Our Girl Scout troop divided and conquered on Thursday morning, with the rest of the troop heading off to tour Harvard, and my own personal Girl Scout and I venturing west by train and subway to visit one of the colleges she's been accepted to:
Their residential campus looks almost exactly like one of the residential areas at my other kid's college. The only difference is the color of the lawn chairs!
I don't *think* this college is still in the running, but it was a top contender at the time we visited, so during our tour I asked ALL the questions and took ALL the photos.
I'm surprised my kid has since agreed to let me come visit another college with her, but come on. I'm not going to leave a question unasked when it comes to my kid's future!
Anyway, here are some of my favorite things. This is a Makerspace open to all students. You KNOW I zoomed in on this photo to check out all their equipment--is that seriously a SERGER in the right corner?!?
Science lab, with plenty of high-end microscopes:
Good-sized dorm rooms, with VERY ample closet space:
I forgot to ask about air-conditioning, but I'm guessing it's a no. My kid has only very recently learned about the dearth of air conditioning in most college dorms, and she. Is. HORRIFIED, bless her heart. She'll have to ask her grandma for the same fancy Woozoo fan that was purchased for her sister for HER air condition-less dorm!
The campus is in a beautiful area, really green and residential for Boston, and I LOVE the idea of going to school in such a big city. Can you imagine all the wholesome and educational adventures one could have?
The kid and I had a lovely wander around, then hopped back on the subway back to downtown Boston:
We had a little more time before we needed to meet up with the rest of the group, so we got ourselves some Dunkin' to eat on Boston Common, then we walked over to Granary Burying Ground, where the kid had agreed to cool her heels and catch up on all her socials so I could take approximately one million gravestone photos.
I now present to you approximately one million gravestone photos!
Happy as a clam with her iced coffee and her phone. Teenagers are so easy to travel with!
Tomorrow, I will pitch a fit because I walked around this little cemetery for an hour and did not realize that Paul Revere is buried here, but on this day I was blithely ignorant that I had not SEEN ALL THE THINGS, so after photographing all the things EXCEPT Paul Revere's grave, back we hopped onto the subway and over to meet the rest of the troop at the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum:
It was a little on the chilly side, but so beautiful out:
The children were universally horrified--and I was THRILLED!--to learn that much of this experience actually consists of a dramatic reenactment with costumed actors (thus allowing the kids with "Find someone dressed like they're part of the Revolutionary War" on their BINGO cards to check it off), role play, and parts for everyone!
There was some big theater kid energy in this recreation of the Old South Meeting House.
We all got our own card telling us about the person we were on this night:
We participated in a dramatic reenactment of the meeting that led to the Boston Tea Party, then took a guided tour of a recreation of one of the ships involved:
Then, we each got to have a turn throwing tea into Boston Harbor!
This is basically the culmination of all my life's hopes and dreams. I was beside myself with happiness:
I'd bribed the kids into this experience by promising them a visit to Abigail's Tea Room afterwards. We got a bottomless teacup for each person so that we could taste all of the authentic teas that were thrown into Boston Harbor!
Most of the kids were troopers about tasting all the strange teas, especially after they figured out that they could cream and sugar it until it tasted like vaguely tea-flavored candy, ahem. And as a bonus activity for the Gamemaker badge, most of them also learned how to play Nine-Men's Morris!
The Harvard group had gone back to the North End for more treats. I am VERY jealous.
Abigail's Tea Room turned out to be a lovely place to hang out, and we ended up lingering until nearly their closing time. If you're in Boston and need a place to rest your feet or get out of the weather, I HIGHLY recommend it! The only bad thing about it is that I drank so much tea that I was very worried about what the rest of our evening would look like, since Boston is not overly populated with bathrooms...
And what did the rest of our evening end up looking like?
It looked like Chinatown!
Many of the kids were SUPER excited about Chinatown, and although we didn't have a plan beyond just, you know, *being* there, I think everyone had just as much fun as they'd hoped they would. There was yet another playground to frolic on, there was a Little Free Library with Chinese-language books to investigate--
--there were little shops and bakeries to pop into and out of as one desired--
--and to my immense joy I FINALLY bought my very first mochi doughnuts!!!!
We ended the evening at a restaurant that fit all ten of us at a huge round table with an equally huge lazy Susan in the middle so we could easily share around our various dishes:
It was SO delicious, and by the time it was over I was stuffed!
