Friends don’t let friends get schoolwork burnout

For just about as long as I can remember, Thursday has been “Classes Day.” As a homeschooler, I don’t have to go to school everyday, but on Thursday mornings for six or seven or eight years my friends and I have been shuffling into one of our living rooms and sitting there while one of our parents teaches us all about history or writing or math or science.

These days, as our highschool curriculum has amped up and we’ve all gotten more busy, we usually meet on both Tuesdays and Thursdays for classes. Many of us also have classes at other schools (like Gutenberg) on the other days of the week.

But the point is, for time immemorial, Thursdays have been class days. And, as a direct consequence, Wednesday nights have been “blow your brains out trying to finish all the schoolwork that you left until the very last minute” nights for the exact same period of time.

Last night was shaping up to be particularly traumatizing. Not only are the SATs (which I have hardly studied for yet) on Saturday morning (AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!), but I had to prepare a report for history class this morning and I was in the midst of making a marathon effort to finish my client’s website on time.

If that last paragraph didn’t make your blood pressure rise a little bit, I’m not communicating effectively.

But I wasn’t the only one feeling the pressure last night. Dear little Natalie is usually a model of student perfection. I have seen her this close to actual tears when she was afraid she would not finish an assignment on time. Next to the reckless abandon with which I usually show up to classes without my assignments completed, she is a complete angel. But due to a combination of circumstances probably outside of her control (I don’t think she knows how to procrastinate), she found herself with all of her Physics and History reading left to do last night, and not nearly enough hours before her normal bedtime in which to do them.

So she did the only logical thing, given her situation. She came over to the house of the only person she knew who would actually be staying up PAST MIDNIGHT finishing schoolwork. And I have to say, I’m very glad she did. Last night became immensely more entertaining for her presence. Even my rush to wrap up the website and get a report together didn’t seem quite as bad with Natalie collapsed on my bed trying to power her way through the History chapter.

And then, of course, we had to go and take pictures of each other. I believe that it was getting close to 2:00 am when we snapped these priceless portraits:

(There were some other pictures that Natalie took of herself, but she made me swear not to post them with the following admonition: “No. Those other ones you have (on Flickr) are just weird. But these. THESE. Are the most hideous pictures EVER. I look like I JUST THREW UP and gained fifty pounds ALL ON MY FACE.”)

We finally quit at about 3:00. Neither of us were finished to our satisfaction, but our exhaustion was becoming ridiculous. Every few minutes I had to slug Natalie in the shoulder to remind her that the reason she was lying on my bed was to do her homework, not to FALL ASLEEP.

What a fitting way to spend our penultimate rushed Wednesday night. Next Thursday is our final day of homeschool classes in our Junior year—which, for many of us, means our final day of classes together ever. Next year all of us will be pretty much doing our own thing. A few of us will be basically graduated already, a few of us will be taking classes at local highschools, and others will be… well, who knows what we’ll be doing. I’ll include myself in that last group.

So one more Wednesday-night rush. One more day of Thursday classes. And then no more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks. (Except, of course, for those directed at yours truly, since I still have loads to catch up on from the school year.)

Posted on Thursday, June 1st, 2006 at 8:56 pm.
Belongs with: Happening Things, Photo Things.
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