Link love

Why aren’t you moving to Minnesota?

I Was Wrong About ChatGPT and AI (Part 1 of 3)

Something inherently funny about the phrase "Disney regrets that it has come to this" https://t.co/usdFEkpNlj pic.twitter.com/uqZCKc0ale

— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) April 26, 2023

Ask the grumpies: Are you on goodreads?

Therese asks:

I am just wondering if you guys are on Goodreads?

We are not!

#1 is on LibraryThing under her full IRL identity.

#2 has a LibraryThing account, also under her full IRL identity, but hasn’t added anything to it in YEARS.  She’s not sure if she remembers enough information to login, though surely there’s an email somewhere with her user name.  She does have the cuecat though which is really cool for adding paper books.  This is weird because #2 is usually really into sorting/organizing/cataloguing, but for some reason putting things into librarything isn’t something she’s wanted to do.  A lot of that is probably because so much of what she reads is from the library and not actually owned.

So, the best way to get book recommendations from us is to read the books tag in this blog.

RBOC

• There’s a new spindrift flavor called nohjito that is mint and lime and it is SO GOOD.
• One of DC1’s teachers sent an email to all hir students complaining about red and blue pens being stolen and students must bring in their own, so I sent hir 48 of each.  Only $30!  It is nice being rich.  (Also I have a different last name than DC1 so no embarrassment for hir.)
• Oddly no DC2 school requests for additional Kleenex this spring, at least not yet.  There’s a really bad cold going around but maybe it’s keeping people home?
• I’m usually a pretty pragmatic parent, but I’m bummed I can’t go to see DC1 off (they do it on a weekday in September and I can’t miss class and DC2 can’t miss school).  DH will be going and I guess they will be flying.  There’s no logical reason for this— a second parent won’t be useful, I can do tearful goodbyes just as easily from home, the parent activities are there to keep parents out of kids’ hair not for any real purpose (except financial aid sessions that don’t apply to us).  They even “symbolically seat” the parents apart from their kids at the combined events.  But there is a little part of me that’s sentimental and is sad about it.  DH promises to take pictures.
• Last spring/summer I seemed to develop some kind of lactose intolerance.  So I stopped eating soft cheeses and ice cream (even in Europe– this was a hardship, but also I didn’t want indigestion!)  Then I got Covid, and when I got back to full health, I seemed to have no problem with any milk products.  The problems seem to be back.  So I guess I will back off of lactose again.  This is irritating because cheese in sandwich form or on top of crackers makes a good last-minute lunch when we’re out of other things.
• Speaking of intolerances, my allergies are INSANE this year.  I think it’s because they’re using the wood chips that they usually use on the coasts instead of whatever woodchips they usually use around here.  I don’t know what the difference is, but my eyes turn red and itchy and start dripping along with my nose if I’m not anti-histamined up.  Zyrtec is my best friend.
• This Science Friday suggests I should not cold-turkey dairy but rather do the opposite and binge on it for a week.
• For people who don’t understand why referee reports in economics usually start with a summary paragraph… right now I’m responding to an R&R in an interdisciplinary journal (that is a field journal for econ, but it’s clear we got non-econ reviewers) and I think that one reviewer and the editor think we did a study design that we didn’t do, but that would be a heck of a lot clearer if they had provided summary paragraphs.
• I need to remember to try magnesium when I’m feeling fatigued.  I already know I need vitamin D (that, in fact, is doctor ordered).  Vitamin B complex and Vitamin B-12 in particular seem to help pep me up as well, and I often remember those when I’m flagging, even though blood tests have not suggested I’m deficient.  I have been taking a multi-vitamin (doctors orders at the last appointment), but sometimes the thought of a centrum causes revulsion so I take a children’s chewable and that just doesn’t do much.  (Usually centrum is ok, though their women’s mini gives me a horrible stomach ache, sometimes I take Rainbow One pre-natal, but that can also cause revulsion sometimes.)  All of my problems (the newly discovered large amounts of white hair, chipping fingernails, fatigue, etc. but also my insulin resistance/PCOS more generally) seem to be linked somehow to Vit D or Vit B-complex or Magnesium or Potassium deficiencies, but I wish I had better control of when which vitamin supplements would help, and even more I wish I knew WHY.  Like, I eat a pretty healthy diet– how is it I’m deficient?  Or is it all psychosomatic?

