I am currently living the kind of life where I pretty often do things that don’t really make EFFICIENCY sense (such as driving round-trip 40 minutes to pick up a Target order without combining it with other errands out that way), because I can’t really fit those things in at a better time and/or because getting it done relieves enough To Do List Stress that it’s worth it. I will think “Yes, it will sort of waste 40 minutes to do this—but then I will have done it, and it will only be 45 minutes later than it is now. We will worry MOST of the time about efficient/responsible use of gasoline, but RIGHT NOW we will let it go in the interest of Getting It Done.”
Some other things we’ve been checking off the list:
• Senior yearbook photos for the twins, which was a bit of a hassle and had a lot of variables and also had a firm deadline. This was a process involving so many decisions/steps, it feels wrong to have it be just one dot.
• Senior yearbook photos for the twins: deciding who should take the photos, and when, and where.
• Senior yearbook photos for the twins: actually taking the pictures.
• Senior yearbook photos for the twins: going through hundreds of pictures to narrow them down to a reasonable number of finalists.
• Senior yearbook photos for the twins: choosing one from among the finalists, cropping it, and emailing it in. Yes, that feels more accurate.
• BABY yearbook photos for the twins, which meant going through several years’ worth of photos, and Elizabeth really wanted to help, but she is way busier right now than I am (two part-time jobs; several clubs; several AP classes; volunteering; social life), so then it became me going through the photos and making a folder of Very Narrowed-Down candidates that Elizabeth could help choose from.
• More college visits. I hate them so much, they are so boring and they all seem the same, but it does feel very good to get them done. Making it worse: my boss saying “Well, and when they find that Right College for them, you can just SEE it, they just KNOW!” Yes well good. How many colleges do we have to tour before I am allowed to give up on that Just Knowing part, because that has not happened yet for any of my first four children. And I kind of hope it DOESN’T, because what if they don’t get IN to the college they Just Know is right for them?? Also, I do not believe for the most part in Just Knowing.
• Updated Covid boosters for three of the kids, and for Paul. This is a good example of something where I had to stop trying to plan for efficiency, and instead just leap on opportunities: “Oh!! You’re home and I’m home and the pharmacy is open!! Let’s go RIGHT NOW.” Elizabeth had fever/chills the night of the vaccine, and felt pretty tired, but was better by mid-day the next day. William felt worn out the next day, and had a sore arm. Henry and Paul didn’t feel any side effects.
Then we had Parents’ Night at the high school, which led me to post this on Twitter:
I felt like with each teacher I was either TOO BLURTY, or else allowed an uncomfortable silence to fall, or else stayed too long, or else left too abruptly/soon. Mostly I worried I was too blurty. My main Coping Thought for such things is that the teachers are already exhausted after working a full day, and most of them just want to get through this evening alive so they can go home and put on soft pants, and they are meeting FAR TOO MANY parents to care too much about what any one particular parent is like. (The problem with this Coping Thought is that if I were a teacher I would be EXTREMELY KEEN to see what my students’ parents were like, and then I would spend a lot of time afterward thinking about those encounters. So.)
Having a Senior seems to be so much work, even setting aside the emotional work of getting them ready to leave the nest. And, having two at once is doubly impressive! High five for all you have accomplished!
If you are ever so inclined, I’d love to read more (and hear from your always-wise commenters too) about part-time jobs for teens during the school year. Elizabeth sounds a lot like my daughter, a sophomore in high school. My daughter has been pushing us to let her get a part-time job like many of her friends, but I’m hesitant. Like Elizabeth she has several extra-curricular activities that take a lot of time, challenging classes, volunteer work etc.. I’m just not understanding WHEN she would actually work? But, many of her friends are employed and are similarly busy, so obviously it can be done! I’d love to hear your thoughts on pros and cons.
I second the wish to hear more about high school part-time jobs!
I mean, my experience is probably very out of date now! But I lived in a pretty rural area with limited job options. I worked in a supermarket, 10-4 on a Sunday and 5-8 on a Monday evening, for a pitiful wage ;)
Admittedly I was NOT a sporty kid so I didn’t have team practice or that kind of thing to factor in. But I was pretty high-achieving academically, volunteered for a talking newspaper for blind people, helped my dad out organising his running club activities (manning the tea urn etc) and usually babysat for cash most Friday or Saturday evenings. I sometimes think (haha ok I especially think this now as my kids reach the mad activities stage and I feel like a human taxi) that the burden for parents is heavier than the burden on the kid.
