act

What a day.

I felt my first pang of wanting a drink in almost 5 weeks, tonight. And why? Jake was home at 5 after x country and after taking a half hour break, couldn't find his assignment pad. Upon thinking about it, he couldn't remember having it in his last classes. And the bad thing is, not all of his teachers put assignments on their websites. What would he do?? I was speechless and could only shrug in frustration. And so I saw him shove his shoes on and back to school he went. I could only hope that the classrooms were open at this hour. I was doubtful.

As I cut up veggies for a stir fry, I had the strong urge to go to the pantry, pull out a bottle and pour a glass. It was so interesting to observe myself and realize that this was my first, strong, emotional trigger: stress over the kids and their doing well. How many hundreds of times had I obliged?

30 minutes later, Jake was back. He had gone from class to class and even asked a janitor to open the door and he found the assignment pad in his Biology class. What a relief! But I still wasn't thrilled. What did you do for your last classes and where did you write down your assignments? Did you not realize then that you didn't have the pad? You have a system and you must maintain it, Jake. You write down assignments for each class in the same notepad, and you write NO HOMEWORK for each class when there is none. And if you can't find your notepad at a class, then you know you left it in the previous class! (He doesn't use a locker to keep things simple.) You have to be committed to staying on top of this, Jake, fastidiously so! It is the only way.

By the way, I asked just now. When you correct your math homework in class and get a wrong answer, do you do the problems again? Not all of the time. Well do you put the correct answer in so you can check yourself later?  Not all of the time, but I will tomorrow. I will get the correct answers tomorrow. You have a quiz on Thursday, Jake. I'm tired, Mom. Just a few minutes... look at the incorrect problems and find a new answer, have dad check it over and/or also get the correct answers tomorrow from the teacher. Whatever you don't get correct you can ask the teacher about immediately. After all, it's Wednesday tomorrow, and you don't want to be correcting those problems and trying to figure it out the night before the quiz....

I hate being a slave driver but on the other hand, he really cannot put off what he can do today. And he needs to hold himself to a certain standard. The competition is fierce out there and frankly, conscientious as he is, he does not work hard enough and needs to be actually taught and pushed to take his studies to the next level. He had overall a B+ average gpa last year. Just a notch up and it would be huge. He tests well, even brought home a 100% on a recent pop quiz in Biology, but he has to get his assignments in. All of them. Just that would be enough to get him into the 90s for almost all of his classes besides French, which is just plain hard for him.

Wishing him luck and hoping that I can be just the right mix of positive and negative, helpful and hands off in hopes that he can get his act together.