Category Archives: Home & Family

Our family went to college night at Sacred Heart school in Atherton
yesterday. Parents and soon-to-be-college-applicants from local
high schools met with about 100 college admissions representatives
from schools all over the USA (and a few from outside). Our
daughter Jessica is a Junior in High School at
Harker in Saratoga and is
deep into considerations of where she
will apply next year.

During the first hour, the hundreds of parents and students were batched into groups to work with college admissions staff on
a sorting exercise.
Each group had to decide about three applicants (Mike, Emily, Lucy)
as to whether to accept, waitlist, or deny their application to a
fictional college. We reviewed their transcripts, test scores, letters
of recommendation, and personal backgrounds. It was an interesting way
to teach everyone the vocabulary and point of view of college admissions.
Our group voted to admit Lucy, waitlist Mike, and deny Emily but it was
a close race between Lucy and Mike. At the end, one of our two
college admissions staff said she was there for Mills in Oakland (a
women’s college) so for her Mike just wasn’t qualified!

Since I run SEED mentoring program admissions on much the same lines
as college admissions, it was fascinating to see how their systems
worked. I might do some informal benchmarking with the schools my
daughter applies to next year.

When we were done with the exercise, everyone went to the gym to talk
with the admissions staff. Jessica is currently interested in about
ten schools, not all of which sent reps to this event. For the schools in our sights, key questions were about their music
program, their international studies program, and whether they had
a women’s wrestling team. Sadly, no one admitted to having a
women’s wrestling team. Some had music programs in theory only, not
performance (University of Chicago dropped of the list with that
answer), some offered international studies but not as a major
(for example, Wesleyan University offers only a certificate). George
Washington University offers a “Presidential Arts Program in
Theatre, Dance, Music, and Fine Arts” which looked very interesting.

We filled in lots of “send me more info” postcards and collected
heaps of brochures and catalogues for further study. We have our
summer’s work cut out for us!

My Father is having his 80th birthday in six months so my brothers
and I have been negotiating with our parents for several weeks on how
to celebrate. After
much discussion, we have settled on renting two houses at
Sea Ranch near Mendocino on
California’s northern coast for a long weekend. Other options were:
Lake Tahoe, Provence (France), Yosemite, Mexico, or Monterey Bay.

For his 70th birthday, the whole family rented a cabin at Fallen Leaf lake,
near Lake Tahoe. For my Mother’s 70th birthday, we all dressed up in
evening gowns and tuxedos and took a night dome car ride on the

Napa Valley Wine Train. Everyone ends up having a good time at these
events but the advance negotiations require time and diplomacy.

My two brothers and I have worked out that the best way of handling family
negotiations is a brief three-way conference call. It cuts out most of
the noise and confusion of playing the
telephone game.
That is, a series of phone calls during which everyone makes small unspoken
decisions and assumptions which result in general misdirection and irritation.

Everyone has agreed that my husband John is going to be the
cook (no contest there!). Now, all we have to do is figure out which
families will bunk together in which house. We have six months to work this
out. I hope that is time enough!

My daughter Jessica participated in “JV” league wrestling finals last night.
Harker
has a mixed boy and girl folk-style wrestling team, as do most of the Bay
Area High Schools in the Santa Clara
Valley Athletic League (SCVAL). Wrestling, unlike most sports, does
not segregate on gender or public/private school lines.

The Junior Varsity wrestling season is now over
(although Varsity continues for two more weeks). Jessi lost her
first two matches but won her final fight, ending this year well.
Her elbow and toe hurt and she is blooming with little bruises but
she is happy with her performance.

To celebrate Jessi no longer having to keep her weight within 2 pounds
of her weight class target, we went out to dinner last night and she ate
pizza and two desserts. We celebrated at Mio Vicino on Lincoln Avenue in
Willow Glen which has an amazing apple and raisin bread pudding and
good chocolate cake. We even bought Jessica a bunch of purple roses from
the little Grandma who walks around the restaurant with a bucket of
flowers to sell.

Jessi is now furthering her celebrations by cooking German apple pancakes
and date raisin bread for Saturday breakfast. The entire family is very
appreciative that she relaxes by learning to bake something new. Jessi
is the only kid I know who carries

Baking Illustrated around with her for light reading.

My son Paul is sleeping in. The celebration last night was for him too
since he was awarded
Jordan’s “Student of the Month” again. As soon as Paul is out of bed
and we have devoured Jessi’s latest kitchen experiments, we start to take
out our swimming pool. We will reuse the deck boards on the caboose so we
need to take them out carefully.

My daughter Jessi is about half way through her Junior year in High School
so we are deeply into college considerations. She is studying for her

SAT or college board exams (to be in April and May).
She is all signed up for her Senior classes
(after much debate between the relative merits of Honors and Advanced
Placement), she is meeting weekly with a college counsellor, and we are
scheduling school visits. She will go on the
Harker tour of East Coast USA schools next month, plus we are figuring
out dates to visit local schools like U.C. Berkeley, Stanford, and Santa Clara
University.

Jessi has won her last three wrestling matches at the JV (Junior Varsity) level
so we hope she will be on the Varsity team next year. The last match of the
season is this Friday. We are in great discussions over how she will spend
her last High School summer. We are considering the relative merits of
an intense Spanish Immersion program versus an internship versus cooking school
versus going back to Westminster
Choir College.
My daughter of the many interests!

I am in meetings all day today with potential SEED mentoring
program participants as well as with site managers and executives.
Tomorrow, John and I get to do some sightseeing around St. Petersburg.

Last night, we went to a very good Russian style dinner at Senat
Restaurant. When the driver
took us home, we saw the Neva river sending up huge sheets of steam
into the frozen air. We also went by the heroic bronze statue
of Peter the Great on horseback. He does not have any spotlights on
him so the big wedge-shaped white rock he is riding up looms out of the
dark. We drove by the statue of
Catherine the Great standing tall on her pedestal in the middle of
the park in front of her palace.

It is a very strange
feeling to have the inside of my nose freeze as soon as
I step out of a car. Everyone walks very fast on the street and
they wrap up in coats and furs and scarves so only their noses
show. Monday, we fly to Tel Aviv where it will be at least 20 degrees
warmer.