ACT's or Bust

My 16 year old son, Brandon, who is a junior in high school, is taking his ACT’s today. He seemed to be pretty nervous about them last night. He actually came and slept with me and his little brother because he thought he was going to have trouble sleeping. (This meant I had a full bed, which included the puppy, so I didn’t get a great night’s sleep.) I’m really hoping he does OK, but he has some pretty high expectations for himself and I don’t want him to become discouraged and give up if he doesn’t do well.

            It’s not that I don’t think he’ll do well, it’s just that these kids seem to me to have an unreasonable expectation of what they have to get on this test. He’s a smart kid, very capable if not a little bit of an underachiever. Things come easy for him and he knows it, so he doesn’t push himself as much as he could. When he does push himself, it’s an almost impossible goal. There is very little in-between for my son. When he told me he was shooting to get a 30 on the ACT’s, my first reaction was to laugh. I know, what a great mom! I instantly felt bad and tried to explain that I wasn’t laughing at him, but I had never personally known anyone to get that score and I had known several people that were considered “geniuses”. My boy didn’t care, that’s the score he was aiming for and that’s what he’s going to get.

            My niece told me about a girl in her class who is considered to be very smart. She took the test three times to get a score that she considered acceptable, a 27. A co-worker told me that one of his daughters is not a very good test taker and she worked her butt off to get a 23. What really surprised me it that he said that now this is not considered a very good score. I couldn’t believe it! I knew a bunch of people who would have been jumping up & down for joy for a 23 when I was in school!

            Have times really changed that much? My first reaction was that I don’t remember being that worked up or nervous over taking the ACT when I was in school a hundred thousand years ago. A score of 27 or higher was practically unheard of, except in those stories that start: “I have a friend, who has a friend, who knows this guy that got a 1000 on the ACT”. Of course, no one ever met the genius in person, it was just an urban myth. A score of 23 was way better than average. Is there really that much more pressure on our kids today?

            But once I thought about it more, I realized that it really hasn’t changed that much. Yeah, sure, maybe the scoring required for better schools has gone up, but the amount of pressure and anxiety is still the same. There are still the certain personality types out there that will spend countless hours studying and losing sleep trying to get the “perfect” score. Some will succeed and others won’t. There will be the kids on the other side of the coin, who couldn’t really care what score they get, but will walk into the test, sit down, finish first, walk out and forget about it, and they will get a better score than anyone else in the room.

I tended to be one of these kids. I was a great test taker, and could fake it without really knowing the material I was being tested on. Is it fair? Hell, no, but could I help it? I’ve tried for many years to tell myself that I shouldn’t feel guilty about this. I didn’t do anything wrong, I just happen to have a special knack for taking tests.  It’s hard, though, because it is a talent that really pisses off the people who struggle with taking tests. It sure as hell didn’t make me any friends. I took the ACT once, got a decent score, and stopped there. I didn’t lose any sleep over it one way or the other. I guess this is why my son’s nervousness surprises me. He also is a great test taker, and should be proud with whatever score he gets.

Once, many years ago, I mentioned to my mom that I did occasionally wonder what I could have gotten on my ACT if I had studied like everyone else, or retaken it. That’s when she told me her story. She was one of the kids who studied, worried and obsessed over tests. She took her SAT’s twice. On the first one she got a fairly decent score, but not what she wanted. So she studied twice as hard, retook the test, and did WORSE on the second one. Unfortunately, they didn’t take the best score, they only accepted the most recent score. She’s still upset by it all these years later, but it helped to teach the lesson that too much preparation can be as bad as not enough.

What’s the moral of my story? That I like to babble? I guess it’s that while I do not obsess about testing, I do obsess about my children and don’t want to see them anxious or disappointment. Please keep your fingers crossed for my son; I hope he gets what he wants so badly.

Censorship - not so black & white

My son brought home a permission slip for a book for his English class. The book is called "American Gods" and is written by Neil Gaiman, and Gaiman has won quite a few awards for his writing. However, the book contains "sexual encounters, graphic violence similar to crucifixion, and strong language throughout".  I have to admit that my first reaction was to be upset that my kid needs permission to read. He is almost 17 years old and a junior in high school. I cannot think of a book out there that I wouldn't let him read. I've always been very against censorship of any kind. My thinking is this: How can you expect people to make informed decisions and learn to think for themselves if you limit what information they have access to? So, of course, I signed the permission slip and returned it to my son.

Today, I thought about it some more and realized how much I've changed over the years. When I was my son's age, they had just started talking about using a rating system for music. It was during the time that people were boycotting Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest, Metallica and others. They were saying that this type of music promoted drugs, suicide and satanism...and this was the music I loved. I was very passionate about it, and no one was going to tell me what I could listen to, or read. I thought these people were idiots. They didn't understand, and wouldn't take the time to listen to find out what the music really was about. I was never going to be like that!

