Junior Internship...nothing like last minute!

The Junior class at Emerson Waldorf School have to do one week of an internship every year. Last year Alex did his week internship with an art therapy school learning about art therapy. It has helped bolster his desire to seriously continue on that career path and is now looking into colleges that would help support him.

Jared mentioned last year that he was interested in becoming a police officer and wondered whether they took on interns. At the time I advised him that we would check into it but that he should consider a second option just in case that was not possible. Well, time got away and before we knew it school started up this year.

We eventually got in contact with the Hillsborough Police Department - and though they did do internships in the administrative side, they did not do internships with the actual police. And, because of some event that was happening in October the particular week Jared needed was not possible. They did have a program called The Explorer Post which was a year commitment for two Saturday's a month learning about becoming a police officer. We had nixed the idea in the beginning because it did not fit the criteria the school wanted.

So, we moved on to the Chapel Hill Police - who had an internship but it was for 17 and 18 year olds and it was a year commitment - not old enough. So back to the drawing board.

We attempted to contact his back-up choice of Architect but we were having no luck on any local places being available that week either.

So we asked to see if the Explorer Post would work in lieu of the one week - as I felt a whole year had to be much more worthy and education than just a week. At first we were advised yes, then we were advised no, that he still needed something for the week of internships. And now it's the Thursday before the internship is supposed to start!

Luckily for me I happened to complain to just the right parent at our school about the whole thing and she said, "How about the sheriff's office? I happen to know the sheriff and his daughter. Let me check on that!" And off she went.

Well, it was incredibly last minute, Sunday as a matter of fact but she called back and said that Jared was all set to start on Monday at the Orange County Sheriff's Office in downtown Hillsborough.... Yipee!!!!

Jared had an awesome week and really seemed to enjoy himself! He went out a couple of times cruising a rougher neighborhood with some of the inspectors, learned about finger prints and how to lift them off objects with different devices, he saw an interview, went to the court, went to the jail, and also saw many old weapons from old cases that had not yet been destroyed. He also did a lot of filing for them and got to see lots of graphic photos of some of the cases the different inspectors had worked on over the years. All-in-all I think he had a great experience and that this has strengthened his desire to become a law enforcement agent of some kind.

He is still going to start the Explorer Post as well and see how where that takes him over the next year. I can't wait! I'm very happy to see him so happy, engaged and interested in something so noble!

Heartbreak and Heartache...

There's always something new to experience as a parent but, even though I knew this might happen eventually, I was saddened that it happened so soon. This is one of those things that you cannot truly fix and make better as a parent - you have to watch your son or daughter from the sidelines, giving love when you can, but really, just watching them work through it (hopefully) and eventually moving on.

Jared's girlfriend Ashley broke up with him after about 6 months of dating. Her reasons were not truly understood and a bit confusing which only hurts more. I think it would be better to say the hard things then to say "I need space. I think we've grown as much as we can. I still want to be your friend." sigh.

But at 16 it's hard to truly say what it was about the other person you didn't like anymore - or maybe never liked - so they try to break up "nicely" and try not to hurt the other's feelings. I get that, but it's hard to grasp from the other side.

It breaks my heart to know that Jared had opened up so much from meeting Ashley - playing games that he would normally not have played, read books he would have NEVER read, seen movies he would have never seen, for his girlfriend because it made her happy and he cared enough for her to want to make her happy. To see him hold her hand and make her laugh; to see him go to the hospital, if only for an hour or two to keep her company and make her feel loved and cared for to be told the above. They had never even fought, not once in the 6 months they were together. She seemed to constantly want to get together with him and then not want to leave when it was time to go home. So this is a difficult switch - as if someone just turned her off - and it's hurting my son.

There's nothing I can do but offer my love and listen if he wants to talk - there's no words of wisdom to impart on this one as I don't understand why Ashley did it. If she had said "You are to pushy about wanting to have sex." or "We never do what I want but only what you want." I can give him words of wisdom of how to grow and change. But to say, "Maybe you cared too much for her?" just doesn't seem right. So it's, "You didn't do anything wrong. There's something wrong with her." Which doesn't make it any better or any easier.

This one's tough for me because I've always loved my role of "fix it and make it better" with boo-boo's and the such. But, this is one boo-boo that I can't truly fix... and it breaks my heart.

Welcome to senior year in a waldorf school!

