Supposedly, KU still plans to open to students for fall. Morrigan has an appointment to move into his dorm tomorrow morning. He and Jason left for Kansas just a bit ago. There are all sorts of measures supposedly in place on campus – temperature tests, a couple free masks and hand sanitizer for students, rules about who is/isn’t supposed to wear masks when/where. But this is college, folks. How many college kids do you know who are fussed about those sorts of things? Even if Morrigan – and his roommate, who is his longtime best friend – obey all the rules, and of course it’s not guaranteed in any way that they will, what happens if the other two guys in their dorm suite don’t? Then there’s Morrigan’s dining hall job, and the classes that are half-online, half in-person. This feels like an impending disaster, especially as I watch universities topple all across the country from the failed experiment of bringing kids back on campus. Will Jason or I be traveling up to Kansas again in a week or two to bring him back home, again?

Just questions that plague a mother at 5am on the morning that her oldest goes off into the unknown.

Morrigan hasn’t yet had the benefit of a normal college experience. His first semester last fall was put on hold due to scholarship/money issues, and he joined the navy instead. When he was medically discharged from the navy not long after he left, he decided to go back to school in the spring. That lasted, oh, less than two months before a pandemic sent all the kids back home for the rest of the semester? My oldest has yet to figure out the ins and outs of adult responsibilities, like many kids his age. He’s terrible with time management, self-discipline, saving money, remembering appointments/projects, and procrastination. This disrupted schooling is not helping the situation. Morrigan has all the normal lessons of adulthood to learn, and they’ll be hard enough for him to learn in a typical environment, much less this clusterf***. And as a mom, all I can do is offer an ear to listen and advice he won’t take and a plea to the universe to keep him and those around him safe.

It’s been a stressful week. On top of getting Morrigan ready for his trip, Laurence began virtual school on Monday. That was absolutely the disaster we anticipated. The school district’s website crashed several hours before the kids were supposed to log in, because somehow the district thought that their page, which gets very few hits on average, could handle thousands and thousands of students/parents all trying to use it at once. It’s mostly gotten ironed out now, and Laurence has changed a few of his classes, and hopefully things will go more smoothly over the next few weeks. Who knows what’ll happen once there’s a combination of online and in-person classes going on simultaneously.

And it gets better! Ambrose is supposed to start college on Monday like Morrigan does. His school is local, and most of their classes will be fully online. Because of this, Ambrose canceled his apartment contract as he says there’s no point in paying for housing just to be in online classes full time. He’s not happy about the online bit as he HATES online learning. Ambrose learns through listening and observing and doing, and doesn’t learn through reading or writing. He’s always been that way, and it makes online school tough for him. In either case, we have no idea whether his classes will be online or not, because his counselors can’t get it together enough to help him finish the process of enrolling. He’s been given one task after another to complete before he can choose classes, and each time he does, it takes ages for someone to get back to him. I don’t blame the counselors as I’m sure they’re overwhelmed and overworked at the moment, but it’s literally the last business day before classes begin and Ambrose isn’t yet enrolled. Sigh.

Then there’s my situation. I did get my acceptance letter from SNHU this week, and classes start on the 31st. It looks like at this point, I’ll need 17 classes to finish school, or about 1.5 years. That’s about as good as it can get, I think. But I’m frustrated about one thing and hope that I can get it addressed – I’ve been given transfer credit for upper level math, english, and history classes, but not for the lower level prereqs for those classes. So apparently I’m stuck taking english comp 1 and 2, and whatever 100-level math is (algebra? pre-cal?). But if I have to take baby classes, at least they shouldn’t take too much of my time. I just hope I can make a case for exempting them or something, because omg talk about redoing high school all over again…this is why I wish I could just GED my way out of undergrad school, or at least through associates level so all those basic classes that I’ve already finished will be gone.

Sorry to ramble. I’ve been up since 5:20 with anxiety about this trip to KS and all the hanging school stuff and the frustrating covid situation and…yeah.