[QUOTE=Dangerosa]
BTW, I have a question about the involuntarily on the five year degree path. Are you taking five years worth of college PLUS the year off for Europe - to total six years between high school and a B.A., or are you counting the year in Europe - in which case how is this involuntary? And you are a sophmore - which gives you at least two years after this - with no guarentees of not having the “senior surprise” of scheduling issues keeping you around an extra semester.
Because if my kids took five years to finish school, and in the middle of their five years, took a year off, I’d be pretty pissy about the whole thing. Eventually, you have to start living a grown up life, and it sounds like - one way or the other - you are putting yours off - and I’m suspecting by two years. You think not moving home is the “grown up” thing - your parents think you’ve already pissed away two extra years - for which they are footing at least part of the bill - and for which you aren’t doing them the courtesy of coming home for the summer. It occurs to me that your parents may have thought they signed on four years ago to be done now, and you are only halfway finished - with, from their point of view, no guarentees on future delays.
If that is what is going on, the compromise may be “stay in Santa Fe, but take a half load of courses while working full time.”
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(Sorry it took me so long to get back to this)
The five years are including the year in Europe: four years of classes plus the year off. The year off happened because, very long story short, I go to an odd school where A) all classes are mandatory (no electives), B) all classes are seminar-style, all discussion, no lectures, and C) I had some emotional/anxiety issues that were keeping me from really participating. So I essentially got kicked out and told I could try again in a year or two if I got my head straightened out. So I moved home for a couple of months and went back into therapy again. The Europe thing happened mostly because it was something I’d originally wanted to do before college, but didn’t mostly because I was way to scared to do so, and even buying that plane ticket on my own was a huge step for me in terms of “getting the hell over things that I’m irrationally anxious about”).
I know that there will be no “senior surprise” extension because of the above point about my school being all-mandatory. You enroll as a freshmen, you take these classes freshman year, these sophomore year, and so on. There’s no choice in it, so I can’t screw up in terms of not getting credits I need. Additionally, there are no summer classes. (If you want a slightly better explanation, click).
However - I had a long talk with my parents this weekend. We seem to have worked some things out - I guess neither of us had really seen where the other was coming from, and we got a bit of that straightened out. They’re still not thrilled with the idea (I’ve yet to get them to stop thinking of me as their “little girl”). But if nothing else, my dad said: “Well, both your mother and I also went to school far away, and we both really moved out of our parent’s houses around sophomore year, with financial help from our parents, so…I guess I do understand what you’re saying.”
So it looks like they’ll be willing to help, under two conditions: They can come and visit me at some point (which I’m absolutely fine with), and I use some of my vacation time to go visit my sister in California (which is a whole other issue that I won’t go into, but will probably be able to sneak out of.)
