Settling into a new year
Sep. 12th, 2011 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrWe saw Fiona this weekend. No, let's not be stereotypical: she didn't come home to do laundry, but she did work at Dreamhaven and then came home for a visit. I took her back to school afterwards to see how she has set up her room, stopping along the way at the Dollar Tree to help her pick up a few odds and ends.
She is doing well. She fiercely adores her theater class, where she has made a host of new friends (she has always had the knack of making friends). "Geeky people like me," she told us happily. "We get together and watch Star Trek in the evenings." Calculus is going well, the teacher being a better teacher than she had last year. Her Spanish teacher is from Madrid, and the difference in accent from what she's accustomed to has been an adjustment (her teacher last year was from Bolivia) but it's not giving her too much difficulty so far. English is 'okay' so far. Her first five page paper is due Thursday. Topic: recount the first time she encountered an instance of discrimination. I asked her what she was going to write about, and she says it will be about an incident back in day care when a boy told her she couldn't wear purple (her favorite) because it was a 'boy color.' (Which is really funny, when you think about it: I've always thought that purple and pink are stereotypically girl colors). I mentioned another (later) famous incident in our family lore, the Incident of the Ball Bag. She groaned theatrically. "That was so embarrassing! I was so mortified that you were making such a fuss about it."
It's funny that Fiona is such an advanced and confident reader (always reading way above her grade level) but she is NOT a confident writer. Sitting down to try to articulate and type the words floating in her brain frequently paralyzes her. And she always hated hated hated it whenever I tried to help her, so that never worked. She had one good suggestion from someone that she's going to try: she's going to buy and install Dragon Speak, a dictation software, and she'll experiment with dictating her ideas and then editing them. Perhaps that will help her get around her block. She's certainly going to have to figure this out if she wants to get through college.
Still no job. She continues to apply. Argh. This is worrisome; she won't be able to buy books next semester or pay for her day to day expenses if she doesn't find something, especially since we made the decision to refuse the unsubsidized loan portion of the proposed financial aid package. But on the whole, she's really happy, and certainly feels that she's landed in the right place. It's wonderful to see her thriving.
Delia, too, is enjoying her new school so far. The commute arrangement seems to be working fine. We'll have a better idea this week of how the new classes are going, and she'll be able to set up and get going on some new projects.
Rob has also had quite a good week. After several tries, his pharmacist finally hit upon an effective generic replacement for the name brand medication that our insurance company had yanked away, and now that it has kicked in, the change is truly remarkable. He's up in the morning and job hunting every day, and checking off one task after another on his to do list. After months of torpor and depression, the difference in him is truly heartening, and I'm thrilled.
So the new year is off to a good start.
She is doing well. She fiercely adores her theater class, where she has made a host of new friends (she has always had the knack of making friends). "Geeky people like me," she told us happily. "We get together and watch Star Trek in the evenings." Calculus is going well, the teacher being a better teacher than she had last year. Her Spanish teacher is from Madrid, and the difference in accent from what she's accustomed to has been an adjustment (her teacher last year was from Bolivia) but it's not giving her too much difficulty so far. English is 'okay' so far. Her first five page paper is due Thursday. Topic: recount the first time she encountered an instance of discrimination. I asked her what she was going to write about, and she says it will be about an incident back in day care when a boy told her she couldn't wear purple (her favorite) because it was a 'boy color.' (Which is really funny, when you think about it: I've always thought that purple and pink are stereotypically girl colors). I mentioned another (later) famous incident in our family lore, the Incident of the Ball Bag. She groaned theatrically. "That was so embarrassing! I was so mortified that you were making such a fuss about it."
It's funny that Fiona is such an advanced and confident reader (always reading way above her grade level) but she is NOT a confident writer. Sitting down to try to articulate and type the words floating in her brain frequently paralyzes her. And she always hated hated hated it whenever I tried to help her, so that never worked. She had one good suggestion from someone that she's going to try: she's going to buy and install Dragon Speak, a dictation software, and she'll experiment with dictating her ideas and then editing them. Perhaps that will help her get around her block. She's certainly going to have to figure this out if she wants to get through college.
Still no job. She continues to apply. Argh. This is worrisome; she won't be able to buy books next semester or pay for her day to day expenses if she doesn't find something, especially since we made the decision to refuse the unsubsidized loan portion of the proposed financial aid package. But on the whole, she's really happy, and certainly feels that she's landed in the right place. It's wonderful to see her thriving.
Delia, too, is enjoying her new school so far. The commute arrangement seems to be working fine. We'll have a better idea this week of how the new classes are going, and she'll be able to set up and get going on some new projects.
Rob has also had quite a good week. After several tries, his pharmacist finally hit upon an effective generic replacement for the name brand medication that our insurance company had yanked away, and now that it has kicked in, the change is truly remarkable. He's up in the morning and job hunting every day, and checking off one task after another on his to do list. After months of torpor and depression, the difference in him is truly heartening, and I'm thrilled.
So the new year is off to a good start.