Last night, my teenage daughter spread her work out all over our dining room table so she could study. This is nothing new. But, it makes it a little difficult for her father and me to watch anything since our tiny family room is not only adjacent, but connected by a pass-through in the wall between.
This makes my husband frustrated, which is also nothing new.
I see his point. My daughter's bedroom is the largest one in the house, fully equipped with everything said young person might need. It has not one but two desks, arranged in an "L" to facilitate both homework and electronics usage. The surface of these desks is a lovely golden oak, but rarely visible thanks to piles of homework, textbooks, dressage tests, entry forms, concert tickets, photographs, catalogs and magazines. And there's the rub. Her desk might be more conducive to study if it weren't so conducive to every other thing. When she needs to clear her head, it's generally too late to clear the desk.
Consequently, the dining room becomes her study hall.
As I said, I do see my husband's point. But, I support my daughter anyway, because I think studying trumps pretty much anything we might choose to watch. Last night, it was Mr. Selfridge on PBS. We kept the volume down and when one of our pre-show predictions came to pass, we silently fist-bumped rather than exclaim satisfaction out loud. Our proximity meant that any requested study aids were procured in rapid haste. Apparently, AP Bio goes down a lot easier with chocolate chips and "Popcorners" and orange soda.
AP Bio, which she is taking for four hours this morning, is my daughter's last exam. Her final final, if you will. All of her courses except AP Bio finished nearly three weeks ago. When she gets home midday, she is done, done, done.
Wow.
Chances are, she will never again study on our dining room table. Her dorm room, most likely; the campus library, probably ... but not our dining room table. And, that table has seen some action.
I can't count how many posterboards, dioramas, science fair and art projects have been carefully constructed there. Some stand out, like her biography of George Washington, a presentation on gypsum (that would be alabaster to you and me), a shadow box of Paul Revere's ride, and a model of ancient Greece's Erechtheion, complete with statues of goddesses made by spraying toga-clad Barbie dolls with Rust-Oleum American Accents Stone Spray.
She and I read Romeo and Juliet together there for freshman Honors English, switching parts scene-by-scene. That same year, we read Homer's epic poem The Odyssey. Longer (and less fun) than R&J, it was nevertheless time well spent and certainly helped her score a better grade from a notoriously difficult teacher. So that was a happy ending all around.
For the past four years, my daughter has taken over the dining room for virtually every mid-term and final, a handful of APs, SAT and ACT prep, and even her college application essays. It kept her focused and reassured me that she was actually hitting whatever books she needed to hit without being too distracted by incoming texts. On many recent nights, we've headed up to bed while she and her work remained downstairs.
But, like so many other things, large and small, these days ... her late night sessions are over.
Now, and for the foreseeable future, we have our dining room back. We can "Whoop!" and high-five and watch TV as loud as we want. And, I won't wake up in the morning to a table cluttered with sticky notes — or sticky snacks.
And no matter how melancholy I may be about the changes we go through, I can console myself with the fact that my daughter is off on a wonderful new adventure. In fact, those afternoons and evenings (and even wee-hour-in-the-mornings) paid off handsomely.
And that's another happy ending all around.
If you've enjoyed this post, I invite you to order the book Lovin' the Alien here.
Yesterday, I had one of those bittersweet parenting moments. (We're at "high school graduation minus eight weeks" now — I'm expecting a lot of these in my immediate future.) Yesterday, I did something for the last time. And, for a change, I actually realized it. All right, not right at that moment; it was about five minutes later, but still ...
Yesterday, I made my last school lunch.
"Whoa."
Yesterday was my teenage daughter's final day of regular classes. We have April break next week, then she will only attend first-period AP Bio each day before heading off for her senior project internship.
Thus, the last lunch.
I repeat, "Whoa."
To put this in perspective, my daughter has been going to school full-time since she was three-going-on-four. If we think about 180 days per year for 15 years, minus maybe 10% for half-days, that's ...
Well, that's ...
Um, that's ...
That's a sh*tload of lunches.
Starting in preschool and all through elementary, middle and high, I dutifully packed a lunch more days than not. We went through many lunchboxes (Power Puff Girls, Brady Bunch, Nightmare Before Christmas, a personalized cooler-pack from L.L. Bean). The first few years, her lunch of choice revolved around a basic food group: the chicken nugget. Eventually, she was willing to bring sandwiches and wraps. A few years ago, she graduated to salads.