I miss haircutting artists

This post was started in 2012, but it’s still true!

Back in graduate school, thanks to a curly-haired friend who used a forum on a website then called naturally curly (which seems to have since been bought out) to find amazing hair-cutting people.  These people were amazing, even though my hair isn’t particularly curly (it does get a wave when it’s shorter, but it hides when my hair is longer).  I could just say, I’d like something shorter and easy to take care of that will grow out fine and doesn’t make my face look fat, and they would give me a new and different haircut each time.  It was always really sad when they would disappear (generally moving out of the city someplace cheaper to live).

One day in grad school when I was between stylists, I was sitting in the open and a woman came up to me and said I needed a haircut and she was training to be a haircut person at a fancy salon and my face was perfect for the cut she was learning and did I want a free haircut.  And I did, and she was right and I looked great in the bob she was learning, and then in the graduated bob she mastered a few months later.  She told me if I was every stuck someplace without someone who knew what they were doing, I should ask for a graduated bob since it’s a basic cut people learned.

And so I moved here, and people at the salon would want more instructions than what I gave, or they’d just do a straight cut at the bottom, so I’d ask for a bob or a graduated bob and I would get it and then I’d be bored of that cut, which the NYTimes would eventually derisively label “the mom cut” precisely because it is easy to take care of and grows out.

On my first foray out into a professional salon since the pandemic started, I ended up with a straight cut at the bottom, though I guess completely straight isn’t in as the last step was to feather the bottom.  (Also 2/3 of my hair (the bottom 2/3) is now completely white.  That was not true 4 years ago.  I feel like Obama post-presidency.)

I miss hair artists who look at your face and find a cut that’s a match for your face.  I miss professionals who tell you what they’re doing and why.  And who tell me things about my own hair, like my natural wave or how I have surprising amount of very thin hair or where the part is.  Like the good phlebotomists who always start with a tourniquet and have a stress ball handy, the best hair professionals usually start by figuring out my part rather than asking me.

Anyhow, this is just to say I miss having people cut my hair who think of it as an art and a science rather than just a job, and who look at my lack of direction about the specific cut as an opportunity to experiment rather than an annoyance.

How do you find someone to cut your hair?  What kind of instructions do you give them?

Link Love

A bunch of well respected, smart reporters were complete dupes for these people and helped sell their agenda to the mainstream. It's not polite to say it, and I'm honestly sorry it's true, but it absolutely is. https://t.co/kAZLE7IsKA

— Assigned Media (Evan Urquhart) (@assignedmedia) April 16, 2023

Did the NYT Plan Another Anti-Trans Skewed Article?  The answer may not surprise you.

Paired actions/donations:  Is your state legislature in session?  Call up your state senator/rep and tell them you want to support trans people and block any bills attacking trans people.  Have more money than ability to talk on the phone?  Support this Las Vegas classroom or this Louisiana classroom.

Meet the group fighting abortion misinformation one reddit post at a time. You can donate to them here.

Tennessee lawmakers want to send publishers to prison if their books show up in states that are banning books from K-12 schools.  You can sign that site’s petition (though I suspect you’ll just get put on a mailing list if you do), but it would be more effective to send an email to your school-board telling them you’re against book banning.  Donate to the Brooklyn Public Library which is still providing free library cards to out of state students despite huge funding cuts.  Let your public library know that you’re happy that they’re resisting book banning and you appreciate their work.  Or donate to the Louisiana classroom above for a donors choose in a state that hasn’t had everything banned yet, but could in the future.

The Missouri Attorney general has opened up a "reporting" form to report on gender affirming care providers in the state. Given that he's seeking to effectively ban care in the state for all trans people, let him know your concern. You know what to do. https://t.co/zhMlvNjLsU pic.twitter.com/oERZk4RxzB

— Alejandra Caraballo 🏳️‍⚧️🇵🇷 (@Esqueer_) April 18, 2023

I think the action item on the above is pretty obvious.  Here’s a list of Missouri zipcodes, also the MO wasn’t in the state list alphabetically when I looked but it is in there.

The Texas Senate has voted to end tenure.  It still needs to go to the house.  If you’re in Texas, call your house member and tell them you’re worried about the good professors leaving and your kids not being able to get a good education in TX.  If you’re one of our academics, tell them you know that we will have to pay WAY more to attract professors if we can’t offer them tenure.

