Lets see if I can make it coherent. I've been thinking about launching our kids out in the grown-up world. We've got one in college, one who graduates high school this year and then one who will graduate after 2 more years. My oldest son graduated from home school and didn't go to college right away. He took a year and tried to find a job. He finally was able to get one (through some family connections) and worked at it for a few days, came home and said that he would like to go to college after all. (He did continue to work there the rest of the summer and saved most of the money he made, which helped a lot.) I started looking at Scholarships.com for scholarships based on his interests, music, art and religion. I found a bunch of scholarships to this college in Mississippi that I'd never heard of, applied for them and he got one, a nice big one. It's a private school and his scholarship is not a full ride, so there are expenses. We had to fill out a FAFSA and he's had to use a Pell Grant and some loans. He will have some debt after school, but hopefully not an insurmountable amount. He is planning on working next summer if he can get his old job back temporarily. I kind of discouraged him from working last summer because we hadn't seen him in 5 months and I knew if he was back to working third shift, we wouldn't see him then, either. I typed up his transcript and had it notarized. He had already taken the ACT the year before, so we had his scores sent there. It's very easy to get the testing done. You just sign up at the website, pay and the student has to go to a local high school to take the test.
With our daughter, though she would like to go to the school he's going to, doesn't not particularly want to move to Mississippi, 9 hours away from her parents. She wants to take a course or two this year (we'd better get her started) through either StraighterLine or a local college that offers dual credit for high schoolers. She will probably major in art. She is very artsy. She wants to start college in this gradual manner because she does not want to take the ACT or SAT. Just the thought of testing makes her nervous.
For the youngest, he is not sure what he wants to do. He is hard at work collaborating with his sister on a novel and he kind of would like to make millions from that and then be an entrepreneur, but we'll see I guess. He is somewhat dysgraphic/dyslexic so he may need some help getting through school although he is plenty smart. He may also go to college for engineering because 5 semesters of calculus doesn't scare him. He is really good at math. One of my husband's brothers majored in math and physics and the other is an accountant, so I guess it's not surprising. My daughter is also pretty good at math but my oldest, sadly, is not. I think he's done with math in college though, so that's good.
In our homeschool group, the moms sit and talk about what their kids are going to do and how we can help them accomplish it. One of the homeschool group kids graduated school at 16, started college and now at 19 has an associate degree at a community college and is working on her bachelors, also commuting to a community college and working at night at UPS so that UPS pays part of her tuition.. One of the girls in our group is going to go to a local university and live in the dorms, majoring in special education. One of the boys in our group has talked about joining the air force. A girl from our church has joined the National Guard and now they are paying her college tuition. There are just so many paths to take. I personally got a bachelor's degree in Child Development, then floundered around trying to actually make money in that field, took a correspondence class in medical transcription and have been doing that for 20 years. I may have to reinvent myself, get some more education and try to do something else since being an MT is not paying as well as it used to. Sigh.
My point is, there are a lot of different ways to go about launching into adulthood and self-suffiency.
The article that got me thinking about this is here. http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2013/11/09/parents-overly-involved-college-students-lives/mfYvA5R9IhRpJytEbFpxUP/story.htmlSnowplow parents. I don't think I am a snowplow parent although I did call my son's school a couple of times regarding his gluten free diet. Once to see if they could accommodate it and once to report that he was getting sick and could they take a look at their cross-contamination issues. That's it, I promise. :-P
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