Cinema Francais

In 8th grade all of the middle school students in our town construct a building for a French or Spanish or Chinese village, depending on what language they're taking. They draw the building assignment randomly and it is with great seriousness and excitement that the assignments are made and buildings constructed. The towns sit proudly on display in our library for several weeks afterwards.

Sam came home with the assignment to build a French cinema. He knew right away he wanted it to be a corner building with little movie posters and iron balconies. I think it's pretty wonderful. I'd love to live in the top story.

Being the third child does have its advantages! By now we have learned all the little lessons about early planning and lightweight materials and adhesives. Most of all, we know that this is a BIG deal at the school--every year there's a poor kid who, unaware,  builds a lego building and calls it good.  Turns out the bar at our little over-achieving school is a little higher than that.

Lucky for me, G is the chief assistant on these projects and I think Lauren, Maddy and Sam will each have fond memories of the month of evenings spent together with him transforming their visions to reality.  I am so glad this is G's specialty. Give me the task of daily homework oversight and I'll gladly hand big, hives-inducing projects to patient, tool-savvy G.

Speaking of cinema and France, have you seen Hugo yet? We loved it. And Sam was happy to think of his cinema fitting right in.  I just want to know if his cinema serves chocolat viennois because that would make it just about perfect.

. . .

p.s. If you want to take a peek at what G and I will be talking about in one or two decades, here's your glimpse. No kidding.

Fruit of my brain

Hellooooooo!!! (she calls from the bottom of a deep, paper-lined well).

I've been hunkered down, trying to finish my two Qualifying Papers (40+ pages each) and my Qualifying Portfolio for my Review coming up. Well, sing Hallelujah, as of about 4:30 this afternoon, it's done. Isn't she pretty?

 

Let me tell you, mine is a brain that does not take kindly to hunkering down. Usually I give in to my dilly dallying with a shrug, in a kind of wild-horses-can't-be-broken kind of way, but turns out wild horses don't get a lot done.  They definitely don't get doctorates. Humph.

I did manage to find a few techniques to keep myself focused. I was chatting with my friend and fellow mom/PhD student, Melissa, and she offered to send me a procrastination questionnaire from her work with students. The aim of the questionnaire was to figure out what type of procrastinator you are so you can use specific tactics to overcome that particular brand. Well, hello! I was 5 of the 6 kinds and that was even when I fudged a little to save my self respect.  I am a perfectionist, dreamer, worrier, crisis-maker, overdoer procrastinator. Nice to meet you.

It did help to think about all of these patterns and avoidances that become part of my daily habit (thank you, Melissa).  I came up with a few aids of my own. They're probably obvious and what you already do. I think I'm also a late-blooming-idea procrastinator.

1. Garbage pail. When I cook, I always grab an empty bowl to put all of the little pieces of trash (egg shells, apple cores, peelings, etc.) while I prepare the food. So I decided to set up a garbage pail list next to me on the desk. In the past, every time I had a thought flit across my brain ("oh, I need to call ____," "is the laundry done yet?") I would use that as an excuse to get up and disrupt my work. Now I said, "Brain, this is not the time to deal with this. Put it on the garbage pail list and you'll deal with that later." Totally worked.

2. Timer. 50 minutes of work, 10 minutes of break. Repeat. Turns out what works for a 3-year-old works for me.  Not that I made our children work 50 minutes at a time when they were 3, mind you. Just using the timer to aid better behavior is a very 3-year-old thing.

3. Lay out the day in 2-hour increments. I think I got this from About A Boy*. I don't know why, this just helped me stay realistic about how much work I really could accomplish and kept me from getting overwhelmed. It takes me a while to settle down to writing so I really do need a nice chunk of time. Mine looked like this:

5:30-7:30  Take Maddy to seminary, to high school, go back home, say goodbye to G and Sam

7:30-9:30  Shower, get ready, tidy up the house, make calls

9:30-11:30 Write

11:30-1:30  Lunch, run errands, answer emails, etc.

1:30-3:30  Write

3:30-5:30  Chat with kids as they come home, help with homework & practicing, etc. Maybe write a little if everyone's all set.

5:30-7:30  Dinner prep, eating, clean up, family time

7:30-9:30  Relax, family devotional, maybe a little more writing

9:30-11:30 Get ready for bed, reading, watching, sleep

Scheduling to the minute makes me really rebellious. I've tried that before and I end up feeling too bossed around and I go to a matinee movie instead (That's probably the dreamer+crisis-maker procrastinators in me teaming up right there.) This gave me enough flexibility and structure to stick to it.

4. Parking lot. Sort of like the garbage pail, this is a document open on my computer screen while I write. Sometimes I'll get little jolts of ideas for another place in the paper so I found that if I had a parking lot for them (rather than suppressing them or running with them) it kept me productive and yet still able to use the inspiration that came (and trust me, I needed all the inspiration I could get).

