Huffing and Puffing through The College Process

When I began The Great Downstairs Cleaning Adventure this morning, I realized that I had to start with my shell table.  It needed wood polishing and glass cleaning -- and it also needed interior vacuuming, which meant that all the shells got to be rearranged.  I think that all of those on this side are my own finds, except for the seahorses, which came from the Shell Shop in St. Augustine.  Ahhh, I am missing the beach, expecially as we in the balmy midwest approach a record for annual snowfall this morning.

I haven't gotten any further than the shell table, because The College Decision Process that looms over us re-captured my attention when my daughter came downstairs.  She is waiting to hear from one last school, and on the scholarship that she knows she's received from another.  The mail came and went, with no college envelopes, so we are moribund in the desert of indecision until at least Monday night.

I've been spending some time on a college message board and, while I am frustrated by the delays and surprises in the process -- even the third time through -- I have told my husband and daughter that they should be grateful for the level of realism and calm that I DO manage to exhibit.  Some of the parents online are unbelieveable.  I don't know how anyone, anywhere, regardless of a child's grades, scores, and other credentials, could view an application to an Ivy League or similar-caliber school as anything but a crapshoot, but there are apparently lots of folks out there who were under the impression until this week that the result for their own exceptional offspring was guaranteed.  Do they really not understand that there are literally thousands of young people just as brilliant, talented, creative, and accomplished as their own?  How can someone make it through nearly two decades of parenting and still believe, as we all should, of course, at the moment our children arrive in this world, that their son or daughter is so stratospherically superior to all the rest that Harvard should be waiting with open arms?

Last spring  at a presentation by senior parents for junior parents at my daughter's school, one father expressed his anguish that his academic and athletic superstar child had been turned down by SuperSchool A and was going to attend SuperSchool B.  "It's just so difficult to see your child's disappointment after he has worked so hard," he said.  Yes, it is; it's very difficult.  But as my daughter said when I reported the discussion to her, "If he's reached the age of 18 and the worst thing that's ever happened to him is that he's going to SuperSchool B instead of SuperSchool A, then he really doesn't know much about disappointment, does he?"

Oh, well.  I hope that my daughter makes a good choice out of the wonderful ones available to her.  But I'm glad that she's setting an example for me of a balanced perspective and realistic understanding of the role of college in the grand scheme of things.

Meanwhile, I am playing, not cleaning:

Walked 2 miles in thick slushy snow and got soaked.