Beginning of Varsity Cheer

Alison is now officially a varsity cheerleader.  That is because today she had her first 2016 varisty cheer summer workout.  I am not really sure how much of a workout it actually is though.  It is really more like conditioning where they run the stairs on the bleachers at the football stadium.  I think it takes all of about 20 minutes to a half an hour.  If it is raining they go into the school and run laps in the gym.  She is supposed to start promptly at 7:00 AM so we’ll see how long this actually lasts.  That is pretty early to get up during summer vacation.

UWL START

Today we had Sarah's registration.  We got there right after 8:00 AM (Check in started at 8:00) and there were already several other people there ahead of us.  After checking in they gave Sarah a schedule of events, and we got one also.  After the introductions, we wouldn't see Sarah again until maybe 3:30 or so.  The bad thing is that one of Sarah's friends who is also going to UW-LaCrosse scheduled her START program for Friday.  If we had planned better we would have coordinated it a little better so that Sarah would have had a friend with her.

There were actually about 200 new students there and they were split into two groups.  I don't know the exact schedule, but they had some ice breaking activities, then they had workshops/presentations where they went over some other tings, such as the credit requirements, scheduling, etc.  They also had advising sessions.  They all got advisors (though not necessarily the one they will have when classes begin).  More on that shortly.

Kris, Alison, and I sat thru some of the same information.  For example, we sat thru presentations on the credit requirements for graduation, housing, meal plans, internal "money" accounts, financial aid, scholarships, and lots of other resources.  We were done with our part of the day by around 3:00.  Then we just had to wait for Sarah.

Now, back to Sarah's problems.  When they broke off to do their scheduling, Sarah notified the people in the computer labs about her problems logging into her account. First they tried resetting her password, which we had done several times.  Then when that didn't work, they had to go into their system and do some sort of a manual reset of her account.  However, because of how long this took by the time she got back around to getting into the system to get her classes scheduled, all of the classes she needed were filled.  She was able to schedule general education classes, such as her required art credits for example.  But unfortunately, she needs to take Biology and Chemistry, which were full.  I warned Sarah that UW would make it so it was virtually impossible to get finished in four years, and if she doesn't get those classes done, that may just be the case.  The good thing (as far as Sarah tells it) is that once she is done with her math credit, she doesn't have to take another math class.  The same goes for physics.  She is pretty happy about that, and as someone who had to take calculus a couple of times, He joy is not unwarranted.

Her advisor told her that her schedule wasn't all that bad, and that she could still try to get in and get Biology and Chemistry.  The system opens for all students apparently on July 11th.  So I told her that as of July 11th she will need to start try picking up those classes.  It dawned on me that the classes couldn't possibly be totally full, since there were still 7 or 8 more START sessions scheduled, and if they were full, how would the students in those sessions get their classes?   So what i think is that they opened so many "slots" for the START sessions.  When they are done, they will open the scheduling system for everyone, and if there are any spots available at that time, she can get into it and just drop other classes.  It sure is nothing like when I scheduled classes at UWM. But I am hopeful that she'll be able to at least get one of the two classes she needs.

LaCrosse Trip

We had scheduled Sarah's orientation (called START, an acronym for Student Advising, Registration, and Transition) at UW-LaCrosse for Wednesday.  However, since things began at at 9:00 (registration at 8:00) and we didn't want to have to get up at 3:00 to get on the road to be there by 8:00.  So instead we drove up today to stay at a hotel and get there right away in the morning.  Then we wouldn't be so rushed and additionally we would be able to drive around LaCrosse and get to know our way around town a little bit.

I have to say, I was a little surprised at how "small" LaCrosse is.  I was under the impression that LaCrosse was a larger town, sort of like a Green Bay.  I thought that they had TV stations as well and was a media center for the area.  But the population is only slightly over 50,000, which is about the size of Wauwatosa.  The City has its own civic center/arena with a satellite UW school, so I thought it would have a little more going on.  But other than the few square blocks downtown there wasn't much else.  I will say though that it does have a nice, small town charm to it, and the surrounding area is very pretty.  But there wasn't much else besides houses, a few smaller strip malls, and nothing more, at least in LaCrosse proper.  The neighboring town of Onalaska had a mall, but other than that we didn't see much else.  Sarah has a friend who is going to Viterbo, so we drove over there to see exactly how far away it is.  At least Sarah will have a couple of friends to do things with.

We took the obligatory trip up the bluffs, and even went over to the other side of the Mississippi, just to have a look around.  But otherwise, we just hung out at the hotel.  Sarah was reading thru the materials for her registration, and went to look at some of the course descriptions.  However, after a few attempts to log into her UWL account on my laptop to look at things she was getting frustrated.  Apparently, she was having problems with her password.  I knew that she was having problems a couple of weeks ago when she had to upload her picture to go on her UWL ID.  At that time I was trying to help Sarah we were able to reset her password and then we were able to get her picture uploaded so I figured the problem was fixed.  I was wrong.

We were able to get her password changed, but when she tried logging in, she got an error message.  After about a half an hour I decided to just give up and told Sarah that she would need to see about talking to the IT help desk as soon as she could.  There was an 800 number as well as an email address to contact the department for help, but since it was 8:45 at night, I thought it was best to just to wait until morning.  More to come tomorrow when she has her orientation.

