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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Part time job.  Taking SAT IIs in June.   SAT I prep for October retake.  Assigned summer reading and essay for school.  Assigned summer work for next year's AP courses.  Starting college essays as soon as Common App is released.  Not a summer I would look forward to.[/quote]

Let's break this down:

1.  "Part time job" -- way to earn spending money with kids his/her own age. 
2.  "Taking SAT IIs in June" -- done by the first weekend of June.  Each test is an hour long.  They are designed to measure work the kid has done in school.  If the kid has prepped for an AP in the same subject area most don't re-study for the SAT II.
3.  "SAT I prep for October retake" -- This is clearly being done by choice of the family.  The Princeton Review course is 30 hours of classes for the course (so about 2 hours avg. a week)
4.  "Assigned summer reading and essay for school" -- Yikes!  Having to read a book!  Everybody starts this in August, if then, when they are back for pre-season.  
5.  "Assigned summer work for next year's AP courses."  -- Nobody starts this before mid to late August.  Usually one book or assignment for each AP class.  Many kids don't do it or half-ass it.  (SHOCKING!!!!)
6.  "Starting college essays as soon as Common App is released."  Hah, that's what you think.   :lol:

[/quote]

[b]Wow, am I the only one who has sympathy for our stressed out kids?  [/b]

1.  DS's part time job is 30-40 hours a week, and he is saving about 80% of his earnings to help with college and so that he doesn't graduate from college penniless.
2.  True enough, but mine will certainly spend time reviewing during what should be his first week of summer.  It is so dumb that they have to take another exam in the same subject they already have shown competence in through the school course and the AP exam, but such is life today.
3.  His choice not ours.  And he already did the Princeton Review course last summer.  It's actually six or seven hours a week in class for 5 weeks or so, another couple hours for commute time, and several more hours at home doing the assigned work.  This year we will use a tutor to target his weakest area, and it will be up to him how much time to put in.
4.  Well at our school they read three books of substantial length, often nonfiction (and I'm not talking about a casual read such as a Gladwell book).  No way could they read them all in August.
5.  Maybe my kid is a nerd, but he always does the assigned work over the summer.  And he will definitely start on his essays because he works so hard during the school year, and has sports.

To me that adds up to a pretty full week without the long hours spent at the pool or hanging out with friends that I enjoyed at that age.[/quote]
If you truly had sympathy you would remove your kid from the pressure cooker/meat grinder and let him hang out with friends and chill a little bit instead of filling up every minute with work and school. Instead, you humblebrag while signing him up for prep classes, tutors, exams and work. Its not "such as life", its the life you have chosen for him. [/quote]

Yes, you are so right.  Or, you have a kid like my step-son who got into a bad college with full loans, took 6 years to graduate (he was busy with friends), didn't get his first job till 23, (all while living with his girlfriend since 18 per the girlfriends parents as she could not live in a dorm) and now unmarried but a baby at 24 and going to graduate school on full loans with living expenses as girlfriend refuses to work (and now moving in with family so they don't have to pay rent).[/quote]

Now THAT sounds like every 24-year old boy (yes, boy) I know - family members, neighbors, colleagues' kids.  It's an epidemic among young men.[/quote]

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