Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
(Professor Farnsworth voice) – Good NEWS, everyone!
O-fficial word came forth this afternoon that, after much holding of cards very close to the vest, Youngest’s skool has decided to proceed with letting freshmen move on to campus for the balance of the fall semester. (She started online classes about two weeks ago.) Furthermore, although we were originally scheduled to move in on September 14, she’s now wangled permission to do so even earlier than that.
Woo-Hoo!
The Gel and Mrs. R, like many frosh and their parents, have been near frantic for some weeks now fretting over whether this was actually going to happen. (Ol’ Robbo didn’t fret, but simply grumbled a bit. It’s not that I didn’t care, it’s just that I recognized it was out of my hands and therefore setting on fire what hair I have left would have been pointless.) This evening they are springing about in relief and renewed excitement. Those are feelings in with which I can readily join. (Not so much the springing about part, however. I’d get wine all over myself and I wouldn’t be able to type.)
So Ahia, here we come!
The other thing teh Gel decided in the past couple days after we talked it over is that she’s not going to bother taking her car to school. This doesn’t bother me a bit. As she herself said, she’ll only be there for about two months, during which she realizes she’s not going to have time for much joy-riding. Also, she’d have to leave it over break since she plans to fly down to Columbia to visit her cousin at USC when classes are done, the two of them driving up to my brother’s house for Thanksgiving, where we’ll meet up with her and bring her home for exams and Christmas break. By leaving it, she’ll save money on parking. (We’re also going to see if USAA will put her insurance on hiatus.) Besides, there’s really no place in Oxford you can’t get to on foot, and her car won’t sit idle, exposed, and unguarded over the winter months. (What we’ll do next spring, I haven’t even begun to think about.)
Of course it also means cramming ourselves, Youngest, and her junk into the Honda Juggernaut for the Big Trip, but I think we can manage. After all, she’s moving into a dorm room, not an apartment like Middle Gel, and has significantly fewer items she needs to take with her. Also, I was never particularly keen on having to convoy all that way, constantly keeping one eye on the road and the other on my herd, especially as about two-thirds of the drive will be new to me. It’ll also mean that my original plan to split the drive out over two days (because I didn’t think Mrs. R and Youngest between them could put in an eight or nine hour drive all at once) has been scratched, and Ol’ Robbo now is going to do the whole thing in one fell swoop. I don’t mind: It’s a long day but not the longest I’ve done, and I was planning to do the return trip all at once anyway.
The Gel’s been champing at the bit ever since this spring to get out on her own and start the next phase of her life, and now it’s actually going to happen. Good to go.
“Don’t Put That Kerosene Away!” UPDATE: The Skool issued another email this evening that had Mrs. R (and, apparently, other folks on the FacePlant parents’ page) reaching for the matches. It was all about this being “a critical week in our implementation schedule” and had a lot of phooforall (a legal term) about testing and masks and whatnot, and the potentially dire consequences if everyone didn’t rally to the cause. (“Don’t make us pull this college over to the side of the road!”)
Having just now read it, I believe it to be, at most, a piece of bet-hedging and covering of the posterior. But then I’m a lawyer as well as a skeptic. As I told Mrs. R, even an educational institution couldn’t be idiotic enough to try and screw a single incoming class out of its full tuition and room-and-board dash, and expect to survive going forward.
Nobody’s told us not to come. So far as Ol’ Robbo’s concerned, that’s all that matters.
UPDATE DEUX: Now Ol’ Robbo is being told that the definitive word has not been given, and that the decision is still up in the air. Grrrrrrr…… But as I say above, at least nobody’s told us not to come. So at least we’ve got that going for us. (Down in the comments, I vent my spleen a little more and offer my armchair analysis of the current situation.)
9 comments
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August 31, 2020 at 8:25 pm
Victoria
Ah well, Youngest’s school is 4.5 hours from us, otherwise I’d invite yinz over for a cuppa.
August 31, 2020 at 9:26 pm
Robbo
The sentiment is most appreciated. At least I’ll make a point of squinting as we pass south of you on I-70.
August 31, 2020 at 9:46 pm
Cherie
Great news! God Bless and good luck on her new journey!!
August 31, 2020 at 10:09 pm
Robbo
Thankee, Cherie!
September 1, 2020 at 10:03 am
rbj1
Good Lord, we survived kollege in the 1980s. I only missed one day of classes. This is hysteria writ large.
September 1, 2020 at 5:17 pm
sleepybeth
Glad she’s able to go. Hoping she’ll be allowed to stay!
This whole thing is just madness.
September 1, 2020 at 7:45 pm
Robbo
It really is teh cray-cray. From all the reports I’m getting from other parents and the Gels’ friends, the kidz, far from being the docile rabbits envisioned in the re-opening plans, are acting like kidz. (Who could have seen THAT coming?)
The schools are terrified of the bad politicks and press associated with a “spike” in positive COVID tests, to say nothing of the potential hazard that Susie Sniffles has hair-trigger litigious parents. So they try to clamp down.
But the kidz are becoming bored stiff. They were sold on the “college experience” but find themselves in something closer to prison. The danger is that more and more of them will say, “Why am I spending 50K a year for this? I can just go home, do community college on-line, and party with my friends. Screw it.” So the schools are hemming, hawing, and hedging, trying to keep the kidz focused with mush about ignoring distancing rules as an honor code violation, and with happy talk about the Greater Good.. They know that the college systems simply couldn’t survive a preference-cascade that sours on it.
The whole situation would be an exquisite dilemma were there a genuine, widespread,, DEADLY, health risk. But as it becomes increasingly clear that this whole biznay is a lot of smoke, mirrors, panic, and bunkum, it’s nothing more than farce.
September 3, 2020 at 11:19 am
NOVA Curmudgeon
At least she didnt go to JMU…what a mess there.
September 3, 2020 at 6:02 pm
Robbo
Yes, we’ve been following that. Mess, indeed. Both Middle and Youngest toured JMU but both decided they didn’t like it very much.