Has anyone here ever actually met someone on FetLife?

Doesn't really function as a dating site as far as I can tell. Do you just send unsolicited messages to people?

In particular, any woman saying she's looking for a man seems to be a scammer

I'm a 50-year-old man stepping into online dating for the first time.

I am looking for a woman who is looking for a submissive man. This is essentially a requirement for a relationship for me and so I'm wondering how explicit to be in my profile. I'm considering 3 different approaches:

1. State it outright
2. Frame it in figurative language (and maybe some acronyms like FLR) that an experienced dominant is likely to pick up on but might pass unnoticed by others
3. Be extremely oblique/don't mention it at all

In online dating, how often do you come across people that you know in real life? I worry that in a smaller city like Baltimore, particularly in my age range, it's fairly likely that someone I know will see my profile. So I guess I'm trying to thread a needle of finding someone who's looking for the same things as I am without sacrificing my privacy. Is that an impossible wish?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Carleton

I have never heard of this school? Is it recently popular? Is it public or private?

Minnesota? I have never heard of this place? Does it really exist?

I am close friends with an Ed.D. who is the head of a private, co-ed, K-8 school (not in this area). When I was going through the search process for my daughter's school, he told me that research has identified Middle School girls as the only segment of school-aged kids, male and female, that realize any benefit from single-gender schooling (and that it's very slight).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I guess I am not hearing anyone say very clearly that they understand who their child is, or what they want. Many 18 year olds are not ready to make any choices. We sent our youngest to community college for two years, and let him work while he was there. He came out with 3.8 and then transferred to UVA, which is a Great state school. No pressure, and now he knows what he wants to accomplish and where his passion lies.

I don't hear anyone taking what their particular child needs or wants into account on this board.

Maybe because the kids themselves don't know who they are or what they want. However, you give your kid a gift when you teach work ethic, for example. Then when your kid does figure out what s/he wants, he will have the drive to pursue it.

Great point. Sounds like Carol Dweck, whose writing has truly inspired my approach to being a parent. We try to offer realistic assessment and praise (when warranted) of our kids' effort without stressing the result. I think it's helped them develop the intrinsic motivation to try to do their best as often as possible, but to also not consider themselves failures if/when they come up short. And I feel like the same approach can be applied on a macro level to the college admissions process - focus on finding the best fit and not stress too much about whether or not their college destination is "good" enough.

Interesting article, but I find pieces of it overstated, like:

"Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it."

And:

"So extreme are the admission standards now that kids who manage to get into elite colleges have, by definition, never experienced anything but success. The prospect of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them. The cost of falling short, even temporarily, becomes not merely practical, but existential. The result is a violent aversion to risk. You have no margin for error, so you avoid the possibility that you will ever make an error."

In some ways, that description sounds more like the parents of these kids than the kids themselves.

Please, please, please never let any child swim alone. If they hit their head or otherwise black out, they could drown in 3 feet of water like this very accomplished teen swimmer did at Michael Phelps's training center in Baltimore.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/towson/ph-tt-lowenthal-1107-20121101,0,4905655.story

I don't think a parent always has to be watching, but there always has to be a buddy.

I don't see the need for a punishment, so much as an explanation of why her behavior was wrong.

Maybe you could tell her that from now on, you will have to walk into class with her to make sure she gets where she's supposed to be. Like she's lost the privilege of going in alone.

A book I would recommend to people already stressing about their elementary school child's college choice is "How to be a High School Superstar" by Cal Newport.

Rather than prep your kid by having him/her take the same courses and superficially participate in all the service activities as everyone else, it talks about how to truly set them apart - and in the process help them live a life that is actually interesting and rewarding.

I'd say summer before 8th grade is a good time to read it and think about how to apply its ideas. I didn't read it until last year, but my oldest child had already kind of lucked into an approach similar to the one the book outlines.

Anonymous wrote:

baltimoreguy wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

baltimoreguy wrote:For girls, Baltimore is the single most saturated private school market in the country - when you compare the number of spaces to the number of school age girls in the area.

Bryn Mawr, RPCS, SPSG, Garrison Forest, Oldfields, St. Timothy's, Friends, McDonogh, Park, Calvert, Cathedral, St. James, NDP, Maryvale, Mercy, IND, and whatever others I'm sure I'm forgetting.

For boys, it's top 3.

Since 2008-09, it's been a bit of a buyers' market - especially for those not counting on financial aid. I think that's very healthy. Instead of sending your kids wherever they can get in, you can send them to the school that's the best fit. And with so many different excellent schools, there really is a school for pretty much every kind of kid.

That's why I'm not crazy about seeing various people running down McDonogh, or Friends, or wherever. Just be thankful that with so many choices, we can all find the place that's right for us, and recognize that what's right for us might be very different from what's right

Even in my own family, what was right for my diligent Type A DS was very different from what was right for free-spirited DD. They are both thriving in two completely different environments - and I feel fortunate that we had such a wide variety of schools to choose from to ensure a great fit for both.

Don't understand your point, half the schools you listed as gril's schools are co ed. There are way more than three boy's schools. No on ever refers to a top three in baltimore and if they did, it would most likely be bryn mawr/gilman, park, and mcdonough for college placements.

I didn't list those as girls schools, I listed them as schools that girls can attend, adding to the very sizable inventory of private school spaces available to girls. For boys, I meant it's one of the top 3 most saturated markets in the country for private schools - when you divide the number of available spaces by the number of school-age boys.

I take it you didn't actually do this calculation, it is just your opinion. Some of the schools you list are boarding schools and take kids from outside the Baltimore area. Some draw from Baltimore, Howard, Harford and Carroll counties, others from some mix of those counties plus Baltimore city.

