Acceptance letters

Navigating College Admission Letters

Written By Dawn Smith

Soon, college letters will hit students’ inboxes and reveal what’s ahead for the next few years. It’s an emotionally confusing time for everyone, mixed with pride, wistfulness, excitement and anxiety. One way to steady the college-bound ship is to learn about the admissions letter process and what to do after the letters arrive.

When to Expect College Letters

Every school is different, so checking date information directly from its website is essential. Most colleges share their decisions through email and student portals. Some even send texts! Mailed letters aren’t as popular, but some arrive as congratulatory tokens after electronic notification.

  • Early decision: Applications are usually due in early November, and the student receives an answer in December, January or February.
  • Regular decision: February is often the month regular decision applications are due, and decisions are released mid-March through early April.
  • Waitlist decision: Students can find out as late as Aug. 1 because the traditional cut-off date for accepted students to decide is May 1.

One of three options is typically revealed when your student opens their college letters:

  • Acceptance: Yay! Your student has worked so hard, and you’ve probably added lots of support hours, too, so enjoy those sweet, Congratulations, You’re In! Don’t be surprised if a series of recruiting letters, invitations to campus and swag appears. The college knows your kid is awesome and wants to secure their official “yes!” ASAP. Now is the time to ask detailed questions about financial aid, campus life or other topics that help your child decide to accept or decline.
  • Waitlist: A waitlist offer might not have been what your student hoped for, but sometimes it’s an option. The college is still considering the application but is probably waiting until May 1 to see how many students claim their acceptance. However, your child should make other plans and not depend on a waitlist acceptance. If your student wants to pursue the waitlist, ensure they follow every detail the college expects, like a continued letter of interest or updated GPA and test scores. Talk with your senior about what it feels like to be waitlisted by a college vs. earning an enthusiastic acceptance from another. Every student wants to feel wanted, and knowing a college is all in for your student can be a helpful element in deciding what to do next.
  • Denial: College application denials are not a personal rejection or a measure of your student’s self-worth. They result from specific formulas colleges use to create a class of students that meets their needs for the year. It’s normal for your student to feel disappointed, but encourage them to focus on the colleges that did offer acceptances and begin to plan for life there. Many, many students realize after a semester or two that second and third choice schools were the best fit.

After the Letters Arrive

Learn the School’s Financial Aid Process

Everyone should discuss payment details before finalizing your student’s college choice. Hopefully, your family strategized how college would be paid for before applications were sent. Now, you can compare payment options like merit awards, scholarships, grants, the GI Bill and traditional student loans.

Review financial aid offers from colleges and carefully examine the details. Compare aid packages from each school and determine if those point to an obvious choice. It’s hard to pass on free tuition, even if it doesn’t come from your student’s top school. Call the financial aid office to clarify any details you’re unsure of.

GI Bill 101

If the GI Bill (or other VA benefits) will fund tuition, read these blogs to help you navigate the process.

Additional Tips for Military Students

  • Leverage military-connected resources. Take advantage of military-specific benefits and programs, like the Yellow Ribbon Program, to help fund college.
  • Build a strong support network. When your child arrives on campus, encourage them to connect with other military-related students and organizations, including the veterans/military offices.

It’s OK for everyone to feel a little off balance waiting for college letters. What’s important is that your student feels supported throughout the last anxiety-ridden days of waiting. Have faith that the result will be the best location for your student’s happiness.

Lizann running

Being Resilient Is More Than Being Strong

Written By Lizann Lightfoot

The word “resilience” is a dirty word in the military community. Too often, it’s used as an unhelpful band-aid to cover the challenges of military life. Military spouses are told it will be easy to adjust to moving every three years because they are “resilient.” We are told not to worry about military kids losing friends or changing schools, because they are “so resilient.” There’s a whole generation of military spouses who — after two decades of war — are tired of being praised for their resilience and instead want meaningful help.

The problem with resilience is that it’s not a passive trait that military families are born with. At no point does the military automatically assign us a resilient gene. Telling someone to be resilient does not solve their problem or ease their pain. Praising someone for being resilient doesn’t make their challenges any easier to face. It’s this misunderstanding that causes people to bristle when they hear the word in conversations.

The problem comes because resilience is often equated with strength. However, these words are not synonyms. Being strong does not make you immune to pain. Even strong people have bad days and painful experiences or emotions. If a rock were placed in the middle of a rushing river, we could tell it to “stay strong!” but it would still be gradually worn away by the passing water. Too many military spouses have felt like that rock in the middle of the stream, trying to hold their place while powerful forces wear them down.

Instead, everyone needs to understand that resilience is a skill. Resilience is something you become only after effort, hard work, painful challenges and difficult trauma. Resilience is the result of painful growth. Being resilient does not mean someone never fails. Instead, it’s a sign that they have fallen many times and have learned to pick themselves up, to adjust and arrange things differently in the future.

While military families often demonstrate resilience, it’s important to understand that military life doesn’t magically become OK because families are resilient. Instead, it is their ability to adapt and become resilient that has allowed them to be OK with this lifestyle.

So, if it’s no longer useful to challenge military families to “just be resilient,” what message would be more helpful?