Netflix is ending their DVD service in Sept.  I guess we will now pay individual streaming costs for things we want to watch?  It was nice having the dvds because there were still things you could get on dvd that you couldn’t get without purchasing a full streaming service, which we’re not going to do.  And we just weren’t going to pay $3.99 to stream a few episodes of a cartoon series.  But I guess those are our options now, and we just won’t be watching as much variety.  (By we, I mean DH and DC2, since DC1 is too busy with school and I’m more of a youtube watcher myself.)

Ask the grumpies: Advice for people applying to college 2023-2024?

CG asks:

When DC1 has completed hir college admissions journey, I’d love to read a sort of wrap-up post of your major takeaways and lessons learned from the process. DH and my knowledge of what one should do when applying to college is literally from a different century. We each applied to three or four colleges, got into some (in my case) or all (in his case), picked one, and went. I did an east coast college tour with my mom (probably fall of senior year, but I’m not sure) and got into one of the schools I visited but not the other. I did a visit to a particular department at another school in the Midwest but then applied to a different program and they told my mom later that they didn’t view my earlier visit as demonstrated interest (which I hadn’t realized). I didn’t get into that school. DH thinks he may have only done a visit to the Ivy he eventually went to after he was admitted, but can’t remember. I suspect my essays were all a painful combination of generic and earnest, but I can’t remember a thing about any of them. I don’t even remember writing them.

Anyway, we have no clue how we should be advising our oldest and all his friends are oldest kids, too, so no one knows what they’re doing. I’d also be very interested in your experience with the essay person or if you know people who have hired consultants. On one level that seems insane to me, but given our lack of knowledge (see above) maybe it would be a good idea and take some of the stress out of it.

From my understanding there’s also a big Covid blip that will hopefully have finished once DC2 is up. I think we’re in a transitional period right now both because of kids who took gap years starting college and the test-optional thing being pretty universal at this point.

Things may be completely different again in 5 years!

During the process, I was maybe regretting a bit that I didn’t ask my friend at Harvard for contact info for the consultant her kid used last year. But also that seemed anathema to my values. The outschool person literally just helped DC1 brainstorm and pointed out areas that needed work and provided info on how to improve general things like transitions and answered specific a/b questions DC1 had. It felt very ethical. DC1’s supplemental optional essays for Macalester and Carleton were written completely without a consultant (DC1 did ask whether to add filler to the Macalester supplement or if it was ok if it was shorter than the word limit, and the consultant said shorter without filler was fine for an optional essay), and DC1 got rejected or waitlisted from the places she did edit the supplements.  But I don’t think that’s her fault– DC1 just got dramatically better at writing these essays with practice and the Macalester and Carleton supplements were among the last few DC1 wrote.  I think the consultant’s main helpfulness wasn’t in each specific essay, but in the brainstorming and thinking about HOW to write a college essay.  So honestly, if you’re going to go with Outschool I’d recommend hiring her over the summer for one of her how to write an essay classes, which we didn’t do, but would have been a good idea.

Now that everything is done, it’s easy to remember that each kid only needs to get into one school they want to go to and can afford.  But it’s hard to remember that when the rejections and waitlists start piling up, especially if you’re not sure if there will be any acceptances.  Our outcome without a consultant was great, so no regrets, but if the outcome had been different we might have had regrets.  I just don’t know enough about college consultants to be able to say whether they’re worth the money or how to find one that is.

It has gotten increasingly difficult to get into elite schools.  Much more so than it was when DH and I were applying to colleges.

I talked to a kid who had gotten into Stanford from a Posh school in San Francisco.  He wanted to be an economics major, but his school-provided college counselor told him not to say that and to instead pretend he was interested in something like 16th century French (which he did have evidence of an interest in).  It worked and now he’s a sophomore economics major with a romance studies minor (details changed because I don’t remember exactly what he said, but some kind of historical humanities thing).  Here’s a related post on how to get into Stanford from the applyingtocollege reddit.

