I appreciate your suggestion about considering a transcript even if your teen isn’t necessarily looking at college or looking right away. One of my teens (interestingly, the most academically inclined) isn’t really interested in college but he is interested in having a record of all he’s done and been involved in. Even if we never need it for college, it’s a great way to organize and recognize the many things he’s developed skills in and worked hard at.

* Another thing that comes to mind is including some really thoughtful letters of reference from volunteer, employment or mentorship connections. My oldest included a few of these on his transcript as well as within the college application. I don’t know if it made a difference but it certainly didn’t hurt and again, it was nice for him to have those and be reminded of the interesting things he’d done and been involved in.

I have been wondering how we are going to do this in a few years. Thankfully I already track everything (well everything I remember to write down) and hopefully in 4.5 years the laws won’t have changed too much in our state. Thanks for reminding me I really don’t need to worry about it til 9th grade here when grades start getting tracked for long term use.

Anne, I appreciate what you’re saying about things being challenging and being able to face the challenge, but I don’t think that’s what Kara was saying.
When I was applying for my PhD program, I was totally scared and intimidated. Me? Get a doctorate? Me, ignorant, first-generation-college, no-money, single-mom me? No way!
But then my mentor gave me the best piece of advice ever: Show up. In the right room. At the right time. With a notebook and a pen. Read the assigned reading. Respond to project prompts as best as you can. Meet with advisors. Use the curriculum map for the program. When you mess up, fix it. When you don’t understand, ask.
I thought to myself, “easy-peasy. I can do this. I can show up on time. I own a pen. I can read. I’m reasonably smart. I’m not afraid of asking questions.” Somehow, several years later, I ended up with a PhD. It was hard work; it was a challenge. But it was “easy-peasy” in the way Kara meant, I think.

Hi Jen!

Yes. It takes some of the fear out of things to realize that you don’t have to change the way your child learns best, right?

Hi Anne,

“Easy-peasy” was in reference to the paragraph directly above it about setting an alarm on my phone 🙂 Certainly there might be hard parts about creating a transcript with your child – this entire post is about how worried I was about the process! But just like you said, I also wanted to let moms know that sometimes the things we are afraid of turn out to be completely do-able. That was my goal with this post, not to make light of the process. Thanks for reading!