We are coming up on Finals Week around here in the house of teenagers. Next week marks the end of the term and the start of the second half of the school year. My house is littered with books and “projects” and I’ve been told there will be a study group or two over the weekend. I have to say that high school Finals Week looks more like I remember my college finals to be than my memories of my own high school days…
So, there’s three teenagers wandering around like grumpy zombies in the morning and staying up late trying to complete projects and reports. One of my daughter’s had to write a ten-minute speech on “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and write a 5-page paper. Now, I love Huckleberry Finn, but I don’t know if I could give an organized speech for a full ten minutes! Meanwhile, there are science projects and make-up work and extra credit all being frantically completed to squeeze every possible point out of what is left of the first half of the term.
Now, I don’t tell them this–but, I’m glad it’s not me. Not that my work doesn’t keep me plenty busy (although I am used to it), but I can see and feel the direct cause and effect. I work so we have a house to live in and food to eat. With my kids, things are a little cloudier and more vague. It’s hard for them to see why building a rocket in a small group in science class, or giving a ten-minute speech on Huckleberry Finn has any direct correlation on anything important that is happening in the world. I get that, I remember wondering “What’s it all for?!” when I was sixteen and seventeen.
But as the mom, my words of advice are more traditional: “Hang in there, it’s only temporary, you’ll make it, blah, blah, blah.” All I can do is keep the hot cocoa warm and replace the ink cartridges in the printer. Oh, and rouse them when the sleep through their alarms so they won’t miss the finals.