Anyway, that's what kept me sane while I pushed through to the deadline (and, admittedly, the deadline got pushed back along the way. Just keeping it real here, folks.)  Do you use any tricks to get yourself on track? Or are you of the mysterious non-procrastinating variety?

. . .

p.s. I was really moved by my advisor/mentor Fred's obituary in the Boston Globe today. I think it captures him beautifully and I feel lucky that I knew him. I've still been sad about his loss and a bit bewildered about how to move forward.  Today I came across a lovely, generous letter of recommendation he wrote for me a few years ago. It gave me a pep talk and soothed my soul. Thanks, Fred.

. . .

*"I find the key is to think of a day as units of time, each unit consisting of no more than thirty minutes. Full hours can be a little bit intimidating and most activities take about half an hour. Taking a bath: one unit, watching countdown: one unit, web-based research: two units, exercising: three units, having my hair carefully disheveled: four units. It's amazing how the day fills up, and I often wonder, to be absolutely honest, if I'd ever have time for a job; how do people cram them in?" (Hugh Grant as Will, About a Boy). 

Take two

Here's Maddy's first second day of school, sophomore year. It was a rainy + chilly day, perfect for the cheerful yellow rainboots and a cozy sweater. 

Oh, I love this girl.

^And even though this is a little overexposed, I love it anyway. It captures her.
Here, I'll add a slightly underexposed one to balance things out: 

. . .

When Maddy brought home all the paperwork and syllabi for the year, for some reason I recalled something Elizabeth Edwards once said. During her son Wade's early high school years she decided to read some of the books he was reading for class so they could discuss them and she could hear his burgeoning analysis and thoughts about life.* 

Brilliant. Now that the kids are older, I feel a bit separated from them in their studies. I'll proofread an essay here and there but mostly Lauren and now Maddy and Sam have sailed their own academic ships. So in light of that, I started thinking that I'll read along with Maddy on a few of her books this year. 

Here's the list for her sophomore English class: 

The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger
Song of Solomon, Morrison
The Turn of the Screw, James
A Separate Peace, Knowles
The Crucible, Miller
short stories, Shirley Jackson and others
Ender's Game, Card
The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
Walden, Thoreau

And films:
The Front (Woody Allen)
Persons of Interest (Alison MacLean)
Walkout 

Pretty great books, right? It'd be kind of like a low-key, mother daughter book group. That I...crash and wrestle into my own territory and attend uninvited? Is this a sweet & lovely idea or borderline helicopter parentish?  I can't trust my judgment on these things anymore. I swing wildly from benign neglect to hovering. I blame the emptying nest and the fleeting years. Savor is my mantra. Gather and savor.

*p.s. In a sad turn of the story, later, when Wade died in an accident before his senior year, she would read the books for that year out loud to him at his grave. Heartbreaking.

Going back

Proof that this is the first day of school:

There's a little nip in the air,

people are wearing new clothes and smiles as they head off (or, in the case of this photo, as they come home), Louie is looking out the window waiting for friends to come home (see above),

the smell of cookies is in the air (oh, I love this recipe sooo much; it never fails),

and shoes and backpacks are strewn hither and yon.  Yep, we're back.

(Maddy changed out of her new school clothes so fast this afternoon [no way I was taking a photo at 5:30 this morning when I drove her to seminary] that I didn't have a chance to get a photo. Second-day-of-school photo will have to do...)

Indulge me

Please indulge me if I pause a bit today to celebrate the final day of coursework in....my.....LIFE!  I started kindergarten when I was 4, back when they were much more flexible about deadlines and birthdays.

 first day of class^ 

And now, 35+ years later (with some years off in the middle) I have finished my final class of my ed-joo-cation (with still a couple of years of dissertating ahead of me).

Some school-going wisdom I've acquired over the years, or what I wish I'd known before:

Always read the syllabus ahead of time.  Trust me on this.

Go ahead and raise your hand and talk. Ask questions, be skeptical.

Sit toward the back with the sarcastic people (part rebel) but speak up (part teacher's pet).

Eye contact and nodding will go a long way toward making your teacher/professor think you know more than you do.  Especially if you are really texting your daughter on your phone at the time.

The semester system was not created with mothers of three in mind, especially around the holidays.

Some reading is optional.

The older you are, the more likely you are to do the optional reading just because it's interesting. 

There's no shame in dropping a class.

Good writing skills go a long, long, long way. Thank you, Mrs. Stock (and others).

Attendance, while not always mandatory, is usually a good idea.

Years from now, will you really care what grade you got in Psych 301? No.  Just do your best and move on.

