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Annoyances (con't)


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  • 3 weeks later...

I had a friend who was a Genius Hunter for the MacArthur Foundation - i'd send him your way but he's dead.

(incredible story about the guy - I was travelling with him in central asia and I liked him, but he would always tell me these ridiculous sounding stories about famous people he used to hang out with. I just ignored because ya'know people are weird. Then he died and I got an email from Lewis Lapham inviting me to a remembrance thing for him.)

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Ponied up lots of money to take an intensive 2-day coffee sensory course this weekend.  Came down with a cold last night and now have a sore throat and runny nose, too late to cancel my hotel reservation without losing my 50% deposit.  Also too late to get a refund on the course (in which I was going to be only instructee, it turns out), but I should be able to reschedule that.

Edited by StephanieL
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  • 3 weeks later...

I mean I can think of good reasons not to want to go to stuy. It doesn't sound like a particularly fun place to go to school.  nyc hs process sounds horrible.

 

we're at a "do we move the kids to the prepostrous day school because we're sort of unhappy with the public school" process right now for middle school next year - the two good secular day schools have a 6th grade entry. I feel very conflicted. I feel like good outcomes are actually better at the local A- public high and middle, but average outcomes are worse.  So you are asking yourself do I think my kid can be in the top five of his class at the public high school or not - and that's just a crazy think to try to underwrite in a 5th grader.  And they you layer in I've met some incredible kids at the day school but I've also met some kids who seem very very entitled.  Its not obvious

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Brings back memories. Touring all those schools was exhausting. Then, indeed, the argument: "You can put that school at number one, but you are unlikely to get in. You can get into the school you have put at number two, but only if you move it to number one."

Good outcome though. 

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5 hours ago, Anthony Bonner said:

 I've met some incredible kids at the day school but I've also met some kids who seem very very entitled. 

That's not entirely a bad thing.    It starts the "We are not they" conversation early on.    Our son went to lower and middle with the likes of Gettys and other lesser but incredibly wealthy names.     He came home from an early play date with the comment, "Funny family.   David has four mothers and three of them have brown faces."     He didn't know about housekeepers, cooks and nannies.    And/but he soon understood that some people live very differently from us and from anything to which we might aspire.   And that some of those people are "perfectly nice" and others of them are not.   LESSON: don't get sucked in by the latter.

 

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So last year the children of the disgraced former owner of a shared working space company that collapsed spectacularly was briefly enrolled in my son's school - one of whom was in his class (he actually said she was very nice and NOT a mean girl). We had a class event where parents were invited and it was amazing to watch all the men but two sidle up to the father and make conversation. (I'm proud to say that my spouse was one of the two who were not impressed.)

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I get not wanting to go to stuy, I don't understand the belief that tech will be more pleasant. the problem is her lottery number makes her pick of those very likely to be the best choice despite her grades, and her lottery number isn't even that bad in an absolute sense.

how do you know the other parents weren't being shitty to that guy? I definitely would have talked to him, I found his persona in those docs hilarious and wouldn't have been able resist seeing if it was real. I do stop to look at car wrecks when I see them. 

also the stuy tour is after you have to submit your rankings.

Edited by AaronS
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37 minutes ago, AaronS said:

how do you know the other parents weren't being shitty to that guy? I definitely would have talked to him, I found his persona in those docs hilarious and wouldn't have been able resist seeing if it was real. I do stop to look at car wrecks when I see them.

I know the fathers well enough to know they weren't being shitty, more like worshipful. Plus I knew all the chatter that was going around the parents. And I had a lovely conversation with his wife.

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12 hours ago, Anthony Bonner said:

this is just so perfectly dickish "we're the best so obviously you don't need to see us to make us your first choice"

 

This kind of attitude is worth noting.    Our son was wooed by and given early admission to a small ivy league that that year was deemed No 1 in the country.    City born and bred, he found himself a fish out of water in the minuscule New England town, finally yelling "uncle" near end of first year.    "Get me out of here!"    Wound up in an enormous urban school, where he flourished.   BUT, although he had accessed counseling at the first school, once he expressed a desire to leave, not one outreach from school staff asking for reasons or offering help.   "Pack your bags, kid.   There's hundreds waiting for your spot!"

eta a favorite anecdote.   He told how he realized how out of place he was when in chemistry class, he looked down the aisles and counted 23 pair of Sperry Topsiders and one pair of yellow Converse hightops.

Edited by voyager
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On 10/27/2023 at 8:07 PM, voyager said:

This kind of attitude is worth noting.    Our son was wooed by and given early admission to a small ivy league that that year was deemed No 1 in the country.    City born and bred, he found himself a fish out of water in the minuscule New England town, finally yelling "uncle" near end of first year.    "Get me out of here!"    Wound up in an enormous urban school, where he flourished.   BUT, although he had accessed counseling at the first school, once he expressed a desire to leave, not one outreach from school staff asking for reasons or offering help.   "Pack your bags, kid.   There's hundreds waiting for your spot!"

eta a favorite anecdote.   He told how he realized how out of place he was when in chemistry class, he looked down the aisles and counted 23 pair of Sperry Topsiders and one pair of yellow Converse hightops.

sounds like it's a small college, but there are those who love it

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Absolutely!     The problem was with the mismatch of student and school.   His high school college counselor shook her head and said that this was an utterly foreseeable disaster, that she/we/he should have realized how totally foreign this school would be for an "outside the mould"  kid from a super-liberal California city.

Edited by voyager
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