Je me souviens ...
My teenage daughter used to really like French.
My husband and I have both been known to butcher said beautiful romance language. (At a hotel on the Riviera, my spouse once told the concierge that the car left its key in our room but, comme toujours, he made up for what he lacked in grammar with his enthusiasm.) When my daughter was little, we used French when we didn't want her to know what we were saying. She was particularly gleeful when her own studies (in eighth grade or so) surpassed our sorry attempts.
So much for our secret language.
My daughter enjoyed middle school French. She certainly enjoyed our mother-daughter trip to Paris. We visited Sacre Couer and the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Versailles (my favorite) and the Catacombs (hers).
We took a late night boat ride along the Seine, ate crepes and croissants, and my daughter conducted a thorough if not exactly scientific taste test of all the onion soup gratinée of the city. Throughout, we gamely exercised our skills françaises.
But, some time later in high school, between French 3 and French 4, la perle lost its sheen. There was a tremendous jump between the expectations of those two levels. They went from taking vocabulary tests (my daughter has always been a crack memorizer) to reading entire novels and doing oral presentations in class (not her favorite thing, regardless of the language).
She qualified for AP French but responded with a definitive, "Non, merci."
Those weren't her exact words, but you get the general purpose and intent.
In just a few months (mon dieu!), she'll head off to college. Although she has already declared her Equine Business major, she is enrolled in a liberal arts curriculum and is expected to fulfill a language requirement. This generated some dinner table discussion.
I suggested that she return to French, ensuring her that, as I found at my own alma mater, college courses would be much better than high school.
My husband also suggested that she return to French, with the helpful hint that if she dropped down a couple of levels, it would be very easy to score an "A."
My daughter had a different idea.
"I'm going to take American Sign Language," she told us.
Wow.
This was a different (and completely valid it turns out) solution. In fact, it may even come in very handy because I'm hoping that along with her Equine Business courses, she'll take some classes in Therapeutic Riding. Horses and horsemanship have proven very beneficial for riders with all sorts of disabilities and impairments. How amazing it would be if all of her interests and academic pursuits converged into something so special and important.
Then again, maybe it's just a creative solution to get out of a foreign language requirement.
Either way, it's her choice, n'est-ce pas?
Bien sûr.
If you've enjoyed this post, I invite you to order the book Lovin' the Alien here.
When teenagers stress, it's tempting to pooh-pooh the whole thing. How often have I found myself dismissing a complaint with some condescending parental retort? Answer: a lot.
"Oh, you think you're tired? Try being in my shoes." This is typically followed by a litany of middle-aged woes. (Don't worry, I'll spare you.) Somehow, we assume that because these younger people have a free place to live (not to mention, smartphones and North Face jackets, and in our case, an actual horse), they have no worries.
I've changed my tune lately. As high school draws to a close, I wonder how my daughter and her classmates will look back on it. Will they cherish the hours spent studying for AP tests, filling out the common app, or trying to secure enough community service hours (doing something, let's face it, that they probably don't give a shit about)?
There seems to be a lot less fun than there should be.
These days, anyone who assumes teenagers have time on their hands and nothing on their minds is just plain wrong. They are under tremendous pressure to take the right classes, get the right grades, apply to the right colleges. And, that 's just academics.
Here are some things teens worry about:
1. Their peers
Mean girls are nothing new (there were mean girls even back in the dark ages, when I went to high school). But, digital media adds a new element and a whole new dimension of meanness. If you were unpopular or bullied back in the 1970s, you could leave it at school. Go home, shut your door, put on Elton John's "Good-bye Yellow Brick Road." These days, your troubles follow you home, compliments of group texts, Instagrams and Tumblr. And, even if you're not a victim of bullying, per se, social media can make you miserable. Remember when you couldn't go to the amusement park because you had to work? Well, apparently all your friends went without you — and they're having a wonderful time.
2. Sex
Like everything else, sex is more complicated than it used to be. There are entirely new concepts around which today's teens have to navigate. Like "sexting," "friends with benefits," "virginity pledges," and every parent's worst nightmare: Tinder. Some kids move too quickly, while others seem paralyzed. (Some parents buy their daughter a horse and with it the knowledge that she's at the stable all day every day with nary a randy teen boy in sight.)
