Colleges Visiting WKHS

Each year college admissions representatives travel to high schools across the nation in order to visit with students interested in attending their schools. Stop for a moment and think about that – the schools are paying someone to come to Kilbourne in order to meet with you and showcase the opportunities available at their college.

While a meeting with a representative cannot replace the actual experience of walking on campus, seeing the people, and experiencing the classes, it can be an important piece of your information gathering process. And, because visiting schools might not be possible until after you have applied to the colleges, this may provide your best view of the school. Possibly even more important, you are expressing your interest and desire to attend their college! The admissions representatives who are traveling to the schools keep track of who they see. Many colleges can go back and tell you exactly how many times a student has come to tour campus, contacted the admissions office, or had an official interaction with a representative of the school. You never really know what can make a difference so if you are able to attend a meeting with a representative, it can only help you.

It is easy to find out what colleges have visits scheduled – simply look at the College Events section on PrepHQ (in the College area) and scroll through the list. (Also, remember, this is one of the reasons that it is important to keep your college list current as you will automatically receive an e-mail alerting you to an upcoming college visit if one of the schools on your list schedules a visit.) If you are looking at the summary page on a college, you will also be able to see there if they have a college event coming up.

If you want to sign up to attend one of the visits, it is simple – all you need to do is click on the button that says, “Sign Up” next to the college event. If you make a mistake or realize that you cannot attend, you can also cancel your visit in the same way. It really couldn’t be any easier. If you are not using PrepHQ (why not?!?) you can also stop into the Counseling and Career Center and look through the list of college visits and sign up for any that interest you that way.

Juniors and Seniors have unlimited opportunities to attend these sessions. Please be reasonable though. If a visit is scheduled during a time when you have class you MUST get your teacher’s approval in advance of attending the information session. You are responsible for all missed work and teachers are not supposed to excuse you from tests, quizzes, or labs. (You can pick up a pass to have your teacher sign in the Counseling and Career Center or you can download one off of PrepHQ in the Shared Files section.)

Sophomores are also invited to attend the sessions with the college representatives, but are limited to participating in the visits during your lunch or Academic Prep/ Probation periods. If you have academic prep, you will need to secure a pass just as the upperclassmen are required.

There are LOTS of colleges that are scheduled to visit WKHS in the coming days and months so please take advantage of this opportunity! (In case you need it - you can link to PrepHQ using the link on the right side of this page.)

Reminder

I realized last night when I posted that I had not been doing very well with my back to school blog posting routine. I promise I will be trying to improve on that. As a reminder, my goal is to post at least 4 of the 7 days each week we are in school. Looking back, some weeks I post more frequently, and some weeks, when things are really crazy (like last week was) I don't get the posts up as I had planned. Thanks for being patient with me though.

An important reminder for anyone considering a change in their schedule for this semester... tomorrow (Monday, August 31st) is the last day to ADD a class to your schedule. (This also means that it is the last day to drop a class if you need to add something else to keep you above the minimum number of classes.) If you have 7 classes (or 6 if you are a senior) then you have 6 weeks to be able to drop a class without having it appear on your transcript. You also have 6 weeks to submit a pass/fail form for any classes that you want to take with that option.

Mixed Emotions

This time of year always seems to have a variety of emotions for me. I am grateful to start another year and see all of you again. I am happy hearing about your summers and what has been happening in your lives. I dread all of the schedule changes. I strongly dislike (well, actually hate would be more accurate) getting up early in the mornings. I am proud of and excited for the students who are heading off to college and I am also (selfishly) a little bit sad to say good-bye as they head on to the new chapters in their lives.

Don't get me wrong, I really am glad that they are moving on to the next phase of their lives, but once college starts, they no longer need their high school counselor. Again, a good thing, but selfishly I miss that connection with the students that I had grown to care about so much. It is always nice to think about the new students starting high school and to wonder about how much they will grow and change over the coming four years. If I am lucky, I will get to enjoy the journey with them... and then in 2013 as they head off to college I will still have these same emotions. It's a cycle that repeats itself every year and so I would think that by now (my 3rd year of saying goodbye to former students) I'd be used to it, but I'm not.

Many of you - students and parents - are facing the same variety of emotions. I know that a lot of the parents who read this blog are sad that their kids are (or will soon be) out of the house and yet also thankful that there will be more food left in the house and less laundry to do each week. :-) For students, some of you are also struggling to deal with the separation from the person you are dating which adds a whole different level of stress to the circumstance.

And, of course, there is the range of emotions that the "now college" students have for themselves - excitement, nervousness, uncertainty, and perhaps even some sadness as they begin this new chapter of their lives and the independence that comes along with it. There are a lot of wonderful websites that are out there with information and tips for students about being successful in college. One of the blogs that I love to follow is called the Professor's Guide and it is from the US News website. I strongly recommend college students add it to their list of blogs to follow as they often feature great tips. For example, two relatively recent posts that I think everyone should read (college or high school student) because they are great tips in general include:

Top Ten Things You'll Discover in College

and

Getting Good Grades in College

Another blog I follow had a great article called Freshman 15: Coping with the First Year of College

I think you will enjoy reading all of their insight and tips! Hope you are having a great weekend!

Let the Fun Begin!

Wow! After being closed out of the building at the end of last week and trying to play catch up to squeeze everything into too few days, I have to admit that I am exhausted... and school hasn't even started yet! :-)

Tomorrow, the real fun begins for all of the freshmen students and those students who are serving as Freshmen Mentors.

One thing that I wanted to alert all of my students to is a slight change in the way you would stop in and see me. As always, you are welcome to stop in and visit anytime that you are not missing a class. With so many students, I am not always available right when you stop by to see me. As in the past, if I am busy, you are welcome to leave a pass and I will come and find you, you can stop back a little while later, or you can wait. The change is that we are asking all students to wait in the front area of the counseling center rather than waiting in the hallway just outside of the counselor doors. This will help protect student confidentiality and limit noise that might disturb those in surrounding offices. I don't think it will be a big deal for anyone to make this adjustment and we posted a bunch of signs to help remind you, but in advance I wanted to thank you for helping to make this new area for waiting work.

Welcome Class of 2013! It will be a fun four years... and believe me, it goes fast!

Local News

Today's Columbus Dispatch features three different stories that I thought might interest you...

The first deals with the culture of cheating.

The second deals with bullying.

And the third is regarding Ohio University's tuition increase.

Happy Reading... :-)

Building Update

Just wanted to provide an update to my previous post... we received word that the building will be closed until Monday morning at 7am for repair and cleaning work due to the fire. Obviously, this means I will not be able to work on any remaining scheduling issues until Monday. Thanks for your patience and understanding. Hopefully the extra time will allow them to get the overwhelming electrical fire smell out of the building!

A Small Fire

This morning when I arrived at school the secretaries were standing outside of the building and informed me that lightening had struck the building sometime in the middle of the night and caused a computer to catch fire. (The fire department responded and prevented it from spreading.)

I actually thought they were kidding because they explained that the power was out in the building and therefore the air conditioning unit (that was finally just turned on yesterday afternoon) was also not working.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a joke and there was a fire that resulted in some damage to one of the business computer classrooms. For safety reasons the building is closed for today while they try to assess the damage and determine the ability to turn on the power to the building. Hopefully things will be back to normal tomorrow, at least down in our office area, but for today, it is an extra afternoon of summer vacation for me. :-) In all sincerity though, please do not try to enter the school building today and know that your phone calls will not go through (as there is no power). Thanks. I will update you if I hear anything else today.