On Zack and college...

Ok – so I guess it has been a month since my last entry. No real excuse, just slacking again I guess.

The school year is flying by already. A little more than eight weeks into the first semester, and things seem to be going pretty well. Zack’s progress report a couple of weeks ago proved he is taking his senior year seriously. Even with 2 AP classes and a 2 period Humanities class, he’s keeping all his classes above a 90% average.

He’s even been accepted to a very prestigious private university – and even better than that, a mere 30 minutes from home. Go here http://www2.mercer.edu/default.htm if you’d like to browse the site. Obviously, with this prestige comes a high price, right? He was even invited to the university’s scholars weekend that only a select few receive. This is a weekend that the invitees compete for one of only 30 coveted presidential scholarship awards. The awardees receive a scholarship for a full four years of tuition, which is current $28,000 a year. We’ve told Zack that this could be a long shot…first of all, a very competitive school to begin with. But this scholarship competition is HUGE. I think we all understand if in fact he isn’t a scholarship recipient that the chances of him going to this university is slim to none. So we shall see!

He’s also been accepted to the three other universities for which he has applied. Those three are all public universities in Georgia. This means the state’s HOPE scholarship program will be available at his disposal. This program allows any student with at least a 3.0 GPA, full tuition to any PUBLIC school in the state. Consequently, it only pays for $3,000 a year for any private school. You see the difference? HUGE – right?

He is taking the SAT again this Saturday. Although he had great scores when he took it this past May, he thought he’d take it again to attempt to raise his scores even further, therefore raising his chances for the scholarship aforementioned above.

Zack is still dating Arrie, now for nearly 21 months. I thought this past weekend though that the time had come for their relationship to end. Zack broke it off with her, not really giving us a lot of details other than she was continuously doing things to annoy him. After only two days, and seeing how miserable he was (literally – he wasn’t sleeping, hardly eating, and spent most of his time moping around the house), he had a long talk with her, and they got back together.

He is currently doing some community service for his Humanities class for 2 hours a week. This year the class requires each student to go to different schools in the area to help assist teachers in tutoring, making copies, etc. He is enjoying it immensely, but I think its because it gets him out of the hum drum of every day life at his own school. Next semester these same students will be required to search for and find someone locally that are in current positions of what the students themselves wish to become. Zack has decided that he wants to major in political science for his undergraduate degree, and go to law school. Of course anything at this point is subject to change. He still has ten months before he even begins college, much less declare a major.

I guess this entry ended up being all about Zack. It was long overdue though. I have been meaning to write about his college decisions for awhile.

I hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of Fall. We’ve had some beautiful weather the last few days, and I hope that the trend continues, at least for a few more weeks before getting too chilly for short sleeves.

We’re having a family portrait done this weekend in our yard. We haven’t had one done in over 7 years, so I thought that it’s definitely time. After all, this could be the last one in a long time considering that Zack will be a high school graduate next May.

Any suggestions on coordination of outfits? I’m still trying to figure this one out…

Until next time!