My hair stylist, Bobbi, told me that her son called her the other day in a state of excitement to brag about his daughter. He proudly announced, "I know all parents think their children are geniuses, but ..." Bobbi interrupted to say, "Oh, I never thought that." I may be as fond and deluded as the next parent ('ceptin' Bobbi) about my spawn, but I think my boy Daniel is just the bomb diggity.
He is so unassuming and self-effacing that we sometimes overlook all that he is achieving. He is a straight A student in one of the most difficult programs (engineering physics) at one of the most challenging schools with one of the most crushing workloads in the nation (Mines.) The average incoming ACT of Mines students is now 32, they seem to be an extremely studious bunch, and yet the average GPA is just under 3.0, which illustrates the arduous nature of the coursework. Daniel has been involved in researching smart lasers for the past year or so. In the midst of his last set of finals, he put together a paper for publication. Apparently he's the lead author. I had thought he was just a flunky for a professor who was driving the project, but it appears he's managing it himself and doing most of the creative work. As of this spring semester, his research hours have been increased to eight per week (he gets paid, I think, $14 per hour, which will give him a nice little allowance, as well as giving him some valuable experience.) Additionally, he's already taking graduate level classes. He excelled on the verbal and quantitative sections of the GRE. In fact, his numbers would be above average for a Ph.D. candidate in math, physics, or engineering at any of the Ivies, Stanford, or MIT. He has never taken an ACT or SAT before because he started at community college, was recruited into UCCS, and then applied as a transfer to Mines, and Mines only looks at one thing for transfer students -- their academic transcripts. He plans to take a masters at Mines next, after which he'll perhaps apply to Ph.D. programs. He's not sure yet what he wants to study for his masters. Options seem to be applied physics, optics/lasers, and electrical engineering (with or without some additional computer science.) The latter would set him up well for a career in robotics. He has also talked about astrophysics, although there seem to be more career opportunities in engineering than in physics research.
In addition to being so very smart, he's incredibly humble, sweet, kind, and sensitive. How did I get so lucky as to have a son like this?
I went up to Golden with him today to help him move into a two-bedroom apartment at Mines Park, an apartment complex run by the Colorado School of Mines. It's an attractive complex of two- and three-story buildings, spread out with lots of open space and plenty of parking, and it's set up against the foothills. He will share it with another student, Sam. Yesterday we borrowed Paige's Toyota Sienna to take up some of his furniture. We moved in a chest of drawers and a futon that converts into a queen-sized bed. Thankfully the room has a built-in desk with good lighting and some shelves, so we were able to bring home the rickety little desk he was using last year. Today we went up with a new desk chair, a microwave oven, some cleaning supplies, and some other household items.
Once we had everything set up, we went out to Romano's Macaroni Grill for dinner. On our way home, we picked up some food. Daniel will probably get most of his meals at the dining hall, which is just a 5 minute walk away, but he has plenty of snacks on hand and should never go hungry. His apartment is cozy and comfortable. I think he'll be happy there:-)
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