#26 Creating Your College Bound Calendar Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa

 

Find the time and it might change throughout the year, depending on your family activities or your students extracurriculars find that weekly time, carve it out as an expectation set aside an hour a week to get it done. But parents put a muzzle on it. Outside of that time, try to resist the urge to sprinkle those college bound conversations in when you’re in the car, just driving home from school, they need a break.

 

Just talk to ’em about their day instead. So that we’re not overwhelming our students and that cadence of the weekly meeting works really, really well.

 

Welcome to a solo episode of college and career clarity. Doing something hard, which is a solo for all of you in my flourish and launch community, because I wanna help you leverage your most valuable asset going into the next school year for your college bound family. I want to provide you with a step by step framework, a plan to concentrate on the.

 

And result in some good feelings about where you’re heading, but let’s take a factual approach. My whole purpose, really the intent of all of the work that I do with my flourish coaching is to resource families to eliminate their overwhelm. So I wanna give you a step by step framework of what to do when to give you clarity and positive momentum all the way throughout the coming school year.

 

But I know just like all the things that I do in my personal life and in my business, that, that can’t happen without being intentional. See here at flourish, I preach all the time. Be intentional and begin with the end in mind. So I want you to think for a second. Where do you wanna be at the end of this next school year in this college bound journey for you as a parent and your teen as your college bound student, it doesn’t matter if you have a rising freshman, sophomore, junior, senior.

 

The work is a little bit different every year, but throughout high school, we need to be intentional. And I want you to keep your eye on, not that finish line all the way out at the end of the college bound journey necessarily, but where do you wanna be? When may of 2023 comes, or if you’re listening to this later any year?

 

May 1st, I’m gonna talk about in a second. Why May 1st is a magical date? So I’m gonna give you this framework for planning the college bound calendar and fitting in all the things which can feel very overwhelming when life does not slow down. So that you have a sense of accomplishment and motivation heading into next summer, so that if you started this summer faring behind overwhelmed, confused, hurried, that you’ll have a different walk heading into next summer.

 

Stay with me to the end. And I’m gonna share with you an upcoming free opportunity to get some coaching with me in our flourish community. Okay, first step. Hopefully by now, if you’re a longtime listener, you have a college planning, timeline PDF that I developed for our families, and you’ve printed it out.

 

I encourage you to print it out, take notes on it, print out multiple copies, post it around the house so that you don’t lose sight and what you need to be doing. Now, if you’ve missed ever getting the college planning timeline, the link for it will be in the show. This is a very valuable resource on what to do when, and it takes you through every school year, freshman, sophomore, junior, senior.

 

It’s a fantastic overview. So if you haven’t gotten met, hit pause, or go to the show notes when you’re near a computer. Download it, print it out. It is your friend and your guide. Now let’s get specific. I want you to start off. This is step one and you’re probably not gonna be able to do it while you’re listening to all of my advice right now that you’re step one.

 

If you’re taking notes on what I want you to do on this step by step framework is to head over to your school district’s website. Or if you’re even like a homeschool family, you probably have some framework that you know of going into the next school year. So find that school year calendar we’re gonna get all of those really important dates on your family college bound calendar.

 

So we’re building a new calendar is a family college bound calendar. It is for the parents and the student. Every student will have a separate one. So if you have two high schoolers, you need to get two college bound calendars together. You’re gonna get these dates in there. First thing I want, I want you to put your start of school year date.

 

Your finished date. And then I want you to identify any days off that your student has in the coming school year. Now, what might that be for a lot of school districts give a day or two off at the end of the grading period that gives teachers have in-service meetings and a data grade, and the kids get a break.

 

So put those on your calendar. Most students are getting Martin Luther king day president’s day, labor day. Those dates put winter break and spring break. Thanksgiving break. If you’re lucky enough, my kids never had a long one, but I know some school districts give a long fall break in addition. So start by putting off any day market clearly any day that your students not in school.

