Geoff got released from his academic/clinical program last week.
Academically, he was doing great, but he had a couple of missteps and some issues with evaluations, and because of that, he failed the clinical portion of things.
They let him know last Thursday and he's been an outright mess ever since.
Can't say as I blame him. I'm kind of a mess too.
Things were going incredibly well, but, sometimes there are issues with Geoff and his learning disability, and they reared their big ugly heads and everything got derailed. And here we are.
Unlike when the children were younger, I would write long and detailed descriptions of the goings on in life. Here now, it's not my story to tell. It's his.
But.
As his mom, as any mom? I'm really sad. I'm deeply disappointed.
In him a little bit; in the school a lot a bit. I think he got a screwed in some ways, and some of it is because of Covid.... I think the school could have done more to prevent this from happening. But in the end, it belongs to Geoff.
I think they sucked at communicating with him. And as he has a communications based learning disorder, communication is key. And I'm not satisfied after talking with a few people so far.
Geoff and I had a meeting with the chair of the department on Tuesday after I spent repeated days trying to get someone to talk to me. Thankfully I have a good friend who understands how these things work, who works with student success, and she told me the magic word of "FERPA" to get permission for the school to talk to me. It's like Academic HIPPA. Frustratingly, they couldn't return my emails or acknowledge that I was even contacting them because reasons. Once I said FERPA, they contacted Geoff and had him to fill out a form to give me permission be talked to.
Frustrating beyond imagination. I can't imagine anyone who doesn't know how to play the game with this getting through anything.
I left somewhat dissatisfied, even though she was very nice and encouraged him to other programs.
We have a meeting tomorrow morning with his academic advisor/accommodations director. He's been the go-to for Geoff to get advice and guidance through this whole academic process. He's a good person. I like him.
There are options. There are always options. Geoff can do things. But Geoff is about as defeated as I've ever seen him. The picture above is from him just crawling into my bed, not to be with me but to be with Phineas.
We're encouraging him to pivot, think about where to go next. It's so hard to turn your head and look for another path, or another option, when you're just looking at the floor and you cannot move.
I was drawn, once again, to Frank Turner, and his song "Don't Worry."
Please watch that video. Please listen to him. Hear his words. I sent it to Geoff but "it's not my style."
Okay. But still. Hear what Frank has to say. Like, I want Frank to just come to our house with a guitar, and sit Geoff down, and sing into his face. This is as close as I'm going to get that. And to be honest, this song is going to help me too going forward.
So, we are dealing with this sadness, with this complete implosion of his plans. This time next year we'd hoped, Geoff hoped, that he would be having a full time job, his own apartment. He was on target for graduation in August of 2022. And now a dream deferred... is not a dream denied, to misquote the famous Civil Rights credo.
As for Geoff, he has no desire to put a new plan in place.
If nothing else in life, after twenty years of this blog, you've seen our family adjust, do that "pivot," and make things work. We have gotten good at this. The unexpected. We say when mom breaks her hip 3 weeks after we move to DC, "of course you did." And we work with the flow.
Nothing is a showstopper for us. If anything, we wait for the show to get the curtain fixed or the lighting figured out or the fire alarm to clear and the audience to come back in, and the show goes on.
So this is wild time for us. A hard week. A very hard week. Pile on three of the wildest site launches I've done, with problems, issues, and some horrible missteps, it's been rough.
We've gotten through worse, right?
We'll get through this. Pray for us, for our strength, and for The Boy. Especially.
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