End of 3rd Quarter

Hooray!  We made it to the end of the 3rd quarter.  We are now 3/4 of the way through the school year which, at least for me, seems unbelievably hard to believe.  I feel like the year was just getting started and the reality is that you are now in the final stretch.  Enjoy the long weekend - you deserve it as I know these last few weeks have felt very stressful for so many of you.

Local Scholarships

Let's face it, college is expensive and (sadly) money doesn't fall from the sky. Many students are trying to investigate options for financing their college education. One great opportunity to help with some of your college costs are local scholarships. These scholarships are great because you are only competing against other WKHS students (for most of them) and, at most, against other students from the general area. These scholarships are all listed on the WKHS Counselor website and I strongly encourage you to take the time to check out all of the scholarships available and read them carefully to determine which ones you might be a good candidate for and therefore want to apply to try to receive.  There are a range of different due dates for the scholarships, but a large number of them are due before spring break.  Please remember that time flies and most of the scholarships have requirements such as essays or recommendation letters so it is important not to procrastinate and to get your applications completed on time.

I have also been receiving lots of questions from seniors related to scholarships.  The reality is that you need to read the details very carefully for what each scholarship is requesting and then give them EXACTLY what they are asking for in the application!  Does it ask for you to use a series of numbers instead of your name on your application and recommendation?  If so, you need to make sure your recommenders know that we have to change your rec letter accordingly.  Does it ask for you to include a resume or a transcript or a copy of your EFC number?  If so, be sure that you include all of those items.  Those are the types of details that make it really easy for scholarship selection committees to eliminate students from the running.  If you didn't care enough to follow their directions, why should they care to give you their money?

Students also have had many questions related to the transcripts that scholarships will often ask for and, again, pay attention to the details they are requesting.  If they want an OFFICIAL transcript, then you need to go through the same process that you used when requesting your transcript for the college application process.  If they are OK with an unofficial copy then you can download one off of Infinite Campus in the reports section.  I will caution some of you that your unofficial copies are not necessarily ideal if you decided to look crazy in your senior photos because your picture is on your unofficial transcript.  So, if this is the case for you, please come and see me so that we can talk about other options.

Good luck working on your scholarships!

See Something Say Something Week

This week is national See Something, Say Something week.  It is a time when, across the country, we are all reminded of the importance of safety at school and in our community.  We all share a responsibility for maintaining the safety of our surroundings.

My hope is that not just this week, but EVERY week, you will recognize any warning signs or threats, take them seriously, and report the concerns to a trusted adult.

Here is a short 1 minute video clip about the imporance of "See/ Say."  Because the reality is that you will see/ say because of those you love and care about. 

Check out the video.  And, as always, if you ever have concerns, please remember that you can always come and share those with me!

Academic Honors Night

Kilbourne is a great place for many different reasons, but ultimately, the primary purpose and goal is to help educate you and to help you learn and grow into the incredible young adults that you are so that you can change our world for the better.  Tonight, we were able to celebrate 401 students who at an Academic Honors ceremony. As a component of the award ceremony, students are presented with gold, silver, and bronze keys in recognition of their achievements in academic excellence.

Gold keys are awarded to students who have earned a cumulative GPA of a 3.5 or higher at the end of 7 full semesters. 33 of "my" students were among tonight's gold key recipients.

Silver keys are awarded to students with at least a 3.5 cumulative GPA at the end of 5 full semesters. 30 of "my" students received silver keys tonight.

Bronze Keys are awarded to students with a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher at the end of 3 full semesters. 32 of "my" students were presented with bronze keys.

Congratulations to each of you for your academic commitment and achievements!

Jobs

There is a famous Confuscious quote, "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life."  I suspect many of you have heard it.  Confuscious is a famous philosopher and far smarter than me, but I have to tell you, I think he got it wrong with this quote.

I absolutely LOVE my job, but I work incredibly hard at it.  In fact, because I love it so much I probably pour even more of my time, energy and effort into what I do each day.  I have a part-time job that I also love.  I can assure you - they both require hard work, time and dedication.  But, they are both incredibly rewarding and meaningful.  My guess is that was probably the point Confuscious was trying to make.  The reality is that as human beings, we can endure almost any circumstance if we feel the end outcome will be worth it.

