Tag Archives: college

This & That

by Annie | Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve written. Lots going on. Most of it VERY good. In no particular order:

–Kaela has been ROCKING it. That kid has gone on a personal fitness crusade and Take-Care-0f-Kaela crusade (with a little help from mum) and MAN has she been hard core! She’s lost (what one barn lady described as) “a sh*t-ton of weight”! She’s doing it right, in moderation and with exercise so no worries there. She’s just taking good care of herself, and that’s awesome.

One of the horse’s Kaela cares for. She sent it to me with the text “Look at that face!” LOL.

At the other barn where she works, she’s had a one or two hiccups that were pretty serious (nothing serious-serious, but serious enough) and I mention that only because it’s not just that’s she doing great at her job, she’s doing great at RECOVERING from some MISTAKES she’s made at her job which says (to borrow a phrase;) “sh*t-ton” about her! It’s one thing to be good at your job. It’s next-level to recover exceedingly well from mistakes at your job. I couldn’t be more proud of her, and happily, her boss feels the same way.

Her friend invited her to join a summer theater group at her church so she’s doing her first musical! She’s having a blast. I cannot tell you how proud I am of her. Her job, the theater group, all of it is her doing, her choice, done on her own without mom and it’s a joy to see.

Coryne has returned from her first year away at school her lovely self, as even-tempered and kind as always, and pretty clear and what she wants to do with her life. It is, as one would expect, uniquely Coryne! She’s decided it’s a life of psychology for her, but with a twist! She wants to do comparative psychology, with her time split – somehow – between animal-assisted counseling, specifically canine, and – this is the really Coryne part – studying wolves in the wild.

Now, before you roll your eyes, this is actually a thing. Obviously we all know about dogs assisting humans, like therapy dogs for vets with PTSD, that kind of thing, which is the kind of counseling Coryne would like to do, but more with a focus on young people who have had traumas, or have regulation issues that can be assisted with a therapy dog, that kind of thing. But the wolves-in-the-wild thing is part of it, since, obviously, they are canines – sort-of the purest canines we have, living in the wild as they do. Seems Coryne had a talk with some girl, a recent graduate of her college at a 3-day seminar she went to near her school. The way she described it so Coryne! “If you Google ‘wolves’ and click ‘images’ this girl knows every wolf by name – most of them personally!” Seems this girl’s career path involved doing a winter internship at a wolf sanctuary in Minnesota.

Winter. Minnesota. Wolves. Outside.

My kid actually wants to do this. LOL. Like I said, “uniquely Coryne!”

So she’s a kid with plan. She knows she’s got to go all the way; to Ph.D. And she’ all-in. She may even decide to do her Masters in… Texas.

Which brings me to Leigh!

Leigh has had herself QUITE the summer! She got a KICK-ASS internship in Texas. (Speaking of weather extremes…) She has been having an ABSOLUTE BLAST. They have been so, so, so, so good to her! She’s working mostly with veterans, in a very small group of graphic design interns, doing things that are directly related to her major and learning tons, making great friends, and growing up. I said to Mike that this feels like a transformational summer for her. That this was a very big deal for her, emotionally, and really in every which way. It’s had a real effect on her. In a good way. And she was a great kid to begin with. I’m so proud of her I could bust. So proud of ALL my girls. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and it never does. I can’t possibly raise three girls and not have SOME disaster, right? <<keeping fingers crossed>> 😉

Oh! I forgot to mention that Leigh & Coryne are talking about how cool it would be if she did her master’s there because it’s all but certain Leigh will be moving there for a job resulting from her internship (this isn’t mom being mom – it truly is all but certain she’ll be going) and there’s an *excellent* university literally minutes from where Leigh will be working so they are very excited about the prospect of rooming together while Corynee does her post-graduate work. We’ll see!

That’s all for now. There’s more. But that’s all for now.

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Can Someone Explain?

by Annie | Leave a comment

UPDATE, THU JAN 26, 2012, EARLY AM:

My goodness but we have lots of cranky libs!  This is not a surprise, per se, but a bit of a surprise that they are so free flowing with their crankitude on my itty-bitty corner of cyberspace.  PLEASE see my SOURCED replies in comments below, in my years long effort to correct lib myths.

Help me, some wicked smaht lib, will ya?

How do you reconcile these seemingly opposing memes from Our Dear Leader:

We don’t want to “punish” success. We simply want to see to it that everyone gets a “fair opportunity at the American Dream” which we describe, in part, as being able to “pay for your children to go to college” and to have the “dignity” of a “secure retirement.”

BUT, this will cost boatloads of money, which, if you “hoard” it, makes you a selfish pr*ck and I will tax your ass back to the stone age… which sounds an awful lot like “punishing” you, right?

So how to make the math work with the rhetoric?  Let’s give it a whack:

Okay – Let’s use the Obamas as an example, since it is a President with the last name Obama who is setting the standard. After all, he wouldn’t be so kingly as to presume that others have less of a dreamy dream than him, right?

Tuition for Malia and Sasha to attend what they regard as the best possible school for them (something the President has said, repeatedly, publicly, is every American child’s “right.”) is $40k per year.

Four years for 2 kids at Sidwell Friends will be $320,000.

If they want to go to Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard like Mom & Dad, all the way, for a J.D. or M.D., that’s another $1,000,000. (Just trust me on this.  I’ve done the math.)

Let’s just round that up to $1.5M because you know that by the time your children actually get there, it’s going to be at least that much. Now, maybe you aren’t the kind of parent who would pay for your child to go all the way to an M.D. or J.D. I know in my own case, my father was not willing to pay for a Masters’ degree for me (I degreed in Professional Writing & Film. Why not become an expert in bat snot on the bottom of Ugg boots in Manhattan in the springtime when the wind blows from the west and go make a living, right?), so not on a professional track and I was just so friggin’ grateful he paid for me to get my B.F.A. it never occurred to me then, nor since, to ever be unhappy about that, but, hey… If you’ve got a kid who can go all the way to be a Harvard M.D. or lawyer, who WOULDN’T want to see that happen, right? So let’s go with it.

Median income in this country is about $60k, give or take, depending on who you talk to or what metric you consult, but let’s just go with it, because it’s a nice easy number to work with.

That’s $5k per month, gross. In order to save $1.5M from the time your little snowflakes are born (let’s say they are twins) until the day they turn 18, you would – EVERY MONTH – have to save (absent compound interest, obviously):

$6,950

($1.5M / 18 years = $83 333.33 / 12 months = $6,944.44)

Oops.

I’m just a knucke-dragging neanderthal conservative, but last time I checked, $7k is more than $5k.

Okay. Let’s say you earn that much. Let’s say you earn TWICE that so you can do something other than live in a box while you save for college.

$14k per month is your income, let’s say.

That’s $168,000 per year. You would have to meticulously save 1/2 your income every month for 18 consecutive years to do that. This is not realistic, eh, mon chere?

So, let’s double THAT to $336,000 so we can get your required monthly savings down to a more reasonable 25% of your income. This is still hard, but at least it’s approaching earth.

Ooops.

That would put you WELL over the magic, evil $250k per couple threshold.

Obama wants to tax you Satans-among-us much, Much, MUCH more.

How we gonna send our little snowflakes to Harvard without having to go to the federal government for a handout like Oliver Twist asking “Please sir, may I have some more” unless we get to keep our money without getting it up the wazoo in taxes? Because, remember, the President was kind enough to criminalize private sector school loans when he got the health care bill passed.

And we haven’t even TOUCHED retirement yet.  JUST TUITION.

Libs?

Bueller?

Anyone?

How does this work?

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