 

Next, I want you to identify testing dates. So this might be on that school academic calendar that you’re looking for in your school website, or you might have to dig around in their counseling area. You’re looking for any dates that they might be giving every student in the building, schoolwide, a C, T or S a T P S a T state proficiency testing, AP testing that comes every may.

 

I’m gonna drop a link in the show notes to the. May, 2023 AP testing calendar. So by now, you know, if your student is taking any AP courses, this coming school year, and you’ll be able to put the exact dates that your child’s testing into your calendar. So let’s get all those dates on the calendar next, you might have some really important family events coming up, and that has to take precedence over other things.

 

So do you know of a family wedding, a special trip that you are taking, going out of town to visit grandma and grandpa to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, whatever those important to you, family dates are. Block those out on the calendar. Now I want you to put a circle or a box or something on may.

 

First May 1st is sort of a magical date when it comes to planning the college bound calendar. And why is that? Well, some of you, depending on what year your student is in, you might be planning college visits over the coming school year. One thing that I know with certainty is colleges do not like to have visitors during final exam.

 

They don’t like to have them during graduation when parents are pouring onto campus to celebrate their students’ graduation. So it is common in the month of may for college visits, to not be available through the admissions office to do an official visit. So we need to get those visits wrapped up before May 1st.

 

If you’re a rising senior, May 1st is a magical national decision, date, college decision date. So your student. Has until midnight on may, first to enroll in their college that they intend to attend the next year may or maybe your kid goes to school through June. I know here in Ohio, we’re outright before Memorial day.

 

May is busy. We’ve got exams, we’ve got AP exams. If your student was in an AP course. So spring fever hits, and may, can be a hard month to get a lot of things done, especially with the unofficial start of summer with Memorial day. Okay, next. I want you to block out Thanksgiving, break, winter break, and possibly spring break.

 

Here’s how I want you to think about those breaks. So Thanksgiving break’s kind of a wash. If you’re doing college visits, you won’t have an opportunity to do them during that time. Thanksgiving break for most of yous. It’s pretty short. It’s a little blip and I truly believe that we all need to take time out.

 

So we need to build intentional rest time out into the calendar and your student absolutely needs some breaks. So get that Thanksgiving break on their that’s one that I suggest really just not doing anything on the college bound journey. Now winter break sometimes for you it’s two or more weeks long.

 

And honestly, students usually start to get a little bored and antsy by the end of that second week, family scatter, their friends aren’t necessarily in town. So. You know, kind of think about the winter break piece of does my kiddo. Yes. They need a little bit of a break and we wanna celebrate whatever holidays you tend to celebrate during that season as a family.

 

But there might be some space in there to do some intentional work after you get over the initial break. Right. But there won’t be any college visits cuz college campuses are going to be closed during that time. Now how you use spring break may really depend on what year your student is in high school.

 

Freshman totally could take the spring break off sophomores and juniors. You may be wanting to use those for college visits, seniors. You’re probably close to, or nearly done with the decision, or you might need to do a final round of visits before you pull the trigger. So spring break can be sort of in flux.

 

Okay. Next thing I want you to add to your calendar . . . next step. In my program, not just my paid program, but I’m just saying in my community. So I have a Facebook parent community, find us over there, join us. I’ll link to it. In the show notes, we advise our families to set aside intentional time each week around college bound conversations.

 

Now this is why I do. And I want you to think about when and how often this should be taking place freshman. If you have a freshman, this does not need to be taking place every single week. Quite frankly, your student needs some space to figure out high school, get involved. All the things and their frontal lobe is not capable of thinking too far into the future.

 

So let’s try to not overwhelm our freshmen with that. Okay. By the time you have a second semester, sophomore. I encourage families to have this college bound conversation be a weekly event. Your student might resist you at first. And I, I, this is why I want you to ease into it. I mean, maybe freshman year, it’s a monthly powwow.

 

Uh, and we just call it a future planning meeting, or a family powwow, whatever you wanna call it. Maybe by first semester, sophomore year, you’re doing it every other week. And then it becomes weekly. See parents. I know kids can be hard to tie them down and say, we’re gonna do this and they might resist you at first.