I do think that committing to a boring, low-paid job and turning up week after week, having to get on with people of different ages and cultures and opinions, is a pretty key life lesson.
I “solved” the schedule/work problem as a teen by just… not sleeping very much. This was, in retrospect, not a great plan. (did I fall asleep on buses? yes! did I fall asleep at friends’ houses while watching movies on weekend afternoons? yes! did I fall asleep in class? yes, all the time!)
However, personally, I am not sure I would have slept more if I had been scheduled for less work and fewer official activities, since social life and volunteering and teenage puttering of other kinds (the internet is bigger now, but email and chatrooms were very distracting back in the day) sort of… expand… to fill all available space sometimes? Also, I have been a night owl since literal infancy. (my mom was convinced that was the sort of thing you could train out of a child until she had me)
Anyway. You can’t do *everything* and especially can’t do everything well, but low-status work experience can be *really* valuable both for training/independence/autonomy and for empathy, so there is that.
My daughter is in Grade 11 (a junior I think you’d call her?). She hasn’t gotten a report card yet but has maintained an average in the 90s for her first two years of high school. She plays hockey in a local league 2x per week plus tournaments, and usually plays on her school’s hockey and football teams. She got a job this summer working at a gas station (manning the counter and filling propane) and has kept 1-2 evening shifts a week during school and I don’t think anything has slipped but it’s a LOT, especially because she’s working on her portfolio to apply to architecture school in her spare time, and trying to find time to spend with her boyfriend of 2 years during the rare evenings neither is working. I have noticed that she’s a bit stressed and I’ve told her she doesn’t have to keep the job if she doesn’t want to, or she can drop to a shift every couple of weeks if her boss can make that work.
Oh hey, I should probably add that a factor to consider is how a teen will get to and from their job. My daughter doesn’t drive yet, so she either walks or scooters there if no one is available to give her a ride (we’re about 2.2 kms away), but we don’t want her doing the same at the end of her shifts, which are after 10pm and it’s dark, so we end up going to get her.
I had a job in my last year of high school – 9-hour shifts both Saturdays and Sundays – but I wasn’t into sports and had no extracurricular activities so it didn’t feel like too much at the time.
Aargh .. I felt like senior photos were
the most colossal task, and the guidelines were even more specific/demanding at the private school 2 of my seniors attended… though the public school
1 of my kids went to was not too far behind in their specifications. So glad it’s over!
Your description of your behavior at parent night was brilliant. That is me all the time , in every social interaction.
I would very much like to hear from all the teachers about their approaches to, and thoughts on, meeting their students’ parents. Do tell!
I’m always nervous during parent meetings and Know Your School Night, and totally focused on whether the parents think I’m weird. It has been very rare that any parent stands out much to me!
I am really glad you gave the school pictures more bullets because UGH, one-bullet tasks that really require 3,000 separate steps (or PHONE CALLS) to complete seem so unfair. SO. UNFAIR.
Anyway, senior photos are done, which is awesome! And the boosters are done, which is also awesome! Go, you!
I feel that tweet so very, very deep in my bones. I always worry about being too blurty or too silent. Plus, I often cry, so there’s THAT.
OMG. I went to the school for the open house in August for my 4th grader, who wouldn’t go when other people would be there (or later when we set up a 1:1 meeting, it turns out). I had just decided to get divorced, my Uncle was in the hospital with serious heart issues (he passed in September), and I was just feeling very emotional and I totally started crying when talking to his teacher! I’m sure she was very concerned, but also there were other families there and I was mortified so I just dropped off his supplies and left asap.
From A Teacher about PARENT Night …
Swistle is correct. We are exhausted after working a full day. We are longing for the evening to be over, and we are anxious zombies the whole time. We are explicitly directed NOT to have targeted conversations about individual students with their parents, so the less the parents try to “conference” with us, the better. We have very little idea whose parents belong to which students, so individual parents make a very blurry impression. We are meeting so many people at once, they all run together. Any individual parent’s relative weirdness fades quickly into the chaos. If you want to talk to us about something specific, please just write an email or request a meeting. The only people we clearly remember from Parent Night are the ones who take the opportunity to be confrontational and aggressive. We’ve all had that experience at least once. Don’t be That Parent.
