Wait A Minute, Mr. Postman

The first wave of college applications have been sent and PoS, worrywart that she is, is pretending that she's not worried. On Halloween, she applied to Beloit in Wisconsin, Knox in Illinois and Ohio Wesleyan in...never mind.

Knox has a 14 day turnaround time from the day you apply. That's great, except perhaps they shouldn't have told applicants that. As you can imagine, 14 days is a long time to mope around the house trying to figure out if you're in or out. It leads to conversations like this:

PoS: Susie got into Knox.
Me: That's nice.
PoS: And they gave her $ 11,000. And that's not even financial aid!
Me: That's nice.
PoS: (crazy look on face)
Me: What's wrong?
PoS: Nothing (more crazy in the face)
Me: Isn't Susie like super athlete, super student, super community service girl?
PoS: Yeah
Me: Okay. Well if she heard back, it just means she applied earlier.
PoS: Yeah
Me: It's going to be a long November, huh?

The curse in going to a small school is that everyone knows everyone's business. If PoS had 500 seniors in her school, she'd only know where a handful of students had been accepted. In a senior class of 24, everyone knows the intimate details of to where, and with how much scholarship money, everyone has applied and/or been accepted. So what do you do as a parent? Give pep talks and silently curse the admissions department.

Oh Really?

I follow a few mommy bloggers on Twitter and have watched with fascination as one of them tweets about her football playing sons and their ACT scores.  It seems that said sons are having problems scoring at least a 15 and it could affect their ability to be recruited for college.  I'm sorry, what?  Having never relied on her sports acumen to get her into college, I can't really relate.  Yet here's a mother that's has verbally expressed that she's not really concerned with their grades or scores, as long as it's just good enough for them to keep playing football.  I wish I could say that this was the only case I've seen, unfortunately it's not.

I have a co-worker whose son was on academic probation his freshmen year in Catholic school.  She threatened to take him off of the team, though the school was more than willing to let him continue to play.  Ultimately she let him stay on the team.  He flunked freshman year and guess what?  He's playing again this year as a second year freshman. I just had to know why she would allow it. Better yet, why keep him at a school that clearly does not have his best interest at heart? Her answer, that's where his dad went to school.  Okay...and?  I'm happy that your husband went there and went on to college.  Your son has the potential to be a couch potato.  I'll check back with you a few years from now to see if he's worn a hole in his spot on the sofa.

And finally we come to a dear friend of mine whose son was a year ahead of PoS in school.  He's a brilliant young man.  He's been a straight A student for as long as I've known them.  In his first 8th grade year (yes, I said his first), he decided he wanted to play football in high school.  His father, a former pro player, decided that he was smaller than the typical high school player.  This was due to the fact that he'd skipped a grade when he was younger because, you know, he's smart.  Anyway, he and his father had the brilliant idea to have him repeat the 8th grade at another school to give him time to bulk up.  You read that right.  His parents put him in private school so that he of the straight A's could repeat the same grade in order to play football more effectively.

So now he's a senior. I know the whole school thing is a sore subject for his mother, but when we do our check-in phone calls, I feel obligated to ask how the application process is going.  When I spoke with her last week, she said they were waiting to hear back from schools.   Of course I asked which schools had they applied to, to which I was told, none.  They're waiting for scouts to finish checking their son out and then going with whomever offers the most money.  I held my tongue and redirected the conversation, but in my head I was screaming, he's smart! What do you mean you're waiting?  What in the hell are you waiting on?  Are you really selling your son short by hoping he gets into a school based on what he can do on the field versus what he can do in the classroom?

Is it me? Am I overreacting here?  As MC Lyte would say, "Just like a test, I cram to understand you."