Fortunately, we had a nice, long walk back to South Station to aid digestion, then a long, long bus ride back to Chelsea Station, then another little walk back to our hotel, so that by the time we finally got into our room and I'd changed into my jammies and found a hockey game on, I decided that maybe I had just enough room for a taste of my mochi doughnuts:
I wish *I* lived someplace where you could buy mochi doughnuts, because they were DELICIOUS!
P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
The Class is written with such compassion and gentleness when it comes to the stories that it tells about the central protagonists, the real children involved in one specific science class in the wealthy, high-class community of Greenwich Connecticut. Tesoriero clearly spent quality time with these kids, and was likable and trustworthy enough to be invited to their promposals and told all the fun little details about their daily lives that, in turn, give her writing life. Her tone when telling their stories is comfortable, a bit gossipy (but in a nice way), but always, always kind and respectful. It would be so easy to typecast a kid as a “character” in her book, so easy to lampoon a kid’s silliness or naivete for laughs, but this never happens. Instead, Tesoriero uses small details that she’s witnessed about the kids’ interactions to illustrate their personalities in a way that feels completely natural and true, and I love how thoughtful and careful she is.
Here's an interview with Tesoriero in which she gives an excellent overview of her book. It's a little long, but you get all the main points and some of the more interesting little details that brought the book to life for me:
The novelty of Tesoriero’s topic is what makes me sad. Tesoriero writes about a unicorn of a science class: an exceptional, privileged teacher of exceptional, privileged children who attend an exceptional, privileged school in an exceptional, privileged town located in an exceptional, privileged part of the country. I haven't looked up how their school district is funded, but if it's property taxes as is usual, they should have plenty of money. Even so, one of the premises of the science class is that the teacher, Bramante, has the skills and the connections to stock the classroom with professional-quality, niche lab equipment that would be otherwise out of the reach of even the most well-funded school, so again, other than in this unicorn situation with this unicorn teacher, wealth is a barrier to recreating this exceptional classroom and these exceptional results.
I'm interested in education philosophies as they connect with education access, and in my amateur research, whether you want the crunchiest, earthiest education or the STEM-iest, most academically rigorous education for your kids, the kicker is ALWAYS money. Here's a short video talking about Montessori and Waldorf and the issue of money to show that these exceptional experiences, wherever they lie on the spectrum, are ALWAYS expensive (and in my short time in the Montessori system, I can tell you that all the other parents but me were R.I.C.H.):
In The Class, the children’s level of achievement is exceptional mostly because of their privilege, and while Tesoriero does acknowledge this privilege, as do most of the children, she completely leaves alone issues of equity, or how on earth this kind of program could ever possibly be reproduced in other schools, or what it says about the overall environment of public education in America. That’s likely because this particular scenario is clearly inequitable, can’t be reproduced in most other schools, and has only dismal things to say about the ways that public school education is, overall, failing the majority of America’s children. All of that is deliberately not the scope of this book, but the book’s very existence begs those questions.
It was interesting, then, to see the small inequities that DO plague the lives of these exceptional, privileged children. Kids who should have won specific science fairs don’t win them. Kids who do win are cyberbullied. One kid, who is clearly THE most exceptional kid, is denied admission to Harvard, but another kid, depicted as entitled and wasteful of some of his many opportunities (but still exceptional! Because privilege!), but also described as wealthy, with parents who are both Harvard alumni and active donors to Harvard, is offered early acceptance. But even though I might want to mock the pettiness of any slight in the shadow of such overall overwhelming opportunity, it’s impossible to, because Tesoriero treats these setbacks with respect; these are children, their setbacks are real to them (if so out-of-scale as to be wildly unreal to me, ahem), and these are the life lessons they’re learning.
But seriously, though--don’t worry about the kid who didn’t get into Harvard; he got into TONS of other schools, and ended up turning down a $267,000 scholarship to Duke, one that would have included room and board and study-abroad, to attend Stanford. As a parent who’s currently got a range of side hustles going on to try to cash-flow as much of my own kid’s college tuition as possible so she can graduate as debt-free as possible, it’s a big challenge for me not to put my petty hat on for that scenario.
I’ll be a little more petty about the kid who worked out a deal with the high school to basically allow him to test out of all of his classes for his final two years while he lived across the country in an apartment his parents rented for him and worked on his multi-million dollar invention. The super fancy international science fair thing he got invited to disrespected him, I guess(?), so he just didn’t go, and then they asked his mom for $600 to reimburse them for what they’d spent on his no-showness. THEN the bougie high school that had been essentially not making him go there for the last two years threatened to withhold his diploma because he didn’t take the wellness class he said he’d take, and OMG, would Yale withdraw their acceptance if he didn’t have his high school diploma? Nvm, they sent his diploma to him anyway.
