Katy Dickinson

Final College Admissions Results

My brother Pete sent us a note today pointing out a New York Times article published on 1 April called "For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too" by Sara Rimer. It sounded depressingly like my daughter's recent experience.

Below are Jessica's final college admissions results. She is spending this Spring Break week hanging out with her boyfriend, baking, gardening, and researching again the five schools which accepted her. Her assignment is to decide if she needs to see any of the schools again in person before she decides which to accept. CMU invited her to join a special multidisciplinary program which sounds very interesting. Other schools are sending her letters welcoming her to look into their music or pre-law programs. I think Jessica is feeling good about her college choices.

Princeton's rejection letter said they had 18,900 applications for an entering undergraduate class of 1,245 students.

Posted at 10:09PM Apr 02, 2007 by katysblog in Home & Family  |  Comments[1]

Getting Ready for the Easter Bunny

We are getting our garden ready for the Easter Bunny. Every year, we invite the kids of our family and friends for an egg hunt in our back yard. Right now, my teenagers (who are on Spring Break) are putting in their two hours each of gardening a day. Since we filled in the swimming pool and built a rail line for our caboose, we have a new yard area in which to hunt. Next Saturday afternoon before we go to church, the Associate Bunny will dye dozens of hard boiled eggs and stuff dozens of plastic eggs with toys and candies for the Easter Bunny to hide.

There is a standing ritual to our annual Egg Hunt on Easter Sunday morning:

• To begin, all hunters gather in the living room where relative ages are determined and the Egg Hunt rules are explained. Rule #1 is always: There are no eggs in the flower beds. Other rules have to do with timing and the boundaries in which where eggs may be found. All hunters must repeat Rule #1. Anyone expressing doubts about the Easter Bunny is excluded from the hunt. Only true believers allowed!
• Every egg hunter has a basket and an advisor. The advisor is a small stuffed animal who accompanies them on the hunt. Each child gets to pick their basket and advisor (picking goes in order of age, starting with the youngest). They get to take their advisor and basket home along with any eggs and candy their parents allow.
• Kids line up at the back door in order of age, youngest at the front. Parents are not allowed outside until the teens go since it is hard for parents not to offer unfair help and advice. (The advice is rarely needed anyway since the little kids always find the most eggs.)
• Each child gets 2 minutes of hunting before the next child leaves the house. There are easy eggs at ground level and harder eggs higher up, both in and under things. Eggs have been known to hide inside of lemons on the tree and on the dog kennel roof. Some eggs are not found for years...
• In addition to hiding the eggs, the Associate Bunny leaves 2 poems. Each poem describes in obscure and maddeningly bad verse the unreasonably hard to find location of the gold or silver egg. The gold and silver eggs are usually found by the teenagers or adults but sometimes the littler kids figure out the puzzle first.

After the hunt, everyone eats a potluck brunch. The kids sort their new treasures and try to convince their parents that they need to bring home all of the eggs they found, no matter how squashed.

Posted at 05:19PM Apr 02, 2007 by katysblog in Home & Family  |  Comments[1]