New Year, Same Old Stuff

So with the new year, people love to make resolutions, reflect on the past year, and paln for the future.

Katie however, is doing none of that. She is simply sitting there. We talked with our family rep last night, and they haven't been able to change her groups yet due to some issues with the group they were going to put her in, so now they are looking at another one. But she has done absolutely nothing at all in the past three weeks, simply waiting for a 'fresh start'. She doesn't seem to realize that in life there aren't any 'do-overs', no one truly gets a fresh start.

As much as a new group will be different, she is the same. And all the girls, from all the groups, know about her. There is enough movement, and the upper level girls doing service work in other groups than their own, so she isn't escaping her past.

She stayed out of Orange, but has done nothing. She says she is working on her homework for the next seminar, but to be eligible to go to the next seminar she has to first achieve level 3, and right now I wonder if that will EVER happen.

When we started this, I was first wondering how long it would take her to graduate, and what we need to change in our home when she returns. Now I'm really questioning if she ever will graduate, if she will even make the next seminar. And I worry a lot about the money, if we can get the next loan, how long we can keep her there, and in the end if she continues to choose not to do anything will this be worth my working for the next 30 years to pay off.

And I'm also frustrated with the constant barrage of student loan consolidation letters. I do plan to consolidate the loans - but only when I have ALL of them in - it doesn't make sense to do it before then, since you can only do it once (or so the law used to be, and I don't know if it has changed).

On the brighter side (if there is one today), I have requested to staff the next Discovery and Focus seminars in Chicago. Right now I'm extremely frustrated and not working my own program, and the fact that we won't be going to any more seminars until May isn't helping, so I figure this will. Since I've done one, I'm not really worried about doing it again, and I really think it will be cool to follow a group from Discovery through Focus into Keys (and not only that, but then perhaps I will actually have some people I know there when I graduate in May - isn't that selfish of me :-) !). Diane isn't going to staff, but she may go with me, though I think that her just sitting in the hotel for three and four days would be kind of a waste, as I won't have any time at all to do anything with her, since you are busy from 9 am to midnight every day. However I think she is a bit worried about me driving home afterward alone when I'm tired.

One last note - they put up new pictures of all the groups, and Katie looks pretty good in hers (much better than the last one) - and like she has lost even more weight, which is also great.