Some people don't have enough tragedy in their lives that they have to invent some.
I solved this problem by just not having voicemail and putting the ringer off on my landline. All my loved ones have my cell number - I haven't answered my landline in almost three years! ;-)
I came to that conclusion in my mid-20s! Though I am a bit more overinclusive - I think 'most' people are just basically hopeless: see why I don't answer my phones?
My parents funded my college education 100%, because they wanted to, and because they could afford to, because of the following:
1. I went to the local community college and took college transfer courses. It's much cheaper, and the basic freshman and sophomore level English, science, history and math courses aren't any different from those at a 4 year university. The added bonus, at least at the community college I attended, was that I mixed with people of all ages, many of whom lived in the 'real world' and had 'real jobs', not just college-age kids, so by the time I transferred to university and dorm-living, I was 21 and didn't go ape**** with the partying and independence and flunk out after the 1st year, like so many college freshman do.
2. I transferred to an in-state, public university. There was absolutely no reason to go outside North Carolina in order to get a good education.
No child of mine will ever do a "team homework project". Schools are intruding massively on the lives of children and their families with all sorts of needlessly time-consuming busy work. When will parents learn to just say NO?
I recall an article in Time magazine a few years back about this problem. Especially loading up elementary school kids with homework and "projects", despite that fact that no research on the subject has ever been able to show any academic achievement benefit to homework prior to the high school level. One father, a former school teacher himself, had the guts to simply inform his daughter's school that she would not be completing any homework assignments, period. And who cares if the teachers trash the kids grades for that -- elementary school grades don't matter!
Wow! She sure had a lot to say.
I initially thought the point of her article was to lambaste people for making obnoxious phone calls, especially late at night. But it really blossomed into a story about spoiled kids!
She makes many excellent points.
For over a year, I rec'd 3 consecutive calls once a week. When I answered, I rec'd the beeping like someone trying to send a fax. I finally started letting my message center take the calls. The frequency stretched to once a month. It's now once about 3 months. I have no idea who is doing it, but I sure could do some damage to their ears if I ever find out.
It was the '70's. Everything was going great, then Menudo broke up, and the New Orleans Police went on strike during Mardis Gras. :o(
Claremont Colleges and USC. And the little bastard has the gonads to complain about being on the wait list at Reed.
[laughing my gonads off...]
Blog fodder bump.
Cheers,
knews hound
http://knewshound.blogspot.com/
I owe my college education to environmentalists.
Yup, you heard that right.
You see, I went to college in 1991, just a few years after the wacky environmentalists got the stupid spotted owl on the endangered list.
This caused Weirhauser to close thousands of land they owned for logging. Wood prices went up. Private property owners called in the local tree cutters who then proceeded to strip cut their properties and sell the lumber. (Did I mention that private property owners don't replant trees that are cut like a lumber company would).
Anyway, my father called in the tree cutters to log 4 acres of our property at that time. Made enough money to help finance my brother and I at college.
We never replanted those trees, but turned the land into pasture.
Thank you crazy environmentalists for helping me get through college through the destruction of the trees on our private property!
:)
But what is it with these aging baby boomers who still help their high-school kids out of schoolwork jams and generally continue to treat them like helpless baby birds?
This is purely a coincidence, but today I was getting a haircut and the hairdresser told me the following story which opened my eyes as to why I have completely given up on hiring caucasian young people when job vacancies occur. She told me that her husband had, through business contacts, gotten a job for their 17 year old son at a coffee shop. She laughingly told me that he had lasted two days on the job because his superiors had asked this kid to sweep the floor, wipe down tables and wash some dishes. He informed his mother that he has never done those things at home so why on earth would he do them in public? It seemed perfectly logical to both him and his mother, and solved one puzzle I have struggled with for some time. Our kids are worthless because they are being raised that way.
So is the author onto something here? Is it that they're baby boomers or that they're aging/older parents? I am constantly amazed by the number of uptight older (agewise) parents (this is a generalization, not a rule)
Carolyn