Party Time

Now that school is over and graduation is complete, it was time to throw Sarah’s graduation party.  She told us she had invited about 50 people in addition to the friends and family that would be coming, so Kris loaded up on food, drinks, cake, etc…  It started out pretty cool (wish it would have been like that yesterday) but by the end of the day it had at least cleared up a little bit.  It wasn’t all that bad, and it was fun to see people I hadn’t seen in years.  But not nearly as many people showed up as what we were expecting.  I suppose I should have realized that because being the day after graduation, there would be a lot of other parties going on at the same time.  Sarah said there were at least 5 other parties that she knew of that were happening the same time as hers.  I guess it’s hard to hit them all.  But now we’ll have lots of extra food and I will have beer to drink for the next six months (No we didn’t get that much beer, I just don’t drink much).  One thing I realized while Kris and I were busy cleaning up around 10:00 was that we didn’t get any pictures.  We were all busy visiting and making sure people had food, etc. that we didn’t get any pictures with Sarah, her friends, any family…  none.  So that makes me a little sad.  Hopefully Sarah or some of her friends, or other family members did.

Graduation Day

Thirteen long years of school have finally paid off – Sarah graduated this afternoon.  I think she was something like 38^th in her class, which put her just out of the top 10%.  I think she would have been somewhere around 12%-13%.

It was HOT.  The last of the supposedly really hot days we have had and it just happened to be Sarah’s graduation day.  And it was very humid.  But it could have been worse.  It could have been raining and we would have been jammed into the school, and most likely forced to watch the ceremony on closed circuit TV because there was not enough room in the gym for everyone.  For what it is worth, we were able to sit on the visitor’s side of the football field so at least the sun was at our backs.  It didn’t help all the much since most of the shade from the pressbox was past where we were sitting.  And in order to get those seats, we got there almost an hour before the ceremony began, so we were sweating like crazy way before the kids walked in.  I felt bad for the kids in the school orchestra who had to sit on the field, in the sun, and play the entrance march, and music during the presentation of diplomas.  I wasn’t wild about the speakers, but at least everyone who spoke kept things short.

We are all very happy and proud of Sarah and her accomplishments at MFHS. I hope she carries that over next year at UW – La Crosse.

Got the Call

As I was finishing up things outside (repainting the patio furniture, Locking landscape bricks, etc.) Kris calls me in the house.  She was busy making barbequed pulled pork for Sunday, and was literally elbows deep in about 20 pounds of meat when the phone rang.  It was the varsity cheer coach who was calling to tell us that one of the girls that had made the varsity squad, but was going to be an alternate, decided that she didn't want to be an alternate.  She had the option of going back down to JV, but decided she would rather just quit (she was a junior).  So the coach went to the list and Alison was the first girl she and her assistant considered as her replacement.  So after explaining this, she asked if we thought Alison would be interested in bumping up to the varsity.  

Kris said she wasn't sure, that it would be Ali's decision, so she called Alison down to talk to the coach.  It didn't take long though, Ali jumped at the chance.  So now we have a varsity cheerleader (even if it is as an alternate right now).  She will get to cheer for varsity games (football, basketball, etc.) but for competitions she'll be an alternate/substitute in case someone gets hurt, suspended, can't make a competition...  whatever the reason they can't be there.  

I feel bad because all of her friends (or most of them anyway) are all on the JV team.  So Ali will have to leave them behind.  I hope they don't end up resenting her because she got moved up and they didn't.  And I hope that it also doesn't give Ali a big head.  There were some cheerleaders when Sarah was on JV that had made the varsity that pretty much became little witches once they made varsity.  We are going to do our best to make sure that doesn't happen.  Plus, Varsity is a lot of work.  She'll have practice several times a week, plus helping to coach the Jr Indian cheerleaders, and she has a couple of honors classes this year.  So she is going to be working her butt off, and if any grades start slipping, she'll be done with cheer.

Finished with Middle School

Tonight we had Ali's 8th Grade graduation.  It was sort of rushed because being in the middle of the week, I had to get home from work, clean up a little, and then head over to the middle school so that we could get a good seat.  Ali was done at 11:00 so she was pretty much ready.  They do their gowns when they got to school, so all she needed was to be in her dress when we left.  And luckily they don't get caps, so there wasn't much for her to worry about.  

When I had finished getting changed, I told her that we'd do a graduation selfie.

These were the first ones I took with my phone.  Actually Ali took the top one, and I did the bottom one.  My phone is a little old and the camera isn't the best so you'll just have to deal with the quality. 

I didn't take any pictures during the ceremony just figuring we'd buy the ones the professional service that was doing it took.  We did it with Sarah, and it was much easier than trying to get pictures when she got her "diploma/certificate" (to be added as soon as we get them).

The nice thing was that this time, someone actually videoed the ceremony, so I didn't have to, though I didn't realize they were going to post it until after I had taken video of Alison walking in, out, and getting her diploma.  I liked the speakers they had too, though it was something they did when Sarah graduated too.  We got to listen to the Superintendent, the Chief of Police, and we had one student speak as well.  All in all, it was quick, and smooth (note, Ali is on a hill, she is not that much taller than Sarah).