Henry has chosen a college! He’d narrowed it down to three top choices, and this month we went to Accepted Students Days for all three, and he has chosen one of them and we have made the registration deposit and ordered a t-shirt!

This decision puts me at five out of five for kids choosing the college that would have been my own secret top choice for them. The strength and certainty of my opinion has varied wildly (I was almost equally fine between William’s top two finalists, with just a SLIGHT preference for the one he chose; I thought Elizabeth should choose an art college at a university instead of an art school, but I was not at all sure I was right), but this time I had a STRONG opinion about the finalist I hoped he would NOT choose (his original frontrunner, and the most expensive BY FAR, and in my fairly strong opinion not a particularly good fit), and a medium-strength opinion about which of the other two I thought he should pick (but as with Elizabeth and art school, I was not at all sure I was right).

We had one eensy set-back in this process, which is that a few days ago, before he’d decided, he got an email from one of the three colleges saying thank you for letting us know you won’t be attending, we’ve withdrawn your application. THAT was adrenalizing! Especially when he immediately emailed them back to say there’d been a mistake, and didn’t get a response! Luckily that was not the college he ended up choosing (nothing to do with the upsetting email), but it WAS his close second choice (and mine), so I spent a day or two worried that (1) he would want to choose that college and (2) it would be impossible to fix the error.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth, who is finishing up her second year of an art/illustration major and it seems to be going very well, gave me the heads-up that she is going to want to have a big talk in the car on the way home to work through some options about changing majors and/or colleges. I’m mostly unstressed about this, just very interested to hear what she’s thinking of. Is this when she will say she wishes she’d gone to an art school instead of to a university, and it’s time to switch? Is it instead that she doesn’t think art is the right career for her? or that she wants to switch from illustration to studio art? Is it that she wants to walk through again the “I’d like to be majoring in something other than art but unfortunately there isn’t anything else I like or want to major in” feelings she had even in high school? We shall see!

We are also just a few weeks from finding out how Edward’s second year went, after a first year that ended in academic probation. First semester grades this year were not as decisive as I’d hoped: no F’s, but another D; an A in the class that had the F last year; another A, a B, a C. To my astonishment, the GPA-based scholarships DID stay in effect during the two semesters of probation—but surely at the end of the probation they will be reevaluated. It is possible Edward’s grades will be good enough to be off probation but not good enough to keep the scholarships, in which case the decision about what to do next will be fraught.

But la la la, sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof, etc. Right now it’s all GOOD things: Henry chose the college I’d hoped he’d choose, and he’s excited about it, and the upsetting email turned out to be irrelevant. Elizabeth wants to have what will certainly be an interesting talk, perhaps leading to some interesting changes. Edward’s Schrodinger grades don’t have to be dealt with today, or for several weeks.