Confined to Quarters
Just an update on the family here-- this week is J's last few follow-up doctor appointments, and so far all is well. We have one last appointment tomorrow with the surgeon, and I expect they'll clear him to go back to full activity. He is even eating normally again, and that alone is a great relief.
The latest drama is not major, exactly, but it has tied our weekends up in knots. For those who don't know her well, M is our academic superstar. She is currently first in her class of more than 500 juniors. She has an overall GPA of 4.59-- mostly due to the fact that she has taken a record number of honors classes since she entered high school. Now this has been an extraordinarily stressful thing at times because her workload is insane, complicated by the fact that time management is not one of M's gifts. And as a rather stubborn teen, she adamantly rejects advice from others on the subject. So at this point she has been living on an average of four hours of sleep for the last two and half years. (I think she managed 5-6 in junior high, but it wasn't much better.)
As part of her academic schedule, she has taken release-time seminary classes every year, but those don't earn her credits toward graduation. So she needed an extra credit. Rather than take a zero hour class, she opted to take two half credit art classes online. When she was planning her course schedule the counselor explained that she wouldn't be eligible to take an online class until she was a junior, so she filled out the forms for both classes when she was registering for her junior year classes in January of her sophomore year. Since she is our first high schooler (and we have had a devil of a time getting answers from her counseling department about certain things) we didn't realize that the minute I sent in the check for the online course they would enroll her immediately. M had no idea, so she didn't even try to get any answers about how to take these online classes until the very end of her sophomore year.
At which point she learned that she had already lost four months of the supposed year she would have to complete both classes. After some pleaded of her case to the teacher that runs the online courses, they gave her an extra whopping thirty days tacked onto the end.
Meaning both classes must be completed by March 8, 2019.
At first we didn't worry. The plan was for her to finish one class during summer break and the other during fall and winter breaks. But remember what I said about M having no time management? Yeah. She was not doing enough of the study lessons to stay on schedule for this plan, and I unfortunately took her word for it that she was "on track."
By December, after a semester with J in online school, I had a better idea of what questions to ask M (and I was starting to get worried, as she was getting closer to her March deadline and still hadn't finished one of the classes). The answer was not reassuring. She was "almost caught up to be on track" with Intro to Art and "way behind" in Art History.
This was a disaster. Not only would failing to finish both classes wreck her GPA, she would not meet the pre-req to take the Drawing and Painting class she has been anxiously awaiting for her senior year and worst of all, she would not have enough credits to graduate high school. (Does anyone else see the bleak humor in a girl with a 4.59 GPA not graduating from high school??? *insert maniacal laugh here*)
I got on her case and demanded that she spend every waking moment of Christmas break working on those classes. Instead, M spent almost all of her free time writing fan fiction and drawing some characters to enter an online contest.
Heaven grant me patience!
I intended to crack the hammer after Christmas, but then we ended up with J and his medical emergency turning life upside down. But once we got back into normal life a bit, I sat down with M and made her show me exactly how much work she had to get done in the next six weeks. It was appalling. After a lot of discussion with Terence (and my mom), we sat down with M and dropped the parenting bomb. Since she didn't seem capable of managing it on her own, in her own way, we were going to do it for her.
From now until March 8th, she has NO free time at home. I told her to treat it like she is studying for the bar exam. Every free minute is devoted to homework or the online classes. Period. And because she cannot seem to stay on task on the computer, I sit next to her ALL weekend. Last weekend I was a homework monitor for about twenty hours of online art. I kid you not. However, it's working. She finished her Intro to Art class and took the final this week. Now she can hunker down and tackle the Art History.
It's going to be a brutal slog. She is 69% complete in a course where she is already supposed to be 90% complete (if she was on track for a March 8th finish). If she does finish the course on time, Terence is rewarding her with a video game of her choice. If she does not, she has to personally cough up the $150 to retake the class. (And of course she'll have the natural consequence of a serious blow to her GPA and having to start it all over from scratch.)