Things I knew already:

1. Having proof that you’ve done extra-curriculars (ECs) is important.  Competitions, views, etc. etc. etc.  These really do matter to demonstrate your “spike.”  Does DC1 regret not doing these?  Well, the outcome was good, so maybe no regrets?  Maybe Harvey Mudd or Pomona would have happened with more or better ECs, but maybe not.
2. It’s important for your rec letter writers to think you’re great.  DC1’s science writer barely knew hir and after eliminating the fascist English teachers and racist History teacher and crazy Spanish teachers and the amazing US History teacher who passed away during Covid and the pretty cool freshman Spanish teacher that left the district, all that was left for humanities was the psychology teacher who didn’t answer DC1’s emails and didn’t seem that thrilled to be writing.  (Personally I would have gone with one of the crazy Spanish teachers because the most recent wanted DC1 to take Spanish V but it wouldn’t fit into hir schedule.)  The Chemistry letter is fine, but who knows what is in the Psychology letter.  Update:  Can’t have been terrible, because the outcome was fine!
3. There are a lot of kids with great testscores and GPAs who don’t get in lots of places that should be targets based on those scores alone.
4. Qualifying for the AIME (via a high score on the AMC 10/12) is important if you want to get into a tech major.
5. A lot of the top schools really are doing full holistic reviews, with SATs being optional and the SAT subject exams no longer existing, and it’s harder for them to use numerical scores to make comparisons.

Things I’ve learned:

1.  Getting into computer science is (give or take) about 2x as hard to get into compared to almost any other major.
2. Early Admissions and Early Decision have become increasingly important.  Some schools that really care about their US News rankings will put together most of their class from early decision.  If you’re in love with a specific school, you probably want to consider ED1.  Definitely do not ED1 a school that isn’t your top choice though.
3.  DC1 learned a lot over the course of doing applications.  So the ED1 application just wasn’t as good as several of the RD applications.  Also there was zero benefit to applying EA to the state school (RD came out the same day as EA this year), and, in fact, it may have hurt DC1’s chances to do so since zie didn’t have rec letters yet.
4.  Even if you are guaranteed admission to a state school, you are not necessarily guaranteed admission to a specific major.  Give yourself the best shot and think about the essays and turn in anything that’s optional even if it’s optional.
5. The optional essays really aren’t optional.  The optional videos and interviews seem to actually be optional.  That is, people on reddit only rarely get into schools without having done the optional essays, but plenty seem to have gotten in without doing the optional videos and interviews.
6. More elite schools say they no longer track demonstrated interest than when I went to college, which is great because a lot of people cannot afford to visit schools all over the country.  However, some aspirant schools are *really* interested in demonstrated interest (Case Western is particularly egregious with this), and based on reddit reading, the ones that do really do seem to care.  But demonstrated interest is no longer visiting in person– it’s going to webinars and clicking on links in emails and making sure you write all the optional essays and do some school-specific research for those essays.
7. According to a lot of these webinars the schools put on, admissions counselors really do prefer the short-story style college essay over the kinds straight-forward essays DC1 prefers to write.  I don’t know how true this is for engineering schools.
8. DC1’s school gives A-s (93 or below) a lower numerical value than As.  (I’m used to a 4.0 scale for high school where all As are treated equally.)  This matters for class rank.  (DC1 should also have put off taking required PE until senior year as that dropped hir class rank as well.)  It may not matter for how colleges calculate GPA.
9. The elites have discovered the Claremont Colleges and all but Scripps seem to be more difficult to get into than most of the east coast SLACs that outrank them on USNews.  Even Pitzer!
10. The applyingtocollege (A2C) reddit and collegeresults reddit are extremely helpful, even though they provide a pretty selected view of elite admissions for the most part.
11. There are lots of other websites that provide candid views of each colleges from current or recent students.  Niche, unigo, and college confidential among others.  As with all review sites, you have to take some comments with a grain of salt, and it’s also important to check the dates of comments because things change over time, particularly when there’s been a scandal.  But there’s still a lot of really interesting helpful information out there for someone who knows how to google.
12. Safeties aren’t as safe as they used to be (yield protection, where they don’t accept you if they don’t think you’ll come, is real), so you may want to have more than one.
13. Reaches are still random, but targets are more random than they used to be.  With everyone else applying to more schools, unless you have an early action school that you would be happy attending or you’re guaranteed your major at your state school, then you may have to apply to a lot more schools too.  (A2C calls this “shotgunning.”)
14. More kids are taking college classes, getting associates degrees in high school, doing undergraduate research (and publishing!) in high school, starting non-profits (this one doesn’t actually seem to help a lot of places), doing summer internships at tech companies, starting businesses, competing and doing well in tests like the AIME, and so on.  Things that used to make students REALLY stand out back in our day are only making them sort of stand out.  Nothing is a guarantee anymore, if anything ever was.