Apparently, I made a mean lunch salad because she used to sell my salad services for $5 to some of her friends. It didn't make that big a difference to me, just had to chop extra lettuce and extra chicken breast, shell an extra handful of edamame, sprinkle some extra cheese, fill an extra container with extra vidalia onion dressing.
With all that "extra" work on my part, who do you think got the $5?
Here's a clue. Not me.
Nevertheless, like some of her other entrepreneurial efforts, the salad business quickly fell by the wayside.
Making lunch has never been a particularly special part of my day, more like a mindless ritual. It takes about 20 minutes or so and I try to make each one creative and relatively healthy. In addition to the main course (be that one of my famous salads or a more pedestrian sandwich), I include fruit, a snack-size bag of something crunchy (and, I admit, decidedly un-healthy — like Cheese Puffs), a sports bottle of water, and a small treat. My daughter (like her lovin' mama) has a sweet tooth. I only recently discovered that in addition to the dessert I was giving her, she also bought cookies at the cafeteria.
So much for my relatively healthy lunches.
These cookies, allegedly "the only edible thing" they serve, are oversized, with chocolate chips or M&Ms. They cost $1.
Yesterday, my daughter treated herself to two of them.
After all, it was her last lunch.
If you've enjoyed this post, I invite you to order the book Lovin' the Alien here.
Lately, my teenage daughter has been complaining that she isn't having much of a summer. I have a mixed reaction to this.
On the one hand, I want to say "Welcome to my world, princess." My work doesn't stop over July and August. In fact, many of my ad agency's clients want their marketing campaigns out in September, so we are typically extra busy at this time. If there does happen to be a lull, I don't enjoy it because I'm too worried about grownup things like income and revenue, mortgage, retirement and college savings.
On the other hand, I have to concede that my daughter has a point. With what felt like countless snow days (six in reality), she was still in school, finishing classes and taking final exams, until the bitter end of June. She started one of her jobs, counseling at an equestrian camp, the very next day. She's had horse shows nearly every weekend, some of them out of state. These are all good things, but it's been too much.
And, speaking of too much, what a perfect segue to the point of this post.
My daughter, and every other high school student I know, has too much summer homework.
She has to read Heart of Darkness for Honors English. (Not too long but a guaranteed snore-fest.) She has to read A Brilliant Solution by Carol Berkin and write a paper on it, plus analyze two essays on Locke and Hobbes for Civics. And, finally, she has to read and take copious notes on chapters of her larger-than-life AP Bio textbook.
We weren't exactly blindsided by the assignments. And, this is nothing new for her; in fact, I've written about this before. But it still boggles my mind. I went to a super competitive high school and an elite university. I can only remember one summer assignment from either distinguished institution.
We were asked to read the novel 1984 prior to starting college. We would be the class of 1984, so someone thought it would be a good choice and would give us a shared literary experience to discuss during freshman orientation week. I had already read it in ninth grade, but I dutifully re-read it (Can you say "geek?"). Apparently, I was in a distinct minority. I think just two of the ten kids in my orientation group had bothered to read it at all.
Today, most high schools assign work in an attempt to reverse what's referred to as the "summer brain drain." Teachers will tell you (and research and test scores support it) that students lose as much as six weeks of learning when they shut down for the year. So, much of every fall semester is taken up with re-teaching what was taught the previous spring. There is definitely a strong case for continued learning.
But, and I really want to type BUT here, just because something makes sense in theory doesn't mean it will play out in reality. Since when do teenagers automatically buy-in to what's good for them? Here are just some of the issues as I see them ...
Teenagers are excellent at procrastination. I think it's the very odd over-achiever who actually starts a summer assignment at the start of summer.
The assignments are long and dull and dry. My daughter and her peers would be far happier to pick up a book if it was actually interesting or entertaining.
There's virtually no support from the teachers. Don't get me wrong, each of my daughter's instructors has posted his or her email address and invited questions and comments from the students. But I'm guessing that very few (or none) of said students are taking them up on it.
Summer homework takes teens away from other important activities. A lot of teenagers, including my daughter, work or volunteer. With better weather and more discretionary time, the summer months should also be used for socializing and physical activity.
And, perhaps, most importantly ...
Year-round schoolwork means year-round stress. Even though my daughter still hasn't started her assignments, they've been on her mind. And, not in a good way. Junior year was stressful enough, believe me.
A break would have been welcomed and deserved. By me, as well as by my daughter.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