Just… you know, in my house, the most recent money/attendance blow-up with my own teenager involved her getting called into her part-time job on a night that she had ballet class, and I was pissed because I had to ask the ballet program if she could make up the class on another night rather than simply skip it, and they were weird about it but nevertheless, I persisted, because I paid fifteen dollars for that stinking class and fifteen dollars is FIFTEEN DOLLARS!
The Easter care package is candy-forward, because I know what my kid likes best about Easter!
I have a whole system in place to distract myself from how much I miss my college kid. One night a week, we play Stardew Valley together and call each other on speakerphone so we can talk while we play. One night a week, we use the Hulu Watch Party to watch a couple of episodes of Schitt's Creek together while we gossip in the chat box. One night a week, the whole family Zooms. Once a month, I send her a letter. And once a month, I send her a care package!
I don't do the cute themey care packages that I've seen some parents do, because my kid and I would both think they were corny, but I've been surprised at how much fun it is just to assemble lots of little bits and bobs that I think my kid would like, then write her a little note and send it off!
It is a constant struggle, though, to remind myself that my kid is a minimalist, and doesn't want any crap that will have to just sit around. If my kid's preferences aren't enough, I also can remind myself of how miserable it was to load the car with all her stuff for college, drive it all there, drag it all into her dorm, and help her unpack it. We'll be doing the same thing in reverse when she moves out (or at least Matt will, because love my college kid as I do, I am going to do EVERYTHING in my power to get out of being the one who goes to pick her up and bring her home at the end of the year!), so I'm very wary of sending her stuff that I'm just going to have to drive back home in a few months. I've been keeping my care packages small on purpose, and sending a lot of snacks, small items that won't take up a lot of room in her luggage, and travel-sized stuff that she can easily use up.
I've been keeping an eye on sales and Clearance racks, and squirreling away care package items as I come upon them. I also sometimes break up multi-packs, and put, say, just a couple of protein bars or pudding cups or hair ties in each care package instead of giving her twelve at once.
SNACKS, CONDIMENTS, AND INSTANT MEALS
I thought the food at my kid's college was going to be AWESOME, because they fed us two meals when we were there for her Admitted Students Day visit, including one meal in the student cafeteria with the current students, and everything was absolutely delicious! But apparently the food they serve when guests are present is a lie, the poor kid, and mostly the meals are bland and repetitive.
And this is a kid who is certainly not accustomed to eating lovely prepared gourmet meals at home, so it MUST be bad!
Her cafeteria is also a short walk from her dorm, and it doesn't sell snacks, so there's plenty of room for care package treats that are quick and easy meals that she can make in the comfort of her own dorm, or make good study snacks, or add a bit of welcome flavor to the typical cafeteria fare. Here are some ideas:
candy
dried fruit
fruit cups
Goldfish crackers
granola bars
homemade treats. I bought some small disposable aluminum loaf pans that are perfect for baking mini loaves of banana and pumpkin bread in, or Matt or I will bake her a batch of one of her favorite kinds of cookie.
Her favorite Russian Tea Cookies are a Matt specialty, fortunately, so I didn't have to do any work!
hot sauce
instant hot chocolate
instant noodle cups. She's got a tea kettle, and everyone loves instant noodles!
instant oatmeal packets
juice boxes/pouches. My kid and I have butted heads her entire life over my reluctance to buy her juice (I maintain that it's literally just nutrient-free sugar water, and she maintains that it's delicious), so putting a couple of juices in a care package is how I let her know I'm spoiling her!
lemon juice. She specifically requested this for flavoring the school water. She keeps it in her roommate's mini fridge.
lunchbox-sized foods. You can get most snack foods in single-serving multi-packs. If you buy a few when they're on sale, you can put a small assortment in every care package.
microwave popcorn.
nuts
peanut butter squeeze pouches and crackers
protein bars
Actual footage of me texting my kid at the grocery store to ask her again what her favorite flavors of Luna bars are.
It's these!!!
pudding cups
tea bags.
trail mix.
vitamins
CLEANING SUPPLIES AND TOILETRIES
There's a drugstore in walking distance from campus, but if my kid mentions that she's out of something and I'm about to mail her a care package, I'll toss in whatever she needs. I mean, I'm watching the sales on our regular products, anyway, so I might as well just buy it when it's cheap and squirrel it away for when she wants it! If I'm giving her something different, I'll make it a travel size so she won't be bummed to give it away if she doesn't like it... and so we won't have to lug it home in a few months!