And again, remember, you only need one college that is a fit for the kid and a rejection does not mean there’s anything wrong with said child.  It could be that one of the admissions officers had a headache when they looked at the file, or that they had their quota of that exact demographic when they got to the file (and for another school your kid might get that slot).  One has to reach a certain level of excellence for each competitive school but once one gets there it really is pretty random whether they accept a person or not.

Parents who have been on this journey recently, what advice do you have?  Parents who are about to embark, what specific questions do you have (I will answer as best I can in the comments).  I’m not directly linking to the outschool lady, but you can email us at grumpyrumblings@gmail.com if you want to use her.  (Or you can look through outschool and see if there’s anyone who you think is a better fit!)

Books!

Whoops, I returned a bunch of books without writing about them.  Oh well!

Tried to read A Duke for Diana by Sabrina Jeffries.  The concept was great.  The first half was great.  And about halfway through it was dumb with dumb tropes (probably not a spoiler to say he thinks his dad committed suicide and shouldn’t marry because of it since it’s hinted to so broadly early on, at least I think that’s why he thinks he can’t marry given the broad hints) that don’t really follow from anything and are like she couldn’t figure out anything new or related to the concept to cause tension in the story.  Like, why not go with the concept which has its own tensions and move from there?  DNF.  So I don’t know if he finds out that his father didn’t commit suicide or that he’s a bastard.  I don’t think he finds out his dad was murdered, which is the interesting solution in other books with this trope (bastard is less interesting, “I’m the son of a sea-cook!”… best is when they get a little lecture on the sins of the fathers not transmitting to the sons, but it’s still a dumb trope with a dumb hero believing dumb things). Maybe the books with the other two sisters will be less dumb-troped.

I really liked The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry by C. M. Waggoner.  Much better than the first book in the series (and about the next generation).  Much more cohesive in all respects, and no dumb tropes.

DNF Murder Most Actual by Alexis Hall.

Surprisingly, Extra Witchy by Ann Aguirre was better than the first two books in the series!

For some reason I have given Drunk on Love by Jasmine Guillory 2 stars to remind myself never to try to read it again.  That means it had something awful in it.  Ah, it’s a creepy employer/employee relationship that did not manage to be not creepy even though it probably could have been (like if he had let her know he didn’t need her job).  I think that was it?  But maybe it was something else.  Maybe how he lied to his mom for no good reason except to attempt to have plot?  I don’t remember.  I think it was the mom thing.

DNF What if It’s Us by Adam Silvera.  Too much boy loses boy.  Not enough boy spends time to get to know boy.  So much angst.

Somehow missed the latest Henri Davenforth book by Honor Raconteur, This Potion is Da Bomb.  It was very good.  These procedurals are so readable.

A little late this year, but I read Lady Osbaldestone’s Christmas Intrigue by Stephanie Laurens.  It was readable.  I was a bit skeeved by this 20-something guy moping because a 14  year old girl had been sent away since they seemed to be in love and she was too young.  (Seriously TOO YOUNG.)  But apparently they don’t meet again for another 10 years, and 24/30 seems like a much healthier age gap.  Just, in real life, any 20-something into any 14  year old is not going to be into a 24 year old ever, because 20-somethings into 14 year olds are not looking for a healthy relationship.  UGH.

Enjoyed more books by Stella Riley.  I think I will end up buying her entire backlist eventually.  I just noticed that The Parfit Knight is only 99 cents on kindle if you want to give her a try.  It took a little bit for me to keep all the characters separate in my head, but after I got the hang of it, that series was very good.  (I also didn’t read that one first– they can be read in any order… at some point I’ll read them in the intended order– I think I read them most stars to least stars when I started out.)

Skipped through to the unsatisfying ending of Death at Wentwater Court— the slang was really overused and irritating.  I’ve read a lot of bright young things books written at the actual time and while the slang is accurate, the use is not— young women trying to be respectful to older men don’t use it even if they use it with young men their own age.  Maids don’t use it with employers until after WWII when they’re getting paid more!  My kids don’t talk about rizz to me but the applying to college Reddit is full of it.  It’s just really jarring…I don’t normally complain about misuse of language in historical fiction but here I think the misuse isn’t the time period but all the signals the use or disuse of slang sends during interactions.  It reads like the author is trying to be clever with look at all the 1920s/30s slang I know but not really thinking about its use.  Also the end was dumb.

