The Daughter and I are alike in many ways. One of the way we are not is in the approach to homework.
When I had it, I tried to get it done as soon as possible, lest it hang over my head. Her attitude is more… relaxed.
Back on November 9, I asked her if she had any homework over the three-day Veterans Day holiday, but she gave me a rather enigmatic answer. It was HER homework, after all, so I was not going to worry about it.
Still, on Friday the 10th, I asked her again. This time, she said, “The marking period ends today.” And do you have homework? “Yes, social studies.”
Well, how was she going to get this assignment done THAT DAY, when there was no school? Why, she could send it via Google docs. So at 3 p.m., she starts answering four questions, about Reconstruction after the Civil War, robber barons of the second half of the 19th century, and a couple other topics.
She completed the assignments. “There, an hour and a half and I’m done.”
I should note that at least one of these pieces was given out back when she was ill the second week in October, and I know she had started working on it when she got back to school the following week. But it was only the impending end of the marking period that motivated her to actually FINISH the task.
It is very easy for a person to project him- or herself in a situation and say, “If it were me, I’d have been a nervous wreck.” But that’s the point; she isn’t me.
And she isn’t her mother either who, less often these days than before, would preach the value of having the homework put away the night before in the proper place. I’d be my inclination, too.
As I’ve indicated, in this matter, she is VERY much her own person.