Sunday, November 23, 2008

Too Much Today (& What Else Is New?)

Today was the second open house at Catlin Gabel, the school we're applying to for Ellie for next fall.

Last Sunday's open house focused on Catlin's middle and upper schools. Today's open house was all about Catlin's beginning (preschool & kindergarten) and lower schools.

It was amazing, just like last year. The science teacher especially was just incredible, as was the head teacher of the pre-kindergarten class. It's the kind of place that makes me wish I could be a kid again and grow up a second time around -- something I never imagined I would ever think before I discovered Catlin a couple years ago.

But oh, it's a challenge to get through days like this. I'm so worn out that I don't know how many days it will take me to recover.

Is it worth it?

Well, I hope so.

Meanwhile, I need to start whittling down the essays for Ellie's application. I'm up to about 3,000 words (8 pages) and, when I pressed her about maximum length, the director of admissions said, "Six pages is a lot." So now my goal is to get it down to five pages.

(The head of the lower school tried to reassure me not to worry about the length, until I told our first draft was at 8.5 pages, and then she laughed and agreed I needed some editing!)

Time for a couple rounds of my mentor's 10 percent rule, I'm thinking ...

(When Pete M. would edit our enterprise copy -- or any copy, really -- he always stressed that no matter how good the copy was, it would be better if 10 percent of the words were cut. And typically, we did two or three rounds of that. Painful? Always. But almost every time he was right, and the copy was better for being shortened.)


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