Group projects are an exercise in futility and frustration (and scheduling nightmares) but just go with the flow.

Email yourself your papers just in case your disk drive crashes. Sigh.

College and graduate school degrees just mean you sat in class for a certain number of hours, read a lot, and wrote a bunch. No magic involved, just work.

I will admit to some lesser moments.  Like my last class of my undergraduate years, BIS 140 (said with derision), a class that taught you how to use a computer (rolls eyes).  I felt I already knew how to use a computer so I didn't attend very often and learned, when I showed up for the final, that in fact I did not know four different ways to save a document using WordPerfect (who needed to know four ways? And, it turns out, who needed to even know WordPerfect?) and other trivial but tested concepts. The sad result was a mediocre grade that, I found out after graduation and walking across with pride, kept me from getting the Summa cum laude distinction after all.  Whoopsie!

What school memories or wisdom would you add to the wish-someone-would-have-told me list?

Final final

I am currently completing my final final, a take home test due tomorrow.

So I'm hitting the books and going to meetings today.

In the meantime, please enjoy this lovely video by Maggie Doyne

of her children in Nepal

(I wrote about her a few days ago...)

So inspiring.  

I needed to be reminded

why I'm studying and taking finals and putting myself through all this.

Everybody needs to love and be loved.

"open up your chest and let it in..."

Ah, perspective.

Scholar time

How is it that one family can produce such different learners and learning styles?

One of my kids is easily distracted and forgets due dates, another could read and do homework in the middle of a fiesta at Disneyland.

One actually puts together a timeline for big projects with mini steps along the way without any urging (clearly not my genes coming through there), another lives in la-la denial land until the day before it's due and then panics (no comment).

It became clear, halfway through last year, that I needed to figure out a way to help all three have better study skills and planning. (This may or may not have had something to do with the mid-year report of one of the kids where missing homework assignments and such had led to a midterm warning of a very low grade. Measures were needed.)

I've always loved hyggli family routines and cultural traditions. I think I should have been British, given how much I adore the tea time tradition. So I stole the essence of tea time, slapped the title Scholar Time on it, and made it our own new tradition.

Scholar Time is from 3 to 5 at our house in the winter, later in the fall and spring (with a little variation for lessons and sports practices, as needed). It's nothing revolutionary: just a set aside learning time for my kids and me.

Truly, it's all in the spin and marketing, folks! I try to make it more of a nice ritual. Put on some music, light a couple of candles, sometimes add cocoa or a treat.

Basically:

We all unload our homework, books, etc. on the table. If there's homework, they do it (I do mine, too). But it's not just about homework.

I make everyone fess up about looming tests, quizzes, etc. If someone has a project coming up, we map out the small steps to make it feel more manageable. I ask (I learned this from my Aunt Annette) how much support they want: minimal (just reminders about due dates, etc. and putting it on the calendar), some (need materials from the store, want to brainstorm, need a proofreader), or a lot (don't know where to start, help with understanding the concepts, helping organize an outline, field trips [our high school has the freshmen find and catalog 100 different leaf varieties; that's a big one]).

If someone comes upon something really interesting, they share it with the rest of us and we stop and chat about it.

Here are the keys:

1. Keep in mind my kids are 11, 13, 16 and all in middle school and high school. Two hours isn't too much to ask; yours might only need 1/2 hour. We try to do it Monday through Thursday and make Friday afternoons an anything-goes day but usually at least one other day just doesn't work out.
2. I am there to help out. Available. Sitting right there. I think this is the biggest shift.
3. It's quiet as possible (for the easily distracted among us)
4. It's scholar time, not just homework time. So if they don't have homework (or finish early), they go over something they've learned, study for a test, outline an essay for next week, read ahead, go practice their instrument (out of earshot).
5. When they're done, they pack up their backpacks for tomorrow (I'm so over the hurry-before-the-bus-comes-I-can't-find-my-essay-and-math-homework). Celebrate another day of learning, woot!

As I said, nothing revolutionary but a great improvement over our laissez-faire homework-doing of the past. That particular low midterm grade? It sprang back up into the zone of better grades. Like most "programs" sometimes we're better at it than others. But I do look forward to a couple of hours of sitting with my kids + watching them learn. And I get my hyggli ritual.

(Maybe everyone already does something like this and it's just taken me 11 years to catch on! Recently a couple of families we know have asked about it since Sam was talking about "scholar time" so I thought I'd put it out there in case it makes sense for others to do, too.)

Plus, I'd love to hear any suggestions about what you do around your house to help kids stay on top of the academic demands (or what you did as a student). I think my kids have more homework now than I had as a college student!

