Suggestions to make money as a junior

This is excellent advice.

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Right there with you. Despite my parentsā€™ and some of my teachersā€™ best efforts, including a hard-trying math tutor one summerā€¦

I cried, cried to pass the basic math class required in my undergraduate program.

I was trying to remember when I took Algebra I in high school and I want to say it was my senior year because it was where I topped out. And I vividly remember going (literally) from that near-remedial math class one period to AP English the next because it gave me an immersive experience in academic classism, so to speak, no puns intended. There were also generally big socio-economic differences between the two levels. ETA: calling my mom to ask about this and she said ā€œare you sure that wasnā€™t Algebra II, you idiot?ā€ :sweat_smile: No, no, in retrospect, I am not.

My accelerated English teacher, sophomore or junior year, actually made a crack once about their pilot students not being able to figure this or that out.

I think @Virginia_Horse_Momā€™s advice is the gold medal mic drop, though.

ETA classicism / classism facepalm

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Perhaps not pertinent to OPā€™s question, but I know a lot of immigrants. For most immigrant families their emphasis is on EDUCATIONā€¦ all capsā€¦education of all types for their kids, but especially education in math and science topics. Education has been shown to be the stepping stone to bettering their life.

For OP, I would focus on getting the best HS education that can lead you to getting into the best secondary educationā€¦be it university or trade school.

I think horses will be a dying career as people become more and more removed from animal husbandry and care taking. Certainly the abuse of horses that has come out to improve performance in competition (dressage and jumpers) has not helped the publicity.

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Yes, my middle school was a nightmare, because they didnā€™t have different tracks for math and English. I was reading at a graduate school level when I was 12 or 13, yet algebra flummoxed me.

I actually donā€™t mind it now, but we will still not discuss trigonometry!

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I promise Im not actively try to be contrarian! For me (2002 HS graduate), I still donā€™t think that school did nearly as much for me with problem-solving nor communication specifically as the real world did. My parents would actively apply concepts to real world activities too. Going to a horse show on Sunday? I had to figure out timing and plan all the weekend logistics and tell THEM where I needed to be at what time and a guess as to how long; what the cost breakdown was for everything too. Problem with entries? I had to talk to the people at the entry booth. I was also expected to work during the summers and those jobs also served very well in those departments as well. During high school I worked at a seasonal restaurant on the lake and summers in college I worked on the equestrian staff at an all around summer camp.

I think OPs parents are actually doing her a real service with this exercise no matter what school she lands in. Sheā€™s going to learn multiple good life lessons either way, and she might figure out some creative ways to make some extra money whether it buys her tuition or not. Im sure sheā€™s going to have a better grasp on the value of a dollar going through everything. That might not seem enough for her now, but those lessons should serve her well in her future.

I always encourage parents that ask about getting their kids into riding to do it if they can. It offers SO much in the way of life skills, work ethic, working with other people, friendships, life/death, blood/tears. Sometimes you have to deal with a situation that you cant ask for help right away and have to make a decision one way or another. I donā€™t see a lot of kids getting much like that these days. Heck I know several kids that werenā€™t allowed to attend funerals of their own family members when they were young teens because it would scar them. Anyways.Thats a different rabbit hole for a different day.

Im not going to go so far to say that school didnā€™t help me at all, but those life skills outside of school that I learned during those years far outweighed the math I struggled with, since forgotten, and have had little use for even in a STEM career :joy: Having been in the corporate world now for nearly 20 years, I find myself seeing more of the book smart people that got the grades and went to a more prestigious school struggling with all the other aspects of the real world.

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Iā€™m glad to hear your story because I felt like such a freak for having unevenly distributed abilities. It seemed like everyone, everyone who was really good at one thing was also really, really good at all the others.

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Me too! And everyone thought I was just being lazy! Trust me, if I could have supported my writing with a lucrative STEM career, I would have done so!:joy:

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What is STEM? Not to do with stem cells, I imagine?

I didnā€™t have to take algebra till 10th grade.
Flunked it the first time. All it did was bring down my grade average, which did NOT look good on a college app.

Not my experience at all. Not everyone is a ā€œrenaissance man.ā€

Just look at the elite-private-school grads who didnā€™t get good grammar as a life skill. Not that it matters in some fields, but it is a bit of a sore thumb.

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What is STEM?

It scarred my dad.

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Secondary ed IS high school. College is tertiary, or just higher ed.

STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

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Thank you.

Engineering in high school? My dad would have liked that ( he was Class of '29).

It combines all those things into one learning experience, using them together.

Computers, robots, 3-d printing, all that stuff.

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We had something like that at one uni i worked at years ago. The program was called something like Across the Curriculum and IIRC all the different subjects were taught in a way that related to each other. That was roughly 30 years ago ā€“ no idea what theyā€™re doing now.

Chiming in to say that when I was in high school eons ago, shop class was that eraā€™s equivalent of STEM. Science, Technology (tools), Engineering, Math - all rolled into experiences such as learning about electrical stuff, plumbing, engines, basic construction, woodworking and carpentry, yada-yada. Some kids took Ag instead of Shop, and that also had STEM correlations - Biology (animal science, etc.), Technology (tractors and combines and milking machines and such), Engineering (how to build or repair darned near anything on a farm), Math (how much hay will you need to get through the coming winter, how much of the back forty to plant in corn versus soybeans, how to calculate crop yields, how big to make the vegetable garden or the hog barn, how many cows/calves can the acreage support and is it cheaper to breed to the bull across town or buy your own bull).

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Some districts still offer the agriculturally based combined education programming.

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our public school district has a Ag Science division even though the district is in the middle of the DFW metroplex, the ag barn is just down the road from us.

back to OP, my youngest daughter graduated from Texas A&M College Station in 2008 (majors biology and animal science), just be advised not all if any junior college courses will transfer into the A&M system. We did find that it was cheaper for her to have her horse in College Station than keeping him here in our backyard, so he went to college with her. As for riding on the A&M riding team, not likely to happen unless your parents are willing to donate a huge amount of money to the programā€¦ Daughter now works for a financial service company and has her Series 7 broker license.

A creative way for earning money while in college our son who attended a Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara CA would lease blocks of apartments that he sublet to other students. A secondary unexpected benefit for him one of his clientsā€™ parents were so appreciative as student housing in Santa Barbara was nearly non existent. They arranged a summer internship that lead to full employment. He ended up owning his companies that have hired most of his college classmates.

We were worried about getting him out of high school let alone college, we worked with the school board here to create a pathway for him and others that I see still exists now being called Arts, AV Technology and Communications (AAVTC) Career Cluster

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I think someone mentioned this upthread but I am not sure it was answered.

OP, is that $50,000 or $20,000 or whatever the amount you need for just the first year of boarding school? Or are you going to need that same amount (or more) in subsequent years?

Asking because it is going to be difficult enough to raise that amount of money in one summer (as others have pointed out), but if you have to do it EVERY YEAR, you are going to get burned out fast. And esp. so if you are having to spend your summers working like a dog while all your (wealthier) classmates are off horse showing on the A circuit or touring Europe or yachting around the Greek Isles with their families. And even more so if you are having to study and attend classes during the summer to try to catch up academically to your peers.

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