Lysol. I really like this tiny spray bottle. It's stupid expensive per ounce compared to the full-sized can, but you probably don't want to carry a full-sized can around in your backpack!
menstruation supplies
mouthwash
Plan B. The expiration date on these is very good, so it's okay to just have it on hand.
shampoo/conditioner
spray cleaner
sunscreen
tissues
toothpaste
wet wipes
CLOTHING AND ACCESSORIES
My kid HATES clothes. She hates shopping for them, she hates trying them on, she hates wearing most of them, and she hates owning more than she thinks she "needs," which is never, by the way, as many items as she actually needs. Also considering the fact that if you don't own many clothes, the clothes you do own get worn out a LOT faster than if you have a larger wardrobe, and I feel like most of my time as my kid's parent has been spent secretly throwing away raggedy articles of clothing when she's not looking, wheedling her into trying on something that absolutely has to be tried on but she doesn't want to, or begging her to accept some item that she desperately needs but refuses to replace.
She went through winter in the Midwest with a coat with a broken zipper. Was I allowed to buy her a new coat? No. Instead, she asked if I would send her a pair of pliers to work the zipper with. SIGH!
So I haven't sent my own kid most of the items on this list. I can occasionally get away with sending her something I scored at Goodwill that relates to a fandom she likes, or something warm and cozy (not new-coat cozy, but, like, wool socks cozy):
hat/gloves/mittens. Warm hats are super easy to sew, and an especially cute one would be a fun addition to a winter care package.
holiday accessories
hoodie/sweatshirt/sweater
jammy pants
slippers
socks
T-shirts
underwear and bras
workout clothes
STUDY, RECREATION, AND DORM LIFE SUPPLIES
My college kid is pretty independent by choice, but all the kids there seem so affable that it's not uncommon to get pulled into a group activity or casual hang-out. She also really likes her solo zen time, though, with a quiet activity and a podcast.
adult coloring books
Amazon gift card
books. When I'm thrifting, I keep an eye out for something my kid will like. Because it's dirt cheap, she can read it and then leave it in her dorm lobby for someone else to take.
deck of cards
decorations/photos. My kid has a digital photo frame that I keep stocked with cute photos mostly of the pets, but if I'm getting photos printed for whatever reason, I'll include a couple of cute shots of Luna and then send them in the next care package.
DVD player. I ended up buying a CD/DVD player that hooks up to her computer and having it shipped to her. She never plays DVDs for fun, but it turned out that her French textbook had an interactive DVD with it and she needed a player ASAP.
earbuds
fidgets
gel pens
handmade something-or-other. So far, I've made and sent a mini notebook, a pencil case, some scrunchies, and a mini Valentine garland in her school colors.
highlighters
journal/sketchbook
notecards and stamps
pencils/pens
post-it notes
puzzle books
small craft/DIY kits. My kid really likes latch hook, and I've been trying to get her into embroidery.
small games. My kid LOVES Timeline, which is fortunately quite compact. Cards Against Humanity is also pretty low-profile. Both games have lots of expansion packs in case she and her dorm mates get super into them.
STEAM gift card
stuff to share with roommate and dorm residents. I sometimes send my kid double of a treat so she can share with her roommate. Or you can send a bulk bag of candy to leave out for everyone in the dorm kitchen or lobby.
stuffed animal. My college kid makes an exception in her minimalist lifestyle for stuffies. She wouldn't want a lot of stuff on her bed, but something super tiny would still be perfectly snuggable.
One thing that I have NOT figured out is how to make mailing these care packages less expensive!!! Her Easter care package contained her bunny onesie from home, a bunch of candy, some homemade cookies, a letter, and an enamel pin, and it cost over thirteen dollars to mail. Add anything heavier, like a book or a game or, god forbid, a full-size bottle of shampoo, and I'm looking at closer to twenty dollars. If I start with a box small enough that I'm confident I can mail it for less than ten bucks, it won't fit enough items for it to feel like a proper care package to me. To be honest, it would probably be cheaper just to buy her stuff off of Amazon and have it shipped directly to her, but that doesn't feel like a proper care package, either!
So if you've got tips for mailing care packages more cheaply. let. Me. KNOW!!!
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