From the teacher perspective, I’ve had some memorably bad parent/teacher conferences, including:
– being hit on by a parent
– being shouted down by a parent for Various Grievances
– a parent telling me about the time they stabbed their ex
– a parent just… playing Pokémon Go for the entirety of the conferences
I also note who misses a conference (especially if they specifically requested it outside of my contract hours) and who smells like weed.
Otherwise, I am far too concerned with my OWN social awkwardness and worrying there won’t be any pizza left for me in the lounge to worry about anything other than surviving the night. I am grateful to anyone who shows up and shows an interest in their kid.
This is amusing and very reassuring, thank you!
I recently missed a conference for my 2nd grader (*pause for mortification*), because, as it turns out, the teacher mis-tyed my email and I haven’t been getting any information from the classroom email list. School started in mid August… I really should have figured this out sooner, but to be fair, neither did she.
As a parent, one of the things that irritates me most at Back To School Night is the parents who are aggrieved that the school’s policies are not what Aggrieved Parent would do (then homeschool, why dontcha) and APs who think this is the perfect time to school the teacher. Dear sir or madam, put it in an email. Cc everyone you can think of.
About part-time jobs for teens:
My teen kids have had success as life guards (busy in summer, limited at other times -if they wanted to do swim lessons), library shelver (some evenings and weekends but never too late or long), ice cream store (seasonal -spring through early October) , and intern at an art center. Also cat sitting, dog sitting, babysitting, watering gardens, and other miscellaneous tasks. My kids all managed to balance work with everything else – the classes, the clubs, the friends. Look for a job where there is some regularity in hours (e.g. my kid did 2 nights a week and every other weekend at library) to help with time management, or one which is flexible for when those important school things crop up. As a teen, I worked at a fast food restaurant, which was fine. Hours in evenings and on weekends, and more in summer. I think as long as the kid is motivated and knows how to set boundaries, a job is good idea.
And college visits are overrated! Every school is the same in some ways (they all have libraries, study abroad programs, etc.) . Visit a few schools of different types so the kid can get a feel for what type of campus is attractive (big? small? urban? isolated?). Then do the virtual tours. Tours can be a problem because what if the school is a great fit doe the kid but they have a lackluster guide?
A kid can make a good college experience anywhere if they put some effort into it -I’m very skeptical of the “you just know” idea. That probably has more to do with the cute tour guide or the nice weather on the day. An interview with a faculty member in the department the kid wants to major in might be good, but really ,most of the visit stuff can be handled online. (I’ve gone through this college thing too many times. I’m tired of the game.)
Partly because of Covid, my kid (college freshman this year) only visited most schools after he got in. And then he DID get the feeling! I think visiting in winter/spring of senior year, when you’ve gotten in and are actually making the decision, makes it feel very different. Also, most schools offer more special tours/programs for accepted students visiting. We ended up visiting four schools (we were able to do two in one trip and two in another). This worked really well for us (and avoided the “dream school rejection” scenario), and I recommend it.
Similar experience here. Oldest is a college sophomore so he wasn’t able to visit any schools before applying. We visited two of the ones he got into that he was most interested in and he decided between them. We weren’t even able to go inside the two schools so it was still a bit of a crap shoot and yet he’s doing great and loves the school he chose. I kind of wish it could be like that for Youngest too (visiting just the schools she gets into – not the covid part) but I suspect it won’t and I’m not looking forward to visiting a bunch of schools. Sigh.
I am a teacher and I can promise you all we want to do is survive and go home to put on soft pants. I also feel like I’m too blurty with them and hope they just want to go put on soft pants and not think about whatever random thing I might have said.
Am teacher. Our meet the teacher night is before school begins, so I have no idea who or how the kids are. Neither, upon reflection, could I say which adults I spoke with belonged to which children. Memorable exchanges included only: a couple families I already knew, and the select few children who were responsive/conversational.
Am also twin! Are your two hoping to go to college together? My sister and I went to the same college despite each also being accepted to a few the other was not. I am extremely grateful that we did, and I’m certain our parents briefed a huge sigh of relief when we settled on going to the one to which we had both been accepted.
I think overall they would prefer to go to different schools, but that Elizabeth prefers it more strongly, while Edward feels more neutral about it. I would find it…very, very convenient if they chose the same school!
