the decision was a positive one, and the smile on her face all day was infectious. That said, I didn’t need that heart attack before I could even get some of the bacon-greased turkey skin in me.

So, dear colleagues in the admissions offices across the nation: please turn the notifications off until Friday. I mean, can you really improve or ruin Black Friday?

Have a wonderful, restful, Thanksgiving.

You Too Can Have a College Counseling Class

 One of the attractive things about moving to CBA is the ability to teach a college counseling class for the juniors. This class runs every other cycle (don’t ask me to explain a cycle schedule), and is a mandatory class for all juniors. We work to demystify the application and admission process, as much as possible. We are using a plan that was developed by our current director, and updating it with a curriculum I was fortunate to work on with Patrick O’Connor over the summer. When the students leave school in June, they will (hopefully) have a solid understanding of the college process, and also will have their Common Application as done as possible.

On my end, one of the best parts is that the class is pass fail, and as long as the CA is as complete as possible in June, and the young men have finished off their brag sheets for their counselor, they pass the class. It’s much like the old show Whose Line is it Anyway: the points are made up and the scores don’t matter.

It’s a common sense class and program and is surprisingly easy to implement. The problem in other schools was getting the administrators off of the “but we can’t fit that in” bus. With the resources that are available for free at this point, there are so many ready-made lessons that can get the students working forward. It will allow the students (and counselors) to be a little less pressured as the senior year begins.

The other advantage I am discovering is that the class takes away many things I would have to spend time in my office explaining, or tasks I would have to accomplish individually. It is allowing my meetings with the students to be much more productive in terms of helping them find the right schools to look at; it also allows me to fine-tune the application more: I don’t have to work with the kid to create the wheel; instead our counselors are helping to inflate the tires.

I know we have “more freedom in the private school than they do in the publics,” and there are a million other “but…” arguments that can be made for why this type of course isn’t done in every school, but if you were to weigh the benefits versus the inconvenience of running this type of program, counselors would be overwhelmingly in support. Sometimes if we just think outside the reasons why something can’t be done, we can see that things can be done: we just need to change the perspective to one finding solutions versus the impediments.

Ch-Ch-Ch Changes...

So there have been a few changes in my life, and with apologies to David Bowie, I have turned and faced the strange. Certainly, the ones I made will not make me a financially richer man, but in terms of work satisfaction, dividends are being paid already. For that one person who followed my other blog, I apologize for the change. Since it was logged in via an email address that is no longer active (more on that coming), I had to change. 

 I’m back and in a new position. A few updates, all of which will be expended upon in later posts: 

 -My daughter, her process being the impetus for my first blog, ended up at Furman University. It was the right fit, and her process was handled well… mainly by her. She is going through the typical first year issues, but is overall enjoying her time in the south. 

 -I retired from public education and moved to Christian Brothers Academy in Lincroft, NJ; it’s an all-male Lasallian high school. I reached the magic number that the state of New Jersey asks for in terms of retirement benefits, and took the opportunity for a career re-boot. 

 Through my daughter’s college process and search, I constantly preached that change is good: that you have to be open to taking a risk and putting yourself in a position where you could fail miserably. Well, I did that: at well below the New Jersey retirement age, with a child going off to her freshman year, another one following in three years, and my wife changing districts, it was off the reservation I went. I’m one month in, but I can tell you that the risk is already producing rewards. 

 One of the attractive things about moving to CBA is the ability to teach at college counseling class for the juniors. This class runs every other cycle (don’t ask me to explain a cycle schedule), and is a mandatory class for all juniors. We work to demystify the application and admission process, as much as possible. We are using a plan that was developed by our current director, and updating it with a curriculum I was fortunate to work on with Patrick O’Connor over the summer. When the students leave school in June, they will (hopefully) have a solid understanding of the college process, and also will have their Common Application as done as possible. It’s a common-sense class and program and is surprisingly easy to implement. The problem in other schools was getting the administrators off of the “but we can’t fit that in” bus. 

 I have made a commitment to myself, and to those who may be interested in what I am writing, to write more. I do miss the process of producing content; it helps me clear my thoughts and hopefully you can find it interesting, helpful, humorous, annoying, or perhaps all three. 

More to come next week. I promise.