You'd think that the fact that I spent a reasonable number of hours over the last 9 months trying to find an appropriate school for Mr G, and that Mr G graduated 8th grade with a big ceremony and everything, I'd have had time to integrate the fact that he is Going To High School. Like, in a couple of weeks.
Er. No. Not integrated.
He's taller than I am now. He has had a mustache for quite a while. He's 14, and has style, and is trying to take care of his skin (inherited my acne-prone tendency, lucky boy), and is making silver rings (not just wirework anymore, but sterling silver-working including setting stones, the index finger and thumb rings in the picture are his - on his huge not-a-child-anymore hand), and he is eyeballing college programs that have the kind of metalsmith degrees he wants... uh.
Not that I should be surprised, I suppose.
Hmm. High school. That was a pretty mixed experience for me. For epeepunk, not as much - he went to a fantastic Quaker boarding school. Me, I went to the neighborhood school, which had race issues and violence and drugs and administrators who told a friend and I to our faces that they would not report an incident of abuse under a teacher's watch because that teacher was a friend of theirs. Yeah... lovely.
Mr G is not going to that school. As it turns out, he's not going where ep went to school, either. With schools closing to choice in order to pass referendums on capital expenditures (so indistrict residents don't pay to expand a school so kids outside the district can go to that school), some of our options shut down. He didn't get in to the highly competitive private schools (very close with one, and waitlisted on the other but we couldn't hold his enrollment on a 'maybe' answer). Mr G qualified academically for the one remaining open-to-choice public school on our list and (phew!) got in. It was not our parental top pick, but when Mr G visited he liked it best of all of them.
He's going to high school.
What a strange concept.
He's also moving from the top school in the state (has been 1, 2, or 3 in the state for the last 10 years or so, straight through), to a feeder-pattern public school. Even not being a top ranked student or in the top group of classes, he placed into honors or 10th grade classes for everything for which they had such a thing. He's taking computer aided design (CAD) and fundamentals of art as his electives. They have some pretty cool art classes, including sculpture, once he passes the fundamentals classes. Useful for that metalsmithing goal.
I'm glad he landed straight honors classes. It puts him with a good crowd, overall (at least from last year's view into the student body). Now he just has to focus on his college goal all the way through, since the college he wants to go to is globally competitive.
I guess I shouldn't worry or fret, really. He'll learn and grow, regardless. There's more than one right way to get to his goal, just like there is more than one right way to be a parent. It all starts with wanting that outcome, whatever it is. And then watching and learning and tuning as we go, based on the situation as it stands at the time, and the child as he is right in front of us.
I will feel better once the school year starts, I think. I am always the most nervous before the curtain goes up, when waiting in the ER, or before the trip.
Deep breath.
He's a great young man.
He's done a fine job with himself so far.
And we have succeeded in not breaking that yet.
***
Follow-up from the previous post... After the lunchbox incident yesterday that reminded me how much Miss R and I are dissimilar, we had a really good conversation about why I pick things the way I pick them. She listened, and she considered, and then she agreed that if the bag she picks for lunch wears out, she'll pay for the replacement herself. So I'm only out effort to find a new one and not the money. Okay, reasonable trade-off. And it was a logical argument. So much for relying on charm!
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