It’s finals season! If you have a college student away at school, they might be gearing up for finals right now. Finals is a stressful time for a college student as they have multiple finals exams in the same week, as well as final projects and papers due all at the same time. This is a time when your college student will feel stressed, possibly homesick, and really need a mommy or daddy hug. Unfortunately, you are not there, so you cannot give them that hug which makes everything less overwhelming. Instead, you can send them a little love from home, in the form of a finals care package.
There are three key ingredients to the perfect care package from home. Something sweet, something squishie to hug, and something to help the stress. Something sweet is easy. You can run out to CVS and grab their favorite candy bar, or you can get something special which isn’t sold on campus or near campus. We love to send our daughter See’s candy, or Godiva chocolate. The boxes are special, and the chocolate is sooooo good. This gives your college student something sweet, which is special. They love that!
This generation loves squishies and stuffies. It seems as if the majority of college students have a squishie collection in their dorm room. Why not give one more? They come in different sizes, but the 12″ is the easiest to hug and snuggle while under stress. A new squishie just before finals week will give your student a feeling of love from home, as well as something to hug while under stress. Love that!
Finally, the care package for finals should have something to combat stress. Stress balls don’t last forever, so if your student brought one to school back in August, there is a chance it is either already destroyed, or on its last legs. Why not send a new stress ball which can take the heat of finals week? This package of stress balls offers not only the ability to squeeze, but also stretch. What a fun stress reliever! Love it!
When I send a care package to my daughter, I like to line the box with a pretty foil in a fun color such as fuchsia. This makes the entire box festive. Your student will open the box, see special foil, and love the sweets, squishie, and stress balls inside. It is the perfect finals care package to help relieve stress and send a little love from home.
Shop finals care package gifts online:
You can ship your finals care package to your student via your favorite shipping company such as UPS or USPS. If sending chocolate, make sure the shipper knows there is something perishable in there so that it doesn’t end up in a hot place. We have had good luck chocolate through UPS ground. It arrives at my daughter’s dorm in perfect condition.
Don’t forget to include a handwritten card with well wishes!
Good luck with finals, and thanks for stopping by!
One of the most anxiety ridden activities of high school is going through the application process. After your child is done receiving acceptances, waitlists, and rejections, then what? There is a short period of time when your child picks a school. Then, your whole family is excited, and you buy the sweatshirt for their new school. Then, you snap photos of your child wearing the sweatshirt and announce the big news all over social media. Your child tells all of his/her friends and then everyone is excited about the new school year in the fall.
One day over the summer, your child attends orientation at the new school and receives a schedule; then it hits you. Your little baby, who you used to carry around, feed, cloth, and snuggle with, is going to leave the house. This means no more good night hugs, no more good morning greetings, no more cooking a favorite meal and seeing the joy on your child’s face. It is over until Thanksgiving vacation. If your child leaves for school in August, it will be three full months before they come home for Thanksgiving.
You might get lucky, and your child attends a school with a Parent’s Weekend in early October. This is a weekend designated for parents to come on campus and visit their student. Chances are, your student will also have their own activities planned such as study groups for mid-terms and projects. You might get a little bit of time with your student, and some meals off campus, but it won’t be the full time attention you are accustomed to back home. Your student has their own life now.
This is hard. No-one tells you how hard it is. Everyone tells stories about how proud they are of their child, but no-one tells you how much you will miss your student. While nothing will replace hugging your child, there are a few things you can do to ease the pain, and to help you survive your student leaving for college.
Get a hobby. If you have a hobby, especially a new one, it will add something new to your life and also distract you from the missing person at the dinner table.
Concentrate on the other kids. Do you still have other kids at home? Don’t forget about them. Stay focused on their lives and enjoy parenting them while they are still home.
Don’t tell your child how much you miss them. If you tell your child how much you miss them and break into tears, they will feel guilty for going away. When you speak with your student, tell them how proud you are of them, and ask about their life.
Help them break-away and be excited about becoming an independent adult. Of course, no college student is fully independent. They will ask you for pizza money and call you for things such as how to remove a coffee stain from their favorite shirt.
Try to keep texting and calling at a minimum. If you need to reach out to your student, wait until the evening when they are back in their dorm room relaxing. You don’t want to bother them while they are studying and running from class to class.
Plan for their return. Look at the schedule for when your child returns for vacation. Plan some activities for those days and also schedule in down time for your student to sleep in and relax.
A child going away to college is a natural part of the parenting cycle. Your child is eighteen years old, and while he or she may not be ready to own a house and care for it, as well as themselves, your child will be ready to tackle things like laundry, getting to the cafeteria for food, keeping their room clean (well, we hope, haha), waking up in the morning, and paying attention to their studies.
