Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho...

A few months ago, my son’s aunt suggested he might like working in a not-for-profit institution, and he might want to consider using his Communications major to that end. Having a built-in connection to Franciscans Hospital for Children in Boston, my son contacted someone in the media and development department there, that he has been in touch with for the past few years. He offered his services for the summer as an intern and she agreed to an interview. She interviewed my son and he must have managed to favorably impress her!

Now home for the summer, he began working there last week. This is an unpaid internship and, for the time being, once a week. But think of the work experience he will be able to add to his resume and the good he will be doing for Franciscans. This is truly a win-win.

My son’s first task is to help with the campaign for a fundraiser the hospital is doing – a 5k run called the “New Balance Heartbreak Hill.”  New Balance because the company is the major sponsor of the race and a significant benefactor to the Hospital; Heartbreak Hill, because it is run on that particular part of the Boston Marathon route. My daughter and I ran it last year; she beat me by five minutes, or about a half mile, without training. Oh to be young.  I suggested this year that they run the race in the opposite direction, but the organizers didn’t bite! While my son promotes the race and volunteers on race day (my husband will as well), my daughter and I are running and hoping to raise funds; we’ve renamed our team to add “Banyana” to the title – this is an African term for Strong Women and the name of my daughter’s soccer team, who are offering their support.

Here is our link:

https://www.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=471219&supId=292165278

Click on or copy and paste the above into your browser to read about this fundraiser and to make a donation if interested.

I will let you know more about my son’s specific contributions as an intern in another post.

Nothing That a Few Late Nights Won't Cure

The past few weeks have been more than a little stressful for my son. He had what seemed like an impossible workload to be completed before the end of the term: papers, project, exams, etc. I felt terrible as I watched him try and deal with the amount of work, the bulk of which arose from a single course.

As I write this, he has completed all of the assignments that were due by last Friday, and is now focusing on final projects and exams. The difference in his attitude today compared to where he was only a few weeks back is remarkable. There was little anyone could have said or done at the time to make him believe that it would all get done. Once again, he has risen to the task.

He will be home for the summer early next week, and has a clear schedule laid out for the following three months or so. He will be doing an unpaid internship in the development department of the rehabilitation hospital that I have written about many times on these pages (more about that in another post); and he will be taking the few more driving lessons he needs to pass his road test and get his license. Admittedly, the whole driving thing still has me a little worried – but I promise not to be surprised when he succeeds at that too!

How I Spent My summer Vacation - Prologue

On a suggestion from one of his aunts, my son got in touch with a woman who works in the development office of the rehab hospital where he spent four weeks in early 2005. As a family, we have kept in touch with the administrators there and have been involved in some of their fund-raisers. My son is frequently invited by the hospital’s Development Office to take advantage of donated sports or theater tickets, or other opportunities (which he almost always gratefully accepts!).


The purpose of his call was to offer his services to the hospital for a summer internship. He has been developing his communications skills this year, working on the University’s student newspaper. He would like to learn more about not-for-profit organizations, perhaps using his writing to promote fund-raising events this summer. But he would be happy to help in any way he can.

After some back and forth by email, he had an interview a week or so ago, and it looks as though he will have his summer hours filled with helping out there – a good cause for him to put his effort behind while gaining some experience in the real work world. I don’t know how the interview actually went; he didn’t share much. I do know that he is excited to get this opportunity and looking forward to the summer.

Three weeks of school before he completes half of his college education. So far, so good.

Amazing

Not long from now, I expect my son will step up to the plate and manage his life. And he never ceases to amaze me by showing how he can do that when I least expect it.

Near the end of his freshman year, he tried to create a back-up of his computer files and got an error message that the drive could not read the disk. I tried a few months later and got the same error. We used a flash drive and I forgot about it.

Just a couple of weeks ago in one of those Eureka moments, I woke up thinking that the DVD drive (indeed the whole laptop) is covered for service for the four years he is at school, and I thought maybe the DVD drive is the problem.
 Of course, in the morning, the thought went nowhere and I forgot to even mention that to my son. Fast forward to just a week ago, and I happened to be spending a nice Sunday afternoon with him. He mentioned that the DVD drive on his laptop wouldn’t work (he has two movies to watch for his Shakespeare class). He told me he was going to the tech office the next day to drop it off. He brought it to them the following day, explained the problem and, without so much as an argument, they told him they would get a new drive for him. It was fixed by Thursday.

