540th Friday Blog Roundup

So the Wolvog just finished his first online college class.  He audited it instead of taking it for credit because I wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep up.  But he did, excitedly chatting with his fellow students on the class forum and taking his exams at night.  It was super cute and sometimes I snapped pictures of him while he was trying to work and then screeched, “you are so cute!”  He got really good at ignoring me.

The only problem came when he got to the final project.

He dragged his heels because he wanted it to be spectacular.  He kept coming up with ideas and summarily rejecting them.  The clock kept ticking closer to the deadline, and I advised him that satisfactory-but-turned-in beat spectacular-but-not-turned-in.  It was finally a few days before the due date and he started working on coding a game.  He finished it with hours to spare except for a small glitch.  He sent a message asking for help from a fellow classmate and went to baseball practice.  When he came home, the answer was waiting, and he fixed the project.  Completed, at last.

He went to turn it in and discovered that he was locked out of the class.  The due date had been a half hour earlier; the time zone listed as one 5 hours ahead of our own even though the college itself was 3 hours behind our own.  He couldn’t turn in the project and would have to accept a zero, lowering his final grade from an A to a B.

He asked me to email his professor, and I did, explaining that I’m writing because I’m his mother and he’s 10 and lacks the ability to negotiate that power dynamic.  He is accustomed to a school situation where his mother can mosey into the classroom and speak to his teacher if there is an issue.  And I also explained that he would have to accept the consequences if it was impossible to turn in the project.

The professor was sympathetic but ultimately couldn’t bend the rules.  The due date was the due date.  Even though it was marked as a zero, she still gave him feedback and praise on the project, and I think he left the class feeling good about it overall.

I think letting him experience that was important — not the class, I mean, but having your hard work not counted due to lateness.  I don’t think he’ll procrastinate like that again.  He gets that the stakes are raised as you age, and that there will be times in the future where he will have to set aside other fun things to buckle down and get something done.  That he may sometimes need to settle on an idea that is satisfactory instead of waiting for something spectacular to spring up in his brain.

I think it’s a good sign that he’s looking for another class to take in the future — either in person at a local college or online again.  It means that he gets the idea that he’s going to be held to a standard and he gets to choose whether he rises to reach it and reaps the benefits or not.

Plus he’s still promising me that I can move to wherever he goes to college in the future so I can still do his laundry and cook his meals and tuck him in at night.  Hoping the ChickieNob chooses the same city if not the same college since she has that plan, too.  Though I’ve been told that I need to stop screeching at them, “you are so cute!” and covering them in kisses while they’re in class.  Online is fine since their classmates can’t see.  But in the classroom?  So embarrassing.

*******

STAR WARS COMES OUT ON ITUNES TODAY!  Um… yes… we set aside a gift card we had to purchase all 6.  One needs to be able to carry these things with them in their pocket at all times.

Isn’t that mid-blowing?  It used to be such a big deal to get to see the movies at home on a VCR.  Now I can carry all of them in my pocket on my phone.

*******

Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “One Day, in Retrospect” (Unnaturally Knocked Up)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I Try: The Additive Property of Happiness has a fantastic post on BlogHer this week busting her top three infertility myths.  It’s nice to have words going out to a more general audience instead of preaching to the choir, and I can see the post being shared over and over again across the Internet.  She’s invited people to add their favourite myths in the comment section, and I encourage you — if you want your words to travel outside this community and hit a more general population — to add your myth in the comment section ASAP.  It’s a great chance to spread a little more understanding into the world.

Searching for Our Silver Lining has a post about choosing to pick up heads-down pennies, superstitions be damned.  I love how she has taken bad omens and turned them around, writing, “Before our final treatment cycle, Grey informed me that we were black cats as others viewed us harboring bad luck. And yet we continued to persevere, choosing to live and exist without apology.”

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ has a post asking you to treat yourself as well as you would treat others, especially when it comes to infertility and loss.  If you have uttered something cruel to yourself lately; told yourself that you need to suck it up or get over it or that you’re not “woman enough” or that all of this is your fault, you need to read this post.  Run, don’t walk, over to her blog.

The roundup to the Roundup: Wolvog learns not to procrastinate.  Star Wars is out on iTunes.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between April 3rd and 10th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.