3. Drugs and booze and cigarettes and, and, and ...
Whether they're experimenting themselves or watching their friends, traditional teenage bad behavior causes a lot of stress. In addition to illicit substances, more and more teens are using prescription meds — they're cheap and easy to come by. In fact, too many teens abuse drugs they've been prescribed themselves, for anxiety, depression, ADHD, and sports injuries.
4. School
I talked about it above, but I can't underscore it enough. Today's teens have too much homework. Summers, vacation weeks, it doesn't matter. In our quest to raise the quality of education, we are ignoring the value of down-time. The kids are burned out. This week is February break and since we returned home Sunday, my daughter has been studying AP Bio pretty much non-stop. And, the weekend itself was a college visit, so there was inherent stress there as well.
Which leads me to ...
5. The future
At a different, also recent, college visit, an academic dean told us that she encourages freshmen not to declare a major right away. This was refreshing, but met with skepticism by most of the parents assembled. There is tremendous pressure for students to already know their major, their post-graduate plans, their career path. They need to be focused and driven. And countless articles analyzing the R.O.I. (that's return-on-investment) of various institutions really doesn't help. What about going to college and trying something new? Or learning about yourself? Or falling in love?
It's
difficult to measure the R.O.I. of these things. But, they are just as
important. And, I can't help wondering, what happens when this
generation of über-focused, ultra-motivated young people suddenly realizes that their youth was hijacked? And, botox aside, they ain't getting it back.
I'm reminded of an anecdote that's often attributed to John Lennon. "When
I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I
wrote down 'happy.' They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I
told them they didn’t understand life."
If you've enjoyed this post, I invite you to order the book Lovin' the Alien here.
We are really in the home stretch now. My daughter's second quarter report card was released yesterday (she managed to keep her grades up despite a growing desire to be done with high school forever — or longer if that's possible). She has one more quarter of regular courses left, then ... Senior Project.
(With an AP Bio test squeezed in there somewhere.)
You may have noticed that I initial cap'd the words Senior and Project. That's because it is very much a proper noun. Senior Project. Senior Project. SENIOR PROJECT! It's something to aspire to, to revere, to regard with awe. Senior Project is a legend that you hear about when you start as a freshman. It offers fantastically adult promises — like open campus, no classes, and an internship.
The internship must be unpaid, but other than that, the field is fairly open. Some kids volunteer in hospitals or as teachers' aids. Some work in offices or libraries. You could build with habitat for humanity or work in a soup kitchen or community garden. My daughter will no doubt find (yet another) opportunity to work with horses.
For a while there, my daughter and her classmates thought the very existence of Senior Project might be in jeopardy. When she was a sophomore, a new principal came in and made seemingly countless, wide-reaching changes, eliminating many of the squishier bits of how the school had been run and adding rules, regulations, processes and procedures. Senior Project was in his cross-hairs for a while, and the underclassmen held their collective breath. Whether someone made a solid case for it (thank you, someone) or the principal ran out of steam or, perhaps more likely, he realized that the lunchroom is overcrowded and getting most of the seniors out of the building would be blessed cafeteria congestion relief ... who knows? The point is, here we are, Spring 2016.
And Senior Project is on!
The fact that one is a senior does not automatically guarantee that one may pursue a Senior Project. Mais non, mon ami. One must have a certain GPA, a limited number of absences, a spotless detention record. (Having earned detention is acceptable provided that said detention was actually fulfilled.)
And, even with the above criteria met, Senior Project is not a free-for-all six weeks of hooky. There are conditions and criteria. Each student must spend 40 hours a week (35, if they're still taking an AP class) at an approved internship under the supervision of an approved supervisor. He or she must secure a faculty mentor and check in with them on a regular basis. Participants have to keep a journal and then make a 5 or 10-minute presentation when the entire experience is over.
(After hearing all this at a Senior Project parents' meeting, I asked my daughter if it might not be easier to just stay and finish her courses. She looked at me like I had two heads and came from the planet Zot. It's a look she's quite good at; she's had years of practice.)
The paperwork is due this week. Another thing my daughter is very very good at is procrastination. (Of course, she has competition there. Every mom I know boasts the same of her daughter or son.) So, I have no doubt that all of her forms will be turned in on time. Just barely.
Stay tuned. Coming up next: Senior Project, Part 2 "Getting The Internship."
If you've enjoyed this post, I invite you to order the book Lovin' the Alien here.