Although your child went away to college, they still need you. They will still come home for vacation and breaks. While they aren’t in the house full-time anymore, your student will always be your child, and they will also love you. Embrace the growing up part, and help to guide them through the struggles.
Pictured: Arizona State University sign, one of the colleges my daughter visited
How to prepare for college application season
Well, hello! If you happen to have been here awhile, you might be wondering why I am suddenly writing about being the parent of a college student. Well, I happen to be the parent of a college Freshman, and I also have two teenagers getting closer to college age. When you have a blog, the point is to share what is going on in your life as well as share tips and tricks in areas you have knowledge. After this past year, I have learned a lot about being the parent of a college student, so I want to share that knowledge with anyone who may have a high school student thinking about college; and also anyone with a college student. I hope you enjoy this new series! I will try to publish one article a week about being a college parent.
Since this is the first post in this series, I wanted to start with college applications. This is something many parents have asked me about at school, and in my other children’s extra-curricular activities. How do you get organized for college application season? I know the process can be overwhelming, especially if you, the parent, did not attend college, or this is your first student going through the process. So, let’s dive into my tried-and-true tips for preparing for college application season!
It does not matter if your student is a junior getting ready to start the application process in August, or if you have an eighth grader with college aspirations. This is the time to prepare for college application season. The biggest thing we learned while filling out my daughter’s applications, is that you need to have all of your extra-curricular activities ready to write about. You need a list! Without a list, you might be looking back on your calendar and digging through drawers seeking certificates and records of activities you have forgotten about. Don’t let this happen to you. We went through it. You need a central place where all of these activities are recorded so your child can easily fill out their applications without forgetting about that weekend building a house for Habitat for Humanity or that time your child was captain of the soccer team.
The easiest way to stay organized is with a sharable spreadsheet. We created a Google spreadsheet which my husband, myself, and my daughter had access to. During the fall of her senior year, she also shared the spreadsheet with her high school counselor. It made life very easy and organized!
In this spreadsheet you need two tabs. One tab will have a list of schools your child is applying to, and the second tab will have columns for extra-curricular activities. This includes activities, awards, service hours, and leadership positions back to seventh grade. Yes, you read that right, seventh grade. My daughter had one application which asked for everything going back to seventh grade. While most applications ask for ninth grade forward, this one application allowed her to enter her activities going back to seventh grade. So be prepared!
You will want a column for each sport, each activity, volunteer work (record those hours!), leadership positions, and more. Label each activity, award, leadership position, etc., with grade level. For volunteer work, you will want to list hours by grade level too. The CSU (California State Univ.) app, UC (Univ. of California) app, Common app, and Coalition app all have different ways of asking for this information, so make sure you have everything detailed in your spreadsheet so you can easily enter this information into the application without any confusion.
The college tab will list the colleges your child plans to apply to. You can make columns with the school’s ranking, the major’s ranking, application due date, link to application, whether or not references are needed, does the school require SAT/ACT, and anything else you find you need to record.
I am not going to recommend which schools to apply to, that is a personal decision based on major and which state you live in. You may want to show your child examples of different types of schools. There are two things to look at when deciding which schools to apply to. What size school does your child want? Do they want a large campus such as Arizona State? Would a small school be a better fit for them such as the University of San Francisco? Do they want an urban environment such as UCLA located in Los Angeles? Or would a small college town be a better fit such as Penn State located in State College, PA? Is a public school or private school a better fit or OK budget-wise? Once your child considers these options, start your list of colleges to apply to!
Finances are an important part of the college list. Are you applying for financial aid? Will you be taking out loans? Are you paying cash for college? The worst thing that can happen is that your child applies to their dream school, gets in, and then you realize you cannot pay for it. Make sure the colleges on your child’s list fit within your tuition budget and payment plans. Private schools and out of state tuition can be very expensive. You may want to add a column on your spreadsheet with tuition cost. Another thing to consider is if a school is out of state, how much will travel cost? You will need to consider plane tickets, hotel, ground travel etc. So, factor those hidden costs into your budget when considering out of state schools.
That is all you really need to do to prepare for college application season, which starts in August and runs through January of your child’s senior year. Create a spreadsheet, record activities, leadership, and volunteer hours; and during Junior year, and create a list of colleges. That’s it! It is much easier than it seems, and your child will be organized for college application season! Love that!
Let me know if you have any tips, questions, or both!
Thanks for stopping by and let me know if you have any questions about the college application process. I would be happy to write about it to help you, and anyone else navigating this process.
XOXO
Cathy
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