Lizann and her family

Here are four useful things to tell a military family (and all are better than asking them to be resilient):

  1. Build a strong support system. Instead of praising military families for strength, stoicism and rugged independence, let’s instead prepare them for the reality that no one gets through this challenging lifestyle alone. We all need a supportive network — in both our military and civilian communities — to help us get through the unexpected logistical and emotional challenges of the military. The earlier spouses are invited into a healthy support network and shown the power of a supportive community, the sooner they’ll learn to reach out and build a new network for themselves every time they move. This will have a long-lasting impact on their ability to weather military challenges.
  2. Develop healthy coping strategies. In military life, families cannot avoid huge disruptions like deployments, PCS moves or temporary separations from their service member. Families can practice healthy habits, mindsets and ways to work through these challenges. Knowing what routines and coping strategies work best for you or your children will make something like a PCS move feel a lot easier to handle.
  3. Nurture a healthy lifestyle. You don’t need an extreme diet and workout routine to have a healthy lifestyle. Every military family member should strive for daily routines that make them physically strong and mentally tough. Physical activity, regular meals and consistent sleep all play a role in your emotional health. Practice making small changes until you feel like the best version of yourself, prepared to handle whatever the military throws your way.
  4. Intentionally practice self-care. The most “resilient” military spouses are those who have identified their own interests and are able to follow their own passions throughout the winding paths of their military journey. Find the habits and hobbies that nourish you and recharge your batteries after a difficult day. Self-care doesn’t need to be expensive or time-consuming activities. Instead, it should be small moments you can look forward to each day or each week because they bring joy and gratitude to your routine.

Instead of expecting military spouses to suffer difficulties without complaint, we should instead speak about the value of building a support system, developing healthy coping strategies, having a healthy lifestyle and practicing self-care. These small changes can have an overall healing and strengthening effect.

Tanecia’s husband and children outside

A Day in the Life

Written By Tanecia Favors

When I hear the phrase “a day in the life” I think of someone who shares what a typical day looks like for them. You know the whole “wake up at 5:45 a.m., work out, make coffee, take a few minutes for themselves before they hit the ground running” type of day. Outside of gearing up for deployments, I have no real everyday routine that would make up a day in the life of a military spouse.

My days look like any other person’s whose life mimics that of a wife, mother, homemaker, entrepreneur, nurse, etc. The list can go on and on. I can tell you that “a day in the life” for this military spouse includes constantly thinking, “Oh, I got this,” only to then think that’s not true. “I definitely don’t have this.”

As military spouses we’re conditioned to “expect the unexpected.” Do we really live our everyday lives like this? For me, the answer is no. If I did, there wouldn’t be any room to experience the joys that show up regularly in the mundane day-to-day routines. Don’t get me wrong, the thought is always there on the back burner, but that’s life, right? The day I want to share with you had the potential to be like any other day of shore duty. Instead, it proved to be one of those days that remind you that you have something on the back burner. I know that whether you are a seasoned spouse or a new-to-this-life spouse, you can relate. Simply because this could be, will be or has been a day in any military spouse’s life.

Every morning starts off the same for us lately. I roll over to silence that horrible alarm that lets me know another day has come too early. I briefly remember the hubs kissing me on the cheek as he headed out the door sometime before the sun came up. I sit on the side of the bed and listen to see if either of our toddlers are awake, and I hear nothing. The silence tells me I might have a few minutes to myself if the floor doesn’t creak as I walk around the room. I play my children’s wake-up playlists on their devices in their room. Just as I was turning the lights on and opening the blinds in my middle child’s room, my cell phone rings. I ignore it because it’s early in the morning and I’m unavailable until at least 9 a.m. As I’m picking out clothes for the day, my phone rings again and I’m like, “OK, maybe it’s something important.” I pick it up just in time to see “My David” (how the hubs is saved in my phone).

I answer and immediately ask is he OK before he can even say hello. He says, “Yes, but are you sitting down?” My heart sinks, and I freeze as I ask, “No, why?” He replies with three words. Words that we have all heard in some variation or another, “I got orders.”

I walk back into my room and sit on the edge of the bed. He asks if I’m OK, and I say, “Depends on the orders.” He confirms my fears. He tells me he is returning to sea. A piece of me knew it was a possibility when retirement was taken off the table (don’t even ask). But for it to be a reality, our reality, my reality, just hit me harder than I thought.

We got off the phone, and I continued my morning routine with the toddlers. I did a good job of holding it together; at least I thought I was doing a good job. About halfway home after dropping my children off at daycare, I felt my chest tighten, a lump build in my throat and my eyes started to water. It hit me that my husband, my partner, the person I had finally let myself get used to being home every day for forever was in fact on a timetable to leave me, to be and do “all the things” on my own.

It hit me that I had allowed myself to be spoiled by him being home every day. I could call him whenever I wanted. I could make all the plans in the world, and he was in a place that we could do them all. Now I have to reign in my expectations and get back in the mindset of “duty days” and “deployments.” I cried for what seemed like forever, and my hubs must have felt my heart breaking because he texted asking if I needed him to come home, and I said, “Yes, please.”

He was home not even half an hour later for me to fall into his arms. I gathered myself, and the rest of the day went as normally as it could. We picked up the kids from daycare, played outside in the front yard before dinner, did baths, brushed teeth and read books before we settled onto the couch to watch our favorite TV show together. That was the beginning of the countdown to my new normal, or maybe normal, as it was amazing to have such a great shore duty. Now it’s back to the regular Navy.

I will say we’re making the most of the last few days we have left together as a family of five. If you find yourself having hard days like this, just make the most of the days you have when y’all are together. We know those are the memories that get us through the tough days of this military spouse life.

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