No prompting, no advice, no practicing, no intervening by Mom on his behalf. As I’ve written here before, he has his own schedule

Things Get in the Way

I am happy to say that shortly after my last post, I had back to back interviews for three jobs and accepted one. I started at my new company on January 3 and have not come up for air since. It's busy and demanding, but I like it very much.

My son is now more than half-way through his second year and I can’t tell you how happy I am to say that this has been a very good year all around. He continues to play Ultimate and I‘ve been to a couple of his tournaments. The team still occasionally socializes outside of practice (he recently hadn’t been in touch for a day or two and before I could call the police he called and happened to mention that he went bowling with some teammates the evening before.

His roommate and some of the crew that lived on the same floor as my son last year have been great at keeping him in the group even though he now lives on another floor – they all went downtown on Halloween (one of those occasions when my son was one of the few non-drinkers in the crowd!). All in all, a very successful term from a social standpoint.

Academically, it’s been even better. He is thriving as a Communications major and posted a 3.5 GPA in the fall semester. The spring semester seems to be a bit more difficult and he has had one short bad period, but he got through that and is back on track.

I know I won’t be as faithful as I was last year, but I would like to see this blog through on a more-or-less regular basis until he graduates. So, until next time…

Dennis Lehane on Writing

In conjunction with the release of his newest book, I heard Boston iconic writer, Dennis Lehane, speak this past week.  He said if you want to write, you should write; not talk about writing, or read about writing, or study how to write, or join groups of writers for support.

I just want to let my readers know (both of them!), that I am not stopping this blog. However, I need to put it on hiatus for some unquantifiable period for two reasons:

First, I am still in the hunt for a new job. Although I have been finding a lot of appropriate opportunities, this seems to be taking longer than I would have hoped!

Second (to tie the sabbatical to the focus of the blog), my son is more than halfway through his third semester in college, and he is doing exceptionally well. Many things have gone right for him: the Disabilities coordinator and he have found a rhythm of regular meetings and my son appreciates the support. He has successfully changed his major to Communications and also has a faculty adviser who actually is in that department. He celebrated Halloween with about fourteen other guys by going to the downtown area in costume. While my son was (probably) the only one who had not had any alcohol prior to going downtown, he was accepted by this group of students. I think this is due in no small part to his freshman roommate, who continues to make sure my son is included when guys from last year’s dorm floor get together.

So…more to follow when I am once again gainfully employed and back in my own rhythm.

Because That’s What College Kids DO!

Last weekend my son and his Frisbee team drove to the southern end of the state to participate in a tournament. I went down on Saturday to watch some of the competition and to drive my son home for the night, the alternative being that he would drive all the way back to the school, and return on Sunday for the second day of the tournament.

If I think back to my college days – and I only hung around with “neuro-typical” classmates (in fact, I can think of only one student in the four years I spent at college that may have had a high-functioning form of autism) – what we mostly did was drink. We drank frequently, and occasionally drank a lot. Worth noting is that the legal drinking age in my state at the time was 18.

So I was not surprised, I suppose, to see that several members of the team were sharing a cooler of beer during the tournament. I believe that at least some of them were 21 or older; perhaps not all. It was a beautiful warm fall Saturday and they were playing Frisbee. It could have been my own campus, so many years ago.

But what did surprise me a little was that they were drinking during a competition. I thought they might take it more seriously. I can’t imagine an athlete involved in any other intercollegiate sport having alcohol in the middle of a game. Truth be told, the team played best in the last game of the day!

I watched these goings-on from my chair in the shade, waiting to see how my son reacted, and how the team members that were drinking would interact with those who were not. There was absolutely no pressure put on anyone who was not interested to “just have one.” In fact, my son was laughing along with all of the others when the two teams played “Detonator” to determine first possession instead of flipping. I won’t describe this game – ask your own college-age son or daughter. Suffice it to say that it was funny to them – and I might have been hysterical at another time in my life. Last Saturday...not so much.

My son told me on the way home that the fellow he had driven down with was not drinking. Nonetheless, I was glad that he was driving home with me. I was also glad that he has little interest in "partying;" one less thing for me to worry about.