Staring up at the mountain

I got some unexpected news over the weekend.  I was selected for a fellowship from Zero to Three, the nonprofit that coordinates training and research about and lobbying for children from birth to age three. I applied back in November but it had been so long that I had pretty much counted myself out and forgotten.

It's a two-year fellowship and I will meet periodically with the other fellows to support each other in our individual projects and present and publish our results. My project will be to expand the guide and assessment I worked on in Guatemala to be used in different settings & other places in the world to train volunteers and temporary caregivers of infants and young children.

I really am excited. Do I sound like it?  Cause I am. I did about 26.9 minutes of celebrating, took a big breath and started feeling a bit overwhelmed.  I will have benchmarks and deadlines and expectations to meet. Yay! And: Oy.

* * *

The lesson yesterday in the young women's church class I taught was about courage.  We talked about the story of Esther.  And about trying difficult things and getting help when we need it. About not letting fear get in the way of good things. I read this poem to them at the closing and suddenly it felt like just what I needed to hear:

how to climb a mountain

by maya stein

Make no mistake. This will be an exercise in staying vertical

Yes, there will be a view, later, a wide swath of open sky,

but in the meantime: tree and stone. If you're lucky, a hawk will

coast overhead, scanning the forest floor. If you're lucky,

a set of wildflowers will keep you cheerful.  Mostly, though,

a steady sweat, your heart fluttering indelicately, a solid ache

perforating your calves.  This is called work, what you will come to know,

eventually and simply, as movement, as all the evidence you need to make

your way. Forget where you were.  That story is no longer true.

Level your gaze to the trail you're on, and even the dark won't stop you.

* * *

This was funny timing, though.  I had been feeling at a bit of a standstill in my PhD program, trying to decide whether to keep going. This felt like a nudge to keep going. Also, as if in ironic response to my desire for a 40th birthday trip, the first fellows meeting is over my birthday in October.  Somebody out there has a sense of humor.

Postcard from Denver...

Voila.  My hotel room.  I forgot my camera.

Thank you MacBook photobooth!

Oh, I love the west.  I feel at home here...the air is just the right recipe of closer-to-the-sun oxygen and crispness, the sky (when it is not snowing, as it was yesterday) is blue.  People are friendly--oh they are friendly.  I'm not saying people aren't friendly in Boston...it's just a different kind of friendliness.  The kind you have to scratch the surface a little to find.

I know we're pretty much settled in Boston and I definitely know its good points, but there's a part of me that is always holding its (my)breath and crossing its (my) fingers that we someday wend out way a bit westerly.  The truth must be spoken and there it is.  I just feel so at home here.

So far I've attended some great sessions. One of my favorites was a symposium on child development research/programs in Africa.  Fascinating...they are being very mindful about developing a canon of child development research generated by African scholars and researchers and reflecting the realities of their setting and culture, rather than importing paradigms and assumptions from the west (but still learning from its lessons).  And another great cross cultural program comparing the interactions of infants and mothers (and the maternal beliefs) in Italy, Netherlands, Korea, and the US.  Next I'm heading to a symposium about attachment relationships in extreme environments like orphan settings and street children.

Lots to think about.  I have to balance my own personal parenting questions with my "scholarly" pursuits when choosing from the HUNDREDS of talks and sessions.  Oh, my.

What are those "scholarly pursuits"?  That is the question.  Also, "what are you going to do with that degree?" a question I both get from others and ask myself all the time.  Hmmm.  It's evolved into a combination of infancy/early childhood studies, international programs, and especially helping children in extreme environments.  Somewhere along the way I found a little niche doing program evaluations and creating trainings for programs like those. I don't know where it will lead.  Sometimes I'm afraid to try because I might fail. Sometimes I'm afraid to try because it might go well!

 But, I do know this.  

I love jumping on the bed in my own little hotel room in Denver.

Help! I'm reading and I can't stop....

As part of my TA role for a personal/social psychology class, I get to grade papers, which I actually enjoy. The first assignment is to select a book from a list provided (mostly memoirs), read it, and analyze the character from a theoretical viewpoint. Great assignment, right? More fun than just a research paper summarizing theory and research, don't you think?

That was my first reaction. Then it started to dawn on me what this meant for me. Hmmm. How many books are on that list, anyway? Thirteen, you say? Just for clarification purposes, do you think the TAs need to read the books in order to grade the papers? I thought so, that makes sense. Oh, no, no...it will be fine...in addition to my coursework...and research work...not to mention my real life that starts when my kids get home from school...to read half of the books this week. Gulp.

Whee! Nothing like mandatory, concentrated, deadline-looming reading to take all the joy out of my usual enthusiasm for reading. On the other hand, I'm getting paid for reading, which feels a lot decadent and a little unethical! But does anyone know any antidotes to serious binge reading?