Parental Statements

DD#2 has decided she would like to attend one of the Catholic high schools in our area. She's actually applying to two of them, but really wants to go to the one that's the most geographically inconvenient.

Of course!

Whether she actually goes is another matter, mostly financial. But we'll apply for aid and leave the rest in the hands of God.

Meanwhile, I'm writing up the Parental Statements, since Hubs is not good at these things. Both schools want to know what I expect from them in the areas of academic preparation, co-curricular activities, and religious preparation. One school combines all three areas and gives me about five lines to answer. They go on to ask questions about any special circumstances surrounding my daughter and what she's like. For the other school, each of the three questions gets a third of the page. Plus I have to write a letter of recommendation for my daughter.

What I want is for my daughter to capture something of the experience I had attending a Catholic high school: the opportunity to really study the foundations of the Catholic Church, to live as a Catholic during the week as well as just on Sunday, to keep questioning and (hopefully) to have someone who can answer those questions.

In my case, there was also a sense of sharing an experience. Most of us recognized each other by face and name when we graduated. We had spent four years going from dorky freshmen to young womanhood. We were challenged daily to learn more, to do more, to give it our best effort. Not everything we learned came from textbooks and not everything was on the approved curriculum.

Not everyone had a positive experience. Talking with former classmates, I'm surprised to see how different high school was for each of us. And while I was not a pariah, I was not one of the "popular" crowd. (It's funny to see that DS#2 occupies the same social zone. He has friends who are brains, friends who are jocks, friends who are geeks, friends who are nerds, friends who are in leadership. He also seems to find those who are active in Boy Scouts--and a few Girl Scouts.)

The difficulty is, of course, how to capture that in a concise, coherent statement!