Last Day of School, 2016
Posted on May 19, 2016 Posted by John Scalzi 22 Comments
Here is Athena looking toward the future (and, more prosaically, in the direction of our mailbox, but even so).
This end of the school year will bring some pretty big changes for Athena. Today is the last day of school, so technically speaking, Athena is now what they call a “rising senior.” But practically speaking, she’s done with high school. She has only one more required class between her and graduation, and she will be taking that, along with other courses, at the local community college next year. The local CC has an arrangement with the high school for students in just this sort of situation, which is nice. But it also means that Athena’s no longer going to school here in town.
Which is a pretty big deal. She’s been at the local school since kindergarten — the building houses elementary, middle and high school all in the same building — so her moving on from there is, in a very real way, a signal break from her childhood. I’m for it, in the sense that I think a year at the local community college will be useful for her both academically and in terms of her getting used to the rhythms of college before she goes off to a four-year school. But still. Changes. And more changes to come.
In any event — off into summer we go.
Congrats to all! Judging from her tweets, she was ready to move on. Excelsior!
I wonder if my kids will end up doing that as well. If my son keeps up as he’s been going he’ll be too young for college by the time he finishes K-12.
Both of my kids did a stint at the local community college in what would have been there senior year, and I think it was very useful to them as they moved on to 4-year schools. In our case, both kids were homeschooled, so they needed some time “in the system” to get used to the cadence of how everybody else does school. Also, I secretly hoped they got stuck with a really crappy instructor as experience working around that is invaluable. It worked out great as the Spanish instructor was less than good at the teaching thing and it forced both kids to figure out how to work both with and around him to get the grade they wanted.
Also, $100 a credit hour in CC versus over $300 a State U adds up to decent savings, even if they only do it one year.
Congratulations and good luck on your life.
You see a quiet determination in her eyes to “go forward.” Greatest hopes, prayers and blessings for that. She stands in the foreground of a beautiful countryside. I hope she doesn’t forget that either, or lessen her love for it!
Congratulations, Athena!
She will fit right in to college. Wise how this worked out for her. Great!
I went to the local state college instead of attending HS my senior year. :-) It was a welcome change for me. Congratulations and good luck to Athena!
Damn! Congrats!!!
Can we assume that at least some of the credits from the CC will count towards the 4 year degree?
So she is basically skipping a whole year of HS??
Sounds wonderful.
As another student who did this, make sure she stays socially engaged! One problem I had was I lost contact pretty much immediately with friends from high school, and because the community college I went to was a huge commuter school, I didn’t make friends there. My schedule was the opposite of most of my high school classmates; I took a good amount of afternoon and evening classes. My last two years of high school were pretty lonely as a result.
Best of luck :)
Wonderful!! What an opportunity!
Go for it, kid.
Will she get to enjoy commencement/”the walk” next year with her class? It’s one of those things that I never wanted to do, but had a good experience doing. If it’s a rump–no one she still really knows is still around–there’s probably no good work around.
By everything I’ve seen, you and Krissy seem to have raised an outstanding person. Congratulations to all of you.
Congratulations to Athena.
Savor every moment. It all goes so fast …
I spent a lot of my senior year staring at my mailbox hoping it held the answers for my future (in the form of acceptance letters)
So did she take accelerated courses to put her in this situation (which seems weird for such a small school, I wouldn’t expect them to have any AP courses) or is this how the school handles situations where a student is advanced, have them take all the required courses and then go to a CC or beyond the final year?
Pkeet99:
She just took a lot of classes rather than have study hall, etc, and therefore finished up her required classes early. There wasn’t much left for her to do at the school, basically.
Looking to the mail box metaphorically speaking, my son did not receive any of his college decisions by snail mail. This makes me kind of sad cause I am old fossil now who longs for the good old days of the fat envelope in April.
Anyhoo, congratulations to Athena on her great leap forward!
Big changes, indeed. Congratulations to all of you– you must be so proud of Athena!
as a community college instructor, taking CC classes near the end of their high school career, either in conjunction with HS classes or as an alternative “gap,” is a great idea. There is a huge change between the typical HS environment and the higher ed environment, and the CC is a good transition. The numbers on traditional college freshmen who do poorly in their first year and/or drop out entirely is one of those “unspoken” problems in higher ed. High Schools love to tell students and parents that they are preparing students for college, but the numbers don’t bear that out.
And contrary to popular opinion, the CC classes are the exact same content and rigor as the traditional higher ed classes – they have to be in order to transfer. They just tend to be smaller classes taught directly by instructors who want to teach, not do research.
Congratulations to Athena!
Congrats to Athena!
I think you’ve mentioned this in passing, but does she have any definite college plans yet? I could see her trying for University of Chicago, in your footsteps; or any of the various Ohio universities and colleges, for that matter.