So the year has started off with a bang! Alex's class went to Maine for a zoology block trip to a place called Hermit Island! It sounded like it was a blast and I think Alex really enjoyed himself and learned a lot. The best part about this trip is that they spent it with 7 other waldorf high schools and about 100 senior waldorf students. So they know they aren't the only "weird waldorf" students out there! Alex made friends with a few students from the Toronto Waldorf School and had them on his facebook shortly after he got back, as well as the Atlanta Waldorf School. I'll post a link to the photos later.

Then we have the college visits starting up in which Alex is now looking at Guilford (Greensboro, NC) and possibly Brevard (Asheville, NC - Kim, the mountains, where we were when I was in white water rafting hell!). So we shall see how the year progresses. For now it's starting to work on scholarships - which will be a learning curve for all of us. Jared doesn't know how lucky he is that we'll be skilled for next year! HA!

We are still only a one car family so the guys have not had their practice to finish up their licensing sadly. I keep hoping it will be soon to get a 2nd used vehicle...sigh. So it's lots of driving them around for their dates and outings.

I stepped up to be the class parent for 12th grade - for those of you who know Waldorf you know that's a big job... and even bigger for 12th grade as we still have their end of year trip we need to earn money for and their graduation... wheee. So, fundraising here we come!

Jared will be starting up his internship next month for his Junior year. At this point he is still interested in being a police officer so he need to contact them this week to see if that's possible. If it is not then he next choice is Architect - don't see the correlation but at least he has a second option and either of them sound interesting to me! I think he would be great at both but we'll see what comes of it all!

Alex has his senior project as well - which is a big deal at our school. They use most of the year working on it and then in the spring they will have a presentation night to talk about their project to the community (parents, other students, etc). His project is creating a Graphic Novel - from the story creation, art work, lettering and inking - truly a huge project! He is hoping that it is worthy enough for publishing at the end. And he has found a alum parent who used to do that for a living as his mentor and we are very excited about it! It fits Alex perfectly! He was so excited about it that he started this summer with working out his idea and starting on the story line - so he's off to a great start!

I completely skipped over summer but I will get back to it at a later post and talk about my great week vacation at the beach with my sister - but for now I wanted to get all of that out there before time slipped by and we were on to the next thing in life!

Kelley

Money Anyone??

So after reading the sob story below does anyone have about $4,000 they would like to donate to the Wiley Clan??

Vehicle Headaches....

I think everyone knows that we bought a brand new car on new years eve day. And when doing so we let our poor 4runner, as he was aptly named "Beast" have a nice respite - waiting to save up enough money to take him in for some highly needed work - and for us to be a 2 car family again.

Well, we did that over our spring break - giving Toyota our truck and telling them we were not in a hurry. They found that it really needed a tune-up and that it definitely needed the O2 sensors replaced (which we were already aware of). But, Beast dumbfounded the service people -after they took care of all those things it was still not running right and it took them about 3 more days to figure it out.

The sad news is we had to pay $500 for the above items to find out that one of the cylinders is bad and though the Beast is running, roughly, that eventually he will die and that it is not worth fixing it or replacing the engine. So, today we went and picked up the dear Beast and left our new Corolla there for it's 5000 mile check up and its gas pedal recall - drove home and waited for them to call us back to go back and get our car.

Beast was running rough but seemed to be just fine and got us home - and 3 hours later got us back to the Toyota dealership for us to get our car back. But it was almost out of gas so Shannon dropped me off to get the car and he took Beast away to gas up and meet me at home.

I got back home - pulled out the vacuum cleaner and was cleaning the inside of the car - making her all shiny clean for my hubby when he got home - but, alas, he never came home. He called from a payphone from the gas station stating that after gassing up the Beast it would not start again. After trying to jump it with the help of a kind citizen, it still wouldn't start. It seems that the fuel pump fuse had shorted or exploded. So I drove back past the Toyota dealership, which was now closed, and hung out with the truck while Shannon went to see if he could buy a new fuse from an Auto Zone or wherever. Sadly, the truck is old enough they don't carry the proper fuses but Shannon bought one that might work.... it didn't.

Another $80 later we have had the Beast towed home - with no hope in sight for us ever using it again. Now all we can hope is that someone will want to buy it off us and come tow it away for parts...

Goodbye Beast...

Hello one car family... AGAIN! Maybe some day we'll have two vehicles working at the same time!