Ah, the joys of parenting. I know it could be worse. But still, the last thing I'd planned for the month of February was auditing an Art History class. But we do what we have to do, right???
The latest drama is not major, exactly, but it has tied our weekends up in knots. For those who don't know her well, M is our academic superstar. She is currently first in her class of more than 500 juniors. She has an overall GPA of 4.59-- mostly due to the fact that she has taken a record number of honors classes since she entered high school. Now this has been an extraordinarily stressful thing at times because her workload is insane, complicated by the fact that time management is not one of M's gifts. And as a rather stubborn teen, she adamantly rejects advice from others on the subject. So at this point she has been living on an average of four hours of sleep for the last two and half years. (I think she managed 5-6 in junior high, but it wasn't much better.)
As part of her academic schedule, she has taken release-time seminary classes every year, but those don't earn her credits toward graduation. So she needed an extra credit. Rather than take a zero hour class, she opted to take two half credit art classes online. When she was planning her course schedule the counselor explained that she wouldn't be eligible to take an online class until she was a junior, so she filled out the forms for both classes when she was registering for her junior year classes in January of her sophomore year. Since she is our first high schooler (and we have had a devil of a time getting answers from her counseling department about certain things) we didn't realize that the minute I sent in the check for the online course they would enroll her immediately. M had no idea, so she didn't even try to get any answers about how to take these online classes until the very end of her sophomore year.
At which point she learned that she had already lost four months of the supposed year she would have to complete both classes. After some pleaded of her case to the teacher that runs the online courses, they gave her an extra whopping thirty days tacked onto the end.
Meaning both classes must be completed by March 8, 2019.
At first we didn't worry. The plan was for her to finish one class during summer break and the other during fall and winter breaks. But remember what I said about M having no time management? Yeah. She was not doing enough of the study lessons to stay on schedule for this plan, and I unfortunately took her word for it that she was "on track."
By December, after a semester with J in online school, I had a better idea of what questions to ask M (and I was starting to get worried, as she was getting closer to her March deadline and still hadn't finished one of the classes). The answer was not reassuring. She was "almost caught up to be on track" with Intro to Art and "way behind" in Art History.
This was a disaster. Not only would failing to finish both classes wreck her GPA, she would not meet the pre-req to take the Drawing and Painting class she has been anxiously awaiting for her senior year and worst of all, she would not have enough credits to graduate high school. (Does anyone else see the bleak humor in a girl with a 4.59 GPA not graduating from high school??? *insert maniacal laugh here*)
I got on her case and demanded that she spend every waking moment of Christmas break working on those classes. Instead, M spent almost all of her free time writing fan fiction and drawing some characters to enter an online contest.
Heaven grant me patience!
I intended to crack the hammer after Christmas, but then we ended up with J and his medical emergency turning life upside down. But once we got back into normal life a bit, I sat down with M and made her show me exactly how much work she had to get done in the next six weeks. It was appalling. After a lot of discussion with Terence (and my mom), we sat down with M and dropped the parenting bomb. Since she didn't seem capable of managing it on her own, in her own way, we were going to do it for her.
From now until March 8th, she has NO free time at home. I told her to treat it like she is studying for the bar exam. Every free minute is devoted to homework or the online classes. Period. And because she cannot seem to stay on task on the computer, I sit next to her ALL weekend. Last weekend I was a homework monitor for about twenty hours of online art. I kid you not. However, it's working. She finished her Intro to Art class and took the final this week. Now she can hunker down and tackle the Art History.
It's going to be a brutal slog. She is 69% complete in a course where she is already supposed to be 90% complete (if she was on track for a March 8th finish). If she does finish the course on time, Terence is rewarding her with a video game of her choice. If she does not, she has to personally cough up the $150 to retake the class. (And of course she'll have the natural consequence of a serious blow to her GPA and having to start it all over from scratch.)
Ah, the joys of parenting. I know it could be worse. But still, the last thing I'd planned for the month of February was auditing an Art History class. But we do what we have to do, right???
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