I didn't do this calculation, I am quoting a presentation I heard by the executive director of AIMS, the Association of Independent Maryland Schools. While some of the schools above are partially boarding, all also offer day enrollment and therefore count in the inventory of private school seats available to students in the Baltimore area.

When people talk about the Baltimore area, they are commonly referring to the Baltimore MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area), which includes all the counties you mention as well as a couple others. Just like when people talk about Washington, they are also including Fairfax County, Montgomery County, etc.

Not sure why my point - that Baltimore parents and students have an exceedingly wide array of school choices, as borne out by the FACT that we live in one of the nation's most saturated private school markets - is causing such contention. According to the way OMB defines our MSA vs. Washington, we have fewer than one-third the population and yet seem to have almost the same number of school choices. Which is one reason the drama surrounding private schools here seems to be so much less than in Washington (present company excluded, perhaps).

Anonymous wrote:

baltimoreguy wrote:For girls, Baltimore is the single most saturated private school market in the country - when you compare the number of spaces to the number of school age girls in the area.

Bryn Mawr, RPCS, SPSG, Garrison Forest, Oldfields, St. Timothy's, Friends, McDonogh, Park, Calvert, Cathedral, St. James, NDP, Maryvale, Mercy, IND, and whatever others I'm sure I'm forgetting.

For boys, it's top 3.

Since 2008-09, it's been a bit of a buyers' market - especially for those not counting on financial aid. I think that's very healthy. Instead of sending your kids wherever they can get in, you can send them to the school that's the best fit. And with so many different excellent schools, there really is a school for pretty much every kind of kid.

That's why I'm not crazy about seeing various people running down McDonogh, or Friends, or wherever. Just be thankful that with so many choices, we can all find the place that's right for us, and recognize that what's right for us might be very different from what's right

Even in my own family, what was right for my diligent Type A DS was very different from what was right for free-spirited DD. They are both thriving in two completely different environments - and I feel fortunate that we had such a wide variety of schools to choose from to ensure a great fit for both.

Don't understand your point, half the schools you listed as gril's schools are co ed. There are way more than three boy's schools. No on ever refers to a top three in baltimore and if they did, it would most likely be bryn mawr/gilman, park, and mcdonough for college placements.

I didn't list those as girls schools, I listed them as schools that girls can attend, adding to the very sizable inventory of private school spaces available to girls. For boys, I meant it's one of the top 3 most saturated markets in the country for private schools - when you divide the number of available spaces by the number of school-age boys.

For girls, Baltimore is the single most saturated private school market in the country - when you compare the number of spaces to the number of school age girls in the area.

Bryn Mawr, RPCS, SPSG, Garrison Forest, Oldfields, St. Timothy's, Friends, McDonogh, Park, Calvert, Cathedral, St. James, NDP, Maryvale, Mercy, IND, and whatever others I'm sure I'm forgetting.

For boys, it's top 3.

Since 2008-09, it's been a bit of a buyers' market - especially for those not counting on financial aid. I think that's very healthy. Instead of sending your kids wherever they can get in, you can send them to the school that's the best fit. And with so many different excellent schools, there really is a school for pretty much every kind of kid.

That's why I'm not crazy about seeing various people running down McDonogh, or Friends, or wherever. Just be thankful that with so many choices, we can all find the place that's right for us, and recognize that what's right for us might be very different from what's right for others.

Even in my own family, what was right for my diligent Type A DS was very different from what was right for free-spirited DD. They are both thriving in two completely different environments - and I feel fortunate that we had such a wide variety of schools to choose from to ensure a great fit for both.

Anonymous wrote:DD recently visited this school. Liked it (not so much the nearby neighborhood) but we have heard that while the school is "good" and one can get a good education, its a school that we're told is comprised of many "Ivy" rejects and that the student body is not really that happy.

Pretty much any New England small liberal arts college (except maybe Amherst and Williams) is full of Ivy rejects - not sure there are hundreds of people enrolling in Colby over Dartmouth or Bowdoin over Princeton.

My impression of Trinity is that there were two kinds of students. The studious kids who didn't quite have the stats for the Ivy League and were perhaps disappointed to be at "only" Trinity. And then there were the smart, underachieving preppy kids who didn't have great grades because they weren't very studious, but were still smart enough to put together SAT scores. Those kids seemed to love Trinity - go to most classes but not all, do a decent amount of homework but not tons, and party hard 3 or 4 nights a week.

In recent years, Trinity has been trying to scale back on the preppy party kids and ramp up on the academics. Paradoxically, it seems they are turning off their core audience - the preppy partiers - while not significantly increasing their appeal to higher academic achievers.

Anonymous wrote:

baltimoreguy wrote:It doesn't matter what kind of school it is. Just say: "Private School X was the best fit for my child's needs."

How hard is that?

because it begs the question: why isn't the local public good enough for you like it is for the rest of us?

I've never had a person ask any kind of follow-up question like that. Would someone really respond to that by asking "Which of her needs aren't being meet at Local Public HS?"

Then again, I live in Baltimore now, so maybe people are that direct in Washington.

I think #9 is a great point. At some schools there is an intentional inflexibility - "This is who we are, this is what we do." That can be great, particularly if who they are and what they do is truly excellent. Not surprisingly, it seems that the most exclusive, well-established market leaders are the schools that take this tone.

But before you enroll there, be sure your child will thrive in the environment and program that school offers. Don't get there and suddenly expect them to start changing to meet the needs of your child.

If he/she won't necessarily thrive at such a school, then you should consider a school that's much more willing to "bend" in order to accommodate the needs of different kinds of kids, even if it's not necessarily the "best" or most prestigious school that accepts your child. Unhappiness often arises when parents try to force their kids into a school that's not the right fit.