The reason I am even talking about this though is that I think there are a LOT of high school students (and probably some adults) who struggle trying to figure out what they want to do in life and are constantly searching for the job that they will love so that they don't have to work.  And I believe that is setting you up for failure.  Find a job that you will be good at, that you will feel you can contribute and use your personal gifts and talents to benefit others and pursue it with everything you have inside of you.  But know that there will still be days or at least parts of the job that will most definitely be struggles and feel like hard, demanding work.  Adjusting that expectation can change everything because if you are able to go into the work world with the awareness that you won't love every part of your job and that there will be hard days that you dread (and yes, I can assure you there will be plenty of both), then you will be far less likely to beat yourself up and fall into the mind trap that there must be some other job out there that will be better for you - that you won't feel like work.

There is already so much stress and pressure that you experience as high school students, adding the extra level of stress that you must find the PERFECT job that you love is a pressure you don't need to add.  We have so many career exploration opportunities for you and I want you to do them all, but I also want you to understand that you are far from done learning and growing.  You will find and explore new paths ahead of you and all of it will contribute to you finding your right place in this world.  So try to take the pressure off and enjoy the learning process.

For now, start thinking ahead a little bit.  Seniors, are you interested in participating in Senior Project?  Mrs. Stubenrauch would love to have more of you participate still this year, but you have to get a move on it right away if you are going to be able to get all of the steps completed before the deadlines.  For students in all grades, do you have plans for next Friday or for Spring Break?  Those are great opportunities for you to head out and make college visits, but they are also ideal days to ask a neighbor, friend, or extended family member if you could spend a day shadowing them to learn more about what they do each day.  The summer is also a great time to try to get some experience out shadowing and learning about what some of the job possibilities are that exist in the world today so you can start now thinking about what experiences you might like to observe.  It doesn't matter to me if you are shadowing someone for one day or doing a full senior project experience, but my hope is that you will ask the people you are spending time with what they love about their jobs, what they don't like, and if they feel like they work hard at what they do... because I suspect you will find that in every job there is definitely a LOT of work involved!

Leap Year Day

"I need more time!"

"How can I possibly get all of this done?"

"There isn't enough time to..."

I hear phrases like this all of the time from students and have had times when I have thought them myself.  The reality is that we often get overwhelmed with all of the things we need to do and it can be challenging to juggle our wants with our needs.  It's entirely possible that you wish you had more time because your schedule IS overloaded.  Sometimes we end up procrastinating on getting things done, other times we agree to help with a project when we really don't have the time for it and would have been better off saying no up front, or perhaps you just tend to underestimate the amount of time that a particular task will require.  No matter the cause, this desire for a little more time is common.

And then we reach today.  Leap day.  A day which comes around every four years - an extra day in the calendar.  (And yes, I know, technically it isn't really an extra day and it is to keep us on track with the Earth's rotation and the seasons, but still, in 2020 it is a year where we have 366 days instead of 365, so I like to think that means we have an extra day.)

Today is a gift.  It is an extra day where you can make choices about how you will use your time and what you will accomplish in these extra hours that you have been given.

But really, isn't that every day?!?  Every day is a gift.  Every day we have choices about how we will use our time and what we will accomplish.  We shouldn't waste it.  Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

So for today, that is my focus.  To stay focused on the things I can control - my attitude, my work ethic, my time management, and my outlook.  I don't want to waste the gift of today.  I hope you will embrace the gift of this extra day today and every day as well.

Try to Be Aware

It's easy to forget... sometimes we all get so caught up in our own lives that we forget that not everyone is in the same situation or feel the same way we do. How we talk about colleges is just like everything else in life and we need to approach it with sensitivity and kindness.

What do I mean?

Well, since we returned from winter break, as more and more college admissions decisions have been arriving, I have noticed that students will sometimes start announcing where they were accepted and their feelings on different schools, forgetting that other students are around. Being accepted is wonderful news and it is completely understandable that you want to shout it from the roof-tops when you have been accepted to a school, but it is also important to be sensitive to those around you and to remember that some of your friends and classmates are NOT being accepted into those very same colleges. 

Receiving a college rejection letter is hard enough, but it is even more hurtful to hear someone else proclaim, "Oh, I was accepted to ___ (insert name of college) but I would never actually go there." Particularly if the school mentioned was the one where a student was recently rejected and had been their top choice college. 

This also plays out when people are talking about colleges where they intend to apply.  Students or parents saying things such as "I would never apply to _____."  This is hard because that college is most definitely someone else's favorite school.

Please understand, in no way am I trying to dampen your excitement, but please simply try to be respectful and aware of what you say about schools and how you "rate" your own colleges. Remember, no one school is perfect for every student and every student is not right for every college- it is important to find the right fit and I sincerely believe that every student WILL be able to find the college that is right for them!