Leaping From The Box

Twelve days until D-Day. Delivery Day. Deliver David to College Day. And I don’t feel like I’m coping very well. Bill says I’ve been micromanaging everything this summer and haven’t let David do enough of the preparations. He’s probably right. It’s been easier to focus on the preparations, keeping busy with the minutiae, rather than dealing with the knowledge that life is going to change.

It is going to be a huge adjustment not having David around on a daily basis. Of our three children, David is the one most like me in disposition and attitude. I’m going to miss having that even keel, come-what-may-we-can-cope attitude around. Heck, I’m just going to miss having a live body here during the day. Even though Charles is still home, he spends so much time at karate that some days it’s like he’s not here at all.

It was a full year before I really adjusted to Kat’s being gone when she moved out, but at least she did so with no warning. I didn’t have time to obsess about it before hand. And the six months before she moved out she was gone a great deal of the time anyway, having a car and license. So I was more used to her absence. David has neither car nor license (although he is going to take his driver’s test this week). This past year, especially, we’ve spent so much time together commuting to his college classes.

But I know David’s ready to experience new things, ready for new challenges. I’m pretty sure that Evansville is going to be a good experience for him and he is excited about going. It’s the anticipation, the waiting that is so hard for me to deal with. I always handle a fait accompli much better than the lead-up time to anything. There shouldn’t be so much time between being accepted to college and actually going to college!

Last night David downloaded the book list for his fall freshman semester at the University of Evansville. His World Cultures class does not have a list. I assume this is because they are reading several books over the semester (actually the whole year, since it’s a full year requirement for all freshmen) and the teacher only wants them reading one book at a time. So he’ll likely have to get those directly from the college bookstore. And it appears as though his Computer Science 101 class does not have a text. Wouldn’t it be a novel idea for a computer science class to be all computerized? No textbook needed?

So, he has to purchase books for three classes: Japanese, Calculus and Chemistry. The full list price at the bookstore for all three classes totals $433.10. If he buys used from the bookstore (assuming they are still available used), it would cost $292. After spending an hour on E-bay and Amazon this morning, I can get several for less, although surprisingly the Japanese books are cheapest at the campus bookstore. If I buy some online and the Japanese at the campus bookstore, the total could be around $260, and most of those online were brand new. So that’s a fair savings.

I would love to see the list of books that David will be using for his World Cultures class. He brought home from Orientation the first book for that class, The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. I have had that book on my “too read” list for over a year. I’ve already read one of his books to the boys and have another here on my shelf to read next. I’m willing to bet that David’s World Cultures class will be a very interesting one.

This morning someone posted on one of the high school homeschool e-mail lists a request for “the” book that we think each high school student should read. And also which book we read as a high school student had the most lasting impact. She wants to create a “must read” book list for her high school student.

If I had to name one book that made the most impact upon me as a high school student, it would have to be The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. But if I had to name one author, it would be Leon Uris. I think his books did more for my understanding of history, especially history over the past 100-150 years, than any history class I ever took, and I did enjoy all my history classes.

As an adult, there is one book that I think all adults should read before they have children of their own or work with children in any capacity. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Maybe adults would view children differently, treat them differently, if this was required reading.

I’ve always thought book lists were fun. A list of books someone has read can tell you a lot about that person. So can the books they own. The first thing I do upon visiting someone is look over their bookshelves (hopefully they have some!). I think the books there, or the absence thereof, tells you a lot about the household.