Finally read (and returned to DC2) The Triumphant Tale of Pippa North by Temre Beltz, while not quite as amazing as the first book in the series, it was still pretty fantastic, and I wish the author would write more!

Also finally finished Murder is Easy by Agatha Christie.  It dragged, which is possibly why it’s not in print (or at least wasn’t when I picked up a used copy).  Two books down in my bedside pile…

And the decision is Carleton!

Why?

The main reason is that Carleton has a Discord (this is like an invite-only forum that you can’t access without an invitation, so it can’t be seen unless you’re logged in and invited) for newly admitted students and DC1 is really vibing (my term, not hirs) with the other admitted students.  They all like board games, even the mainstream Taylor Swift fans.  They’re all serious about academics.  They’re mostly introverted and nerdy.  DC1 has never been around so many people who share so many of hir interests before.  (Zie has friends at school, but they’re really into CS or games but not school, or they’re into school but not CS or games.  And friends online are into games or music but not CS or school.  Etc.)

From the materials that the other three schools have been sending, Macalester students are somewhat of a fit but still more external-looking than at those at Carleton for the most part. Oberlin just doesn’t seem like a personal fit, and Union is not a fit at all.  Re: Oberlin, it’s not that DC1 doesn’t care about social justice, zie does deeply and has very mature views that astonish me whenever zie shares them, but zie isn’t going to organize a protest.  Re: Union, DC1 isn’t an east coast jock.  (We recently learned that there are only ~50 students in the Union Scholar program each year, so a pretty big deal for them, but DC1 would be part of an elite minority.)

The second main reason for Carleton over Macalester is that people at Macalester have more free time and do stuff outside of school and DC1, I am not making this up, said zie doesn’t actually want a whole ton of free time outside of schoolwork.  I mean I get that, but at that age I would have phrased it more positively, like having a thirst for learning and wanting to make the most of guidance from experts while I could.

The other reasons are that Carleton has pretty much always been on the top 10 or thereabouts of SLACs.  Currently it’s at #6.  Macalester is on the rise, but it’s still a tier lower.  Oberlin has been dropping. Carleton is also ranked #1 for undergraduate teaching on various lists and is on top 10 SLAC lists for computer science.  Carleton and Oberlin are both really nationally/internationally known schools for those who know elite schools, whereas Macalester (though becoming more well known) is still somewhat regional and Union is very regional.  Carleton and Macalester both have great food (a hilarious moment on one of the Macalester virtual student panels was when someone asked them about the worst cafeteria food experience and one of the women was like… sometimes the chicken breasts are a little dry), Oberlin and Union’s dining hall services are more mediocre.   Oberlin does have the great music scene, but Carleton is across from St. Olaf so DC1 can go to concerts etc. there.  Plus Carleton has a flexible music minor.

Macalester really did do a great job of recruiting, and if DC1 hadn’t fallen in love with Carleton (or if we valued that 120k cost difference more), zie would be very happily going there.  I expect that Macalester will continue to rise up in the rankings over the years.  It is truly a great school and boy does their marketing team know what they’re doing.  They had interesting virtual sessions (unlike Oberlin’s, which was dull and uninformative).  DC1 LOVES the socks and the bagpipe confetti.  The sticker sheet was also great (to be fair, so was Oberlin’s).  They’ve sent fantastic infographics about job outcomes (though Carleton’s Sankey diagram about where their majors end up is also really impressive) and local amenities.  They’ve got great day in the life videos online.  DC1 spent a few hours pouring over the link to the school newspaper archives they sent.  I strongly recommend Macalester to any kids interested in the SLAC experience.  It seems like a really great school.  (Also, as with Carleton, Oberlin, and Union, anyone we mention it to who knows someone who went is like, my friend/family member went and LOVED it there.)  More people outside the Midwest should know and consider it.