Fast forward many years to when my oldest son was little and just starting to find out what kind of music he liked. He wanted to listen to Rap: Eminem, Snoop Dog, Lil Bow Wow...stuff I didn't listen to at all. By this time, the rating/warning system was in place and I hated to admit it, but I was grateful for it. Now I knew which CD's contained explicit language or strong themes and it was helping me to decide what to let him listen to. After all, he was still little, only about 7 or 8 years old, and I didn't want him hearing the profanity or other things. Now we could buy clean versions of music - it was a compromise of sorts. He wasn't always happy about it, but he could still listen to some of what he wanted and I didn't have to sit and listen to hours of music that I could barely tolerate. That's when I realized that the issue wasn't nearly as black and white as I thought it was.  We have been using a rating system for years for movies, and while it isn't perfect, it's better than nothing. These systems have given me, as a parent, a better opportunity to learn with my son while still protecting him and not having to shelter him from everything.

So, is the permission slip a good thing? I looked the book up and read a summary of the plot and decided that it probably was. While I no longer limit what my son has access to, I could see why some parents might have a problem with this book and want their children to read something else. I believe that I have given my son the decision making skills to choose his own path, but I am also glad that I still know most of what is going on in his life. I do believe that this is a good book for him, as it is something that may challenge his thinking while keeping him interested. It's the kind of book I would choose for myself, and I do plan on reading it. But I've also realized that the permission slip is not the same thing as censorship - it's just giving an option and opening up dialog, which in my opinion is always a good thing.

Spring Fever

It's that time of year - when the weather turns warmer for a couple of days between snow storms and you start noticing the signs that spring is really on it's way. I love this time of year. Some years I really start to get "cabin fever" and cannot wait for spring to show up with all the new buds and daffodils and tulips and babies...but this year is different. I am excited that spring is coming. I see the signs everywhere: the grass is turning green underneath the snow, the trees are budding. But I do not feel impatient for full blown spring; I am willing to savor the slow changing from winter to spring.

We have had more of an actual winter here this year than we've had in many years, and I've really enjoyed it. It's been nice to see snow covering my lawn for weeks instead of a day. It reminds me of the winters we had when I was a kid where there was enough snow to build snow forts and tunnels and you could pretend to cross-country ski to the neighbors. I loved those winters, even when there was so much snow we had to dig out the front door and the neighbors would get together to dig out the roads. (I grew up in the country where side roads are not always plowed or even maintained at all.) And in reality, here in Colorado, we are in what is historically the snowiest month of the year.  I remember fondly being snowed in on my birthday, which almost always falls during Spring Break at the end of March. We are even known for getting big snows in April, which happened when my youngest was born 5 years ago, and we lost power for a week and had to go stay with my parents. We would get enough snow that the top of Pikes Peak was white more months than not...I've really missed that.

But I still love the transition from winter into spring. One of my friends on facebook talked about going to a ranch today to watch the calves being born. This is one of my absolute favorite things about this time of year. I commute 35 miles to work each way and the majority of it is on a rural highway through many pastures. This time of year is when you see the new baby cows playing in the fields, chasing and head butting each other. I can literally feel the new energy in the air as Mother Earth wakes from her hibernation...it is refreshing and invigorating. Soon, the birds will be singing and we'll see the first robins chattering to each other on the top of my chain link fence. The daffodils will be poking up soon, and we can start the planting of the vegetable garden. (We always either start way too late or way too early - I think this will be one of the early years.)

My husband is feeling it this year, too. We went to Lowe's to buy tools and spent most of the time wandering the gardening section, picking out seeds and planning the next outdoor project. We raked and cleaned the yard today; he watered trees and tried to start the rototiller. The puppies and Matt ran and played and enjoyed the wonderful weather together.

So, yes, I do have "Spring Fever". But this year, I've decided to enjoy the little bits as it comes because I don't want to miss anything.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

I have heard several people over the last several years throw out the idea that welfare recipients should undergo mandatory sterilization to keep them from continuing to have children and sucking the tax payers dry.  It seems that this idea has been met fairly favorably by many.  I myself have even been guilty of saying things like “Stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to breed.”  In my defense, I am mostly being facetious, but I think we have all felt that way at times.  However, something made me stop and seriously consider this matter today.  There was a news article on the internet about a woman who was raped in 1967 when she was only 13 years old, became pregnant and was then sterilized without her consent.  She was determined by the state of North Carolina to be “mentally inferior and promiscuous”.  She didn’t even realize that this had been done to her until later when she was married, attending college and wanted to have more children.

This, of course, led me to do more research.  I was absolutely appalled at what I found.  It turns out that the United States was the first country to undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of “Eugenics”.  Eugenics is the applied science which advocates practices aimed at improving the genetic make-up of a population, usually referring to human populations and it was very popular in the early 1900’s.   Proponents believed that people with certain hereditary disabilities such as deafness, epilepsy, blindness, mental illness or retardation, and/or physical deformities should not be allowed to marry or have children.  Laws were passed in 33 states allowing forced sterilization for people with these conditions.  While these laws were still active, over 65,000 individuals were sterilized without their consent.

