OK I'm gonna brag a little. Nathanael took the PSAT a while back and the results came back the other day. He scored the highest score of all the sophomores- a 217. Higher than any of his brainy friends. A 180 is considered really good and 15o is average. In SAT scores it translates to well above the national merit scholar level. In all three categories he did better than 99% of other sophomores. OK I've got a gem on my hands. I mean I hope he gets lots of scholarships and grants. But really I have a kid who is destined for the best of the best and he can get into many types of schools including Ivy League. So when he DOES decide on a college, despite so many things we've done, it's gonna be a financial nightmare. Despite the fact that he will be able to work part time, will be able to do several things. I want him to apply to as many places he wants and then once he decides we'll worry about the cost. There are a lot of great places in state but if he qualifies for someplace unlike anything we have here, I will encourage him. I talked to my folks, like "Help me!" and my mom said not to worry, there are lots of grants, etc. available. She's always said she'd try to help in college but stated point blank she can't put all the grandkids through college 100% and what she does for one she does for all of them. She says she's not worried about Nathanael because he's smart enough to get a lot of his college paid for. We have SOME money earmarked for college for the kids but I'm going to be blunt, the mutual fund which did so well kinda lost impetus in about 2000. It's slowly made its way back but there just isn't enough there to pay even a year at an Ivy League. If he lives away from home we not only have tuition but all the room and board issues. When my mom taught school for 20 years about all of that was spent on putting us 4 kids through school and to tell you quite the truth we 4 kids in our irresponsibility wasted a LOT of her hard-earned money. A couple of my brothers had a terrible year or two before getting their act together. My own husband solved his problem by joining the military for 4 years after his sophomore year. His grades during freshman and sophomore years were so abysmal that certainly his parents were NOT convinced they should shell out more until he was serious about it. Well he came back after 4 years very serious and then when he went into graduate school his master's GPA ended up very high, 3.8 or so. My own freshman year I flunked calculus. Now I have a kid who is focused enough not to screw up like so many of his forebears. Yay, yay, yay, did I actually raise a kid who has learned from our mistakes?!!! What did I worry about in high school and even college- boys, relationships, blah blah blah...such a WASTE of time!!!! I should have REALLY focused on getting the professional background I needed and I would have a better career now! I also battled depression and that made me go on half throttle a lot. Now that my brain is stabler I know how to channel and focus more. If I had only had this medicine then....OH WELL hindsight is 20/20...anyway, the focus is NATHANAEL and his outstandingness even though he is STILL a procrastinator. For example he had a chemistry project that was due and his partner got mono. After waiting for about two weeks, I think, the day before it was due he said, "I can't turn my project in because my partner's got mono and he has the data." DUH!!!!! OH if you're smart enough to qualify as a SOPHOMORE to be a national merit scholar, then HELLO can't you FIGURE OUT A WAY TO GET HIS DATA?!!!!! We have SO MUCH TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT these days...I mean we have telephones, e-mail, and bipeds have learned how to use the spoken word...there are WAYS to get information...the stinker is going to shoot his smart little self in his smart little foot by testing far beyond those little kids that spend their lives studying but procrastinating. He even has a t-shirt that proclaims PROCRASTINATE NOW!

Anyway I'm SOOOOOO proud of him. Please let him know on his blog how proud you are of him, too.