Last week when DC1 said it was most likely going to be Carleton, I looked at the 529 plans, and saw that DC1’s is … about 120K short, give or take.  (It has exactly enough for any of the other three choices, which was not really planned but is where the stock market landed.)  We had some extra money from a big tax refund, so I put another 10K into DC2’s 529.  My current plan is to exhaust DC1’s 529 and then I’m not sure whether we will dip into DC2’s or pay cash.  On the one hand, dipping into DC2’s would allow us to use up the 529s if DC2 ends up going to a less expensive school than did DC1.  On the other hand, paying cash would allow DC2’s account to accumulate more tax free, AND there are a more ways to use up a 529 than there used to be (including the IRA!).  If our kids have kids it’s a really nice way to pass on generational wealth.  But our kids might not have kids!  Still, DC1 has a lot of relatives that will be having kids, so we’ll be able to pass on excess money to someone.  (I keep in mind that our end goal is not necessarily to make/save as much money as possible– if the government is good, they use our taxes for things like feeding people.)  Probably what I end up doing will depend on how the stock market is doing– it will be easier to justify taking out of DC2’s still mostly stock-based 529 if stocks are high than if stocks are low.

DC2 is currently talking about going to MIT/Vanderbilt/Northwestern for economics (they’re doing a finance unit in math and zie is loving learning about bonds), so zie has different but equally expensive preferences compared to DC1.   DC2 would also be a great mechanical engineer or designer more broadly– zie has designed several cat toys and cat habitats that are universally loved by immediate and extended family felines.  Zie has a wonderful amount of creativity and ability, so might follow in my sister’s footsteps instead of mine.  Fortunately we have another 5+ years before zie actually has to decide on schools.

So I guess next year when I’m back up at full salary, I’ll be putting money into DC2’s 529.  I will have to think about if I want to do 1K/month or just put all our excess money in there until we’ve reached some threshold.  And of course we’ll have to figure out how to actually pay DC1’s tuition– does the 529 do it directly or do I have to have cash on hand and then request reimbursement?  $83K/year is a LOT.  I wonder how often payment happens.  I wonder how much tuition will go up each year.  (Macalester has a nice page that shows theirs goes up 2K/year, so maybe Carleton will be similar?)

I do think (and hope) that DC1 will be happy at Carleton.  Everyone who has been seems to love it and it really does seem like a great match for hir on every front except the weather and lack of poke places in walking distance.  Everyone here is happily optimistic about DC1’s next four years, including DC1.  My sister says she will send DC1 a SAD lamp for Christmas if necessary and my MIL has plans for more warm winter clothing.

So I think we’re done with this process!  Friday is the requested Ask the Grumpies on what we’ve learned and advice for parents about to embark on this journey.  Then maybe back to business as usual finishing up and posting blog drafts from 2012?

Side Note:  Apparently Carleton would have given DC1 stickers had DC1 gone to their admitted students weekend.  So maybe that’s a reason to do a college visit…  They also said they give more swag at orientation week.

College educated readers and parents with kids who have gone through this process– how did you and yours make a final college decision? Any recommendations for kids the summer before starting freshman year?

Link love

Texas trans children families.  Actions:  Donate to Equality Texas or donate for kids books written by trans kids in another state via donors choose.

I'm working on an unbiased article on dogs for the New York Times. I'm not looking to speak to dog owners or veterinarians at this time but if you hate dogs and think dogs are controlling your mind and that they should all be launched into the sun I would like to hear from you

— merritt k (@merrittk) April 14, 2023

You heard about the unethical stuff Clarence Thomas was doing with Harlan Crow?  Turns out there was also some actually illegal stuff too.

A crazy story of rich powerful people defrauding the government.

Not all probiotics are good for you.

My friend at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA says they’re having trouble hiring for this associate provost position which requires knowledge of curriculum development and ability to do basic data processing. The pay range is pretty reasonable (something like 125-155k/year, give or take).

Retire by 40 is starting a new Barista Fire series where he tries out new side jobs.

This is cool– you can see average salaries 3 years out for students from different colleges by major (if they have enough majors receiving federal financial aid– no info for people who don’t receive federal aid on this site).

Ask the grumpies: how do you want your kids to remember you?

CG asks:

How do you want your kids to remember you?

I don’t actually know.  Fondly?  Like we tried our best and provided a stable supportive home life?  Hopefully we will be friends as adults for many years to come before we pass.

Really I just want them to be good people and to be happy.  Whether or not thoughts of me are part of that, I’m not sure how much I care.  Like, I want their realities to be good whether or not they attribute that goodness to anything we’ve done.  I’m fine with them taking us for granted once they’re on their own, and if we’re dead I’m not sure I care if they blame us for things?

#2:  No kids!

Grumpy Nation parents, how do you want your kids to remember you?