While most of these sterilizations were performed in psychiatric hospitals or homes for the mentally disabled, many were also carried out on poor women in the welfare system.  All it took was labeling someone with a mental illness and they could be forced to undergo tubal ligations.  In many instances, the patients were only told the surgery was for birth control and were never aware that it would be permanent. 

So what exactly was it that made the United States have second thoughts on forced sterilization for the good of all?  Two words:  Adolf Hitler.  When Nazis were tried for war crimes after WWII, they claimed that American eugenics policies had inspired Hitler’s purification laws.  They couldn’t understand why we didn’t support their cause when we were, in essence, working for the same goals.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am 100% Pro-Choice.  Birth control is important.  I believe we need more education and easier access to birth control.  But I also don’t think that my government or any one else who thinks I may not be good enough should be able to make that decision for me.  Just look around you – how many of your family or friends might not be here today if these laws were still on the books and actively enforced?  What if someone told you that you couldn’t have any children because you were too poor, or take anti-depressants, or at age 13 you were raped and therefore must be promiscuous?  Where do we draw the line?

Now please excuse me while I go watch “Forrest Gump”.

Let's try that again

I am so happy! I got everything done today! Ok, you can stop laughing now, of course that never happened.  I did better than yesterday: got enough laundry done for tomorrow, got enough dishes done for dinner, helped my preschooler with his homework and even managed to feed the family twice.  Unfortunately, my house still looks like it was hit by a tornado.  Where the hell is my fairy godmother?

Oh well, I guess I'll go to bed now.  Wait, it's Sunday night, which means Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon on Chiller.  I don't really need sleep, do I?

Another One Bites the Dust

I had plans to get so many things done this weekend and just realized that it's after Midnight (early Sunday morning) and I haven't gotten a damn thing done.  So once again, I start the vicious circle of self loathing and promising to do better.  The new plan is to get up early (yeah, right!), start dishes & laundry, pick up the house, run to town for Tony, help Matt with homework (for PRESCHOOL - UGH!), and yadda, yadda, yadda....

To be fair, I wasn't completely lazy today.  I did go to the store for Pepsi and donuts for breakfast.  I also took Brandon's truck to pick him up from a friend's house and ran out of gas in the process.  That was fun! I stopped by my friends' house to try to pay for Matt's daycare and turn in my Pampered Chef order.  (Crap, she wasn't home so I'll have to add that to tomorrow's list.) I played on Facebook and did one whole load of laundry.  I even grilled hamburgers for dinner.  That's being productive, right? Does it matter that I did all of these things in my PJ's? Does it really matter that the TV was a babysitter again? Or that the dog practically had to chew her own leg off to prove how hungry she was so that I would get up and fill her dog bowl?  At least I worked on the new Facebook friends lists, because the world would probably have ended if I hadn't gotten that done.

Oh well, we'll try again tomorrow.  Wish me luck!

Just Another Manic Tuesday

I don't really feel unemployed because I spend so much time looking for a job.  I applied for 6 more jobs today, took yet another employment test and tried to follow up on the 11 jobs I applied for last week.  There are definitely some perks to not working.  I'm spending more time with my kids and have been able to attend more school and sport functions.  My daycare bill is non-existent.  My gas bill and automobile maintenance are much lower.  The hours are good, and I don't have to get dressed up or even dress at all if I don't want to.  I know I'll miss these things when I go back to work, but the cons are pretty big, too.  The pay sucks!  I am fortunate to be receiving emergency unemployment, but I know it's got to end sometime.  And some of the perks are also some of downfalls.  I love my 3 year old, but I am so sick of watching cartoons:  Mickey Mouse, Handy Manny and the millions of Disney movies we have.  I hear the theme songs in my sleep.  My leg hair is growing wild and free, and my idea of doing my hair is throwing on a bandana.  I'm surprised that my husband doesn't care about how I look, I've let myself go so bad.  I absolutely hate to clean house, so I sit here trying to come up with any excuse not to clean. Ultimately, I end up feeling guilty when I see the state of disarray the house is in.  I plan on getting to it; I should have no problem being Super Mom now.  I have images in my head of what my perfect life is now.  The dishes and laundry are always done.  I work out daily.  I pack amazingly tasty and nutritious lunches for the family.  I walk the dog and take the little one to the park.  The reality, though, is my biggest flaw:  execution.  I am great at planning how everything should be.  I just can't seem to get off my butt to get anything done.  I also miss having a life of my own.  I miss adult conversation.  Sadly, I even miss gossip.  I miss the solitary time spent on the daily commute where I don't have to answer the endless "Why?" questions or have to look for the items my husband has misplaced.   Man, I need a job!