 

But I wanna remind you that it’s, you’re probably getting ready to make a maybe six figure investment, a very large financial and time investment into one of your most valuable assets, your child to set them up for future success. And so it’s well within your right to say, there are certain things that I’m gonna require of you before I spend a hundred thousand dollars or more on educating you.

 

I think it’s best done within an expectation of a framework that, Hey, this is our time that we set aside for this. So it’s within your right. It is a fantastic practice. And what I know is when it’s expected and it happens and what gets scheduled gets done. Then your student will resist it less when it becomes a regular practice at the same time, while we, as adults could probably talk about all of the things related to this journey every day.

 

Your student cannot, it overwhelms them and they have many, many things going on. So you, we need to give them some space. So what I’ve found works really well is to find the time and it might change throughout the year, depending on your family activities or your student’s extracurriculars. Find that weekly time, carve it out as an expectation set aside an hour a week to get it done.

 

But parents put a muzzle on it outside of that time. Try to resist the urge to sprinkle those college bound conversations in when you’re in the car, just driving home from school, they need a break, just talk to ’em about their day instead, so that we’re not overwhelming our students. And that cadence of the weekly meeting works really, really well.

 

Okay, so what’s next. Now we have all of those things. Our college bound weekly conversation, days off school, we gotta put those AP and other test dates in there. What are we gonna do now? Now turn to your college planning timeline. Again, I’m looking to it in the show notes and begin to figure out what for the year for that timeline that I’ve given you, what you’re going to do when.

 

Start building a schedule of what needs to get done and use the college planning timeline as your guide and also your checklist. So you may not know where you’re going to visit colleges, what campuses you’re gonna land on. But if you, as a parent know that your students off on election day, because your buildings are used for as a polling place and your place of work is off, or you can take a personal day that day, set it aside now for a college visit, you still have time to figure out where you’re going to go.

 

If you’re not intentional with blocking off the time. It will get away from you and those feelings of overwhelm and behind are going to return. So I can’t really, at this point, say to you, yes, do this in, you know, November and this in December, because it varies what’s normal and expected and right. For one student isn’t right for the others.

 

If I think about my two that headed off to college after graduation and I, I have three. So I’ve got one that went directly into the trades and is doing fantastic with that. It was the right choice for him. The other two, headed to college right after graduation. And what worked for Trent. Did not work for Sydney because they are different kids with different academics, different timeline for when they were completing the all important algebra two that guides a C T and S a T testing.

 

They had different extracurriculars that created different busy seasons for them. So you’re going to need to take an individualized approach. Now you might be sitting there thinking like, ah, that leaves me with a lot of questions and I’m not really sure exactly where I wanna put this. Well, I told you if you stayed with me to the end, I have a special opportunity for you.

 

So I am doing a free college planning calendar masterclass. So come on, zoom with me. You’re gonna bring that college planning timeline, and I’ll provide a new copy for anybody who signs up and didn’t get it. It’s going to be on July 27th, 2022 at 7:30 PM. Eastern time via zoom. I’m going to give you the link to sign up in the show notes.

 

And when you sign up, I’m going to send you my calendar PDF. So every, we have a, a beautiful PDF that we created. To create this college bound calendar for this coming school year. And I will email it to you when you sign up. So that calendar is a month by month. I will have other handouts that we will give you when we do our college planning calendar master class, and we’re gonna use the college planning timeline.

 

I’ll be teaching you, answering question. Anything goes, we’re gonna lean into my 23 years of working with college bound families as a counselor, and we’re gonna build this out. So you’re intentionally setting the time aside so that you finish the school year with you and your student feeling satisfaction, completion, and excitement about what next summer can be giving what you accomplish this coming school. Whether you’re students beginning school in July, August after Labor day, I wanna resource you and we’re gonna have a successful school year ahead. So if this helped you or you know, that you have a friend that would benefit from not only this information, but maybe joining us on July 27th, hop on over there into the show notes, get everything you need.

 

And forward this episode to a. As always my purpose is to give you excitement, clarity, and momentum along the college bound journey.