On the whole, I agree with Bitts– I’m a teacher too, and that is largely my experience. I remember only (1) parents who I already know (which, this year at least, has been super lovely), (2) parents who are particularly engaged in what I’m saying (I had a lovely and enthusiastic conversation with a parent about UDL), and (3) funny moments.
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Notably, I had a student quite a few years ago now who just could not stay seated in a chair to save her life– she fell out of them all. the. time. Her parents came to Parents Night and… fell out of their chairs. It was my favorite Parents Night experience ever.
You have a good heart. That comes through so clearly in your blog that there is no way that it doesn’t come through in person too. Nearly any amount of weirdness can be excused if it’s clear that the person is fundamentally a good human on the inside.
I did have that Just Knowing feeling as a high school student visiting colleges and I went there and was very happy with it. My son did not but he picked one and was happy with it. So I guess it might happen or it might not, but it doesn’t HAVE to for a happy outcome.
Does William go to school very close to home or is he taking a semester/year off?
He is doing an internship at Paul’s workplace, so he is living at home with us for a semester!
Wait. He and Paul are going to the same place and rather than one of them being slightly inconvenienced by being too early/staying late or however that works they have decided to take TWO CARS to a single location and strand you in OTHER LOCATION?!?!?
YELLING!!!
I WAS YELLING INSIDE MY HEART!!! Luckily they saw sense before I was forced to yell OUTSIDE my heart.
Another Coping Thought regarding feeling like you’ve been weird in social interactions (which I think every introvert has felt ever): this is a thought I don’t have to engage with. I don’t have to give myself performance reviews every time I talk to other humans. For introverts, for people in this current weird phase of the pandemic, for people with anxiety. We can have thoughts we can just let pass through our heads. A really amazing takeaway I got from cognitive behavioral therapy.
Reading this, I am so very grateful that the school offers one photographer to do senior/ graduation photos. They send me the proofs. I choose the proofs and buy a package. They send me reminder emails forever to order more prints. The school chooses a photo for yearbooks.
I have never thought of this not happening and omg, what an incredible amount of work!
I want this. My girls are only sophomores and I already dread the senior portrait experience.
What IS the deal with the super customized senior portraits taken by a presumably expensive photographer? Now that my oldest is in high school, I came to the realization that’s what people do for their seniors. I’m sure its lovely to have a special photo taken in an artsy location with an amazing photographer, but that seems out of reach for many. I wonder what people on a tight budget do. Plus on the school’s end that’s a lot of corralling parents to submit photos, etc.
I am FASCINATED by how things work at different schools. Here, the grad photos are sorted out by the school, who contract with a company like Jostens, etc. and provides a photographer. We get proofs, we choose which ones we like, we order. I can’t remember if we get to pick one for the yearbook or if the yearbook committee chooses (my kids are in Grade 11 and Grade 9, so I haven’t gone through it yet. (Back in the late 19th century when I was the yearbook editor, I chose the photos for the yearbook.) We do not have to arrange all of this ourselves. Fascinating. Also so stressful for parents, my goodness.
As a HS teacher – you have to be EXTREMELY weird and/or inappropriate for me to remember you or note your behavior. For example, saying you’re going to hit your kid when you get home, being aggressive and/or combative about your kids grade, arguing with me about best practices, etc. We have so many students at the HS level that the parents become a blur unless they are truly terrible (or awesome). Social awkwardness does not even register!
This is the first time I’ve understood that senior photos for yearbooks aren’t just photos taken at the school by a standard photographer like all school photos.
I’m Canadian and we don’t use the word “senior” to describe someone in their last year of high school, so even though I have had a photography side hustle for about a decade, it took me years to not immediately assume that “senior portraits” was a category that described taking good photos of elderly people.
At my son’s school, they were taken at the school by a company. If you missed every picture day available, you could get yours done by someone else, but the school VERY MUCH FROWNED on that.
That senior photos list made me want to lie down and die. I also do not believe in “Just Knowing” for university – neither of mine did and neither of mine had big regrets (aside from regretting that we didn’t have the foresight to know that a Global Pandemic would royally fuck everything).
Hard same on “am I weird but fine or just weird”.
My son didn’t want to do any school visits because he “just knew” about wanting NYU. He applied early decision, and fortunately got in. My husband is still resentful that he didn’t want to do campus visits, but I was like, “are you arranging campus visits anyway? no. Leave it alone”