Actually, my youngest daughter is a dual-enrollment student. She attends the same college as I do, except she only attends two days a week, Mondays and Wednesdays.
I am taking a Physics class which I adore. I am not naturally gifted in Math or Science, like so many of the other students, so I have to work SO much harder than they do to achieve positive results. Well, we have been studying Simple Pendulum, Restoring Force, Harmonic Oscillations, Wave Propagation, Geometric Optics with Laws of Reflection, Refraction and such. On Thursday of last week, we knew we would have our first test of the Quarter on the upcoming Monday at 9:15 a.m.
On Thursday, I get out of school at 10:05 a.m. Therefore, I had at my disposal:
Thursday: 13 hours
Friday: 24 hours
Saturday: 24 hours
Sunday 24 hours
for a total of 85 hours to study the 23 practice problems our instructor had given us.
I may not possess a natural ability in Math and Science, but I am a hard worker. Even though I did procrastinate a bit on Thursday by using two or three hours to give my house a good cleaning, I still made good use of the 80-ish hours I had remaining by, runnning errands, playing SIMS on my computer, reading emails, sending emails, reading the many Blogs I follow, and generally wasting my entire day. I just couldn't get myself to the dining room table to study. I know, shame on me. So Thursday was a wash.
On Friday I studied for seven hours straight. 11:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., maybe longer than that.
On Saturday, I studied for another six to seven hours and felt great about what I had covered and learned. Then I went to a friend's house for dinner and to watch a few episodes of SG-1. :-)
On Sunday, we went to church and after changing into comfy clothes, I went right back to the dining room table to continue my studies because I felt I really needed to be able to complete the 23 practice problems we were given without looking at any of my notes. I worked for about four hours and felt I would be able to do well on the test.
On Monday morning, I got up at 6:15 a.m. in order to spend time practicing the summary before heading to school. I had my foo foo coffee using frothed milk from my Breville Milk Frother, yum. That's another Blog entirely. I ate my piece of toasted wheat bread with peanut butter, and sat at the dining room table to study. At 8:30 a.m., I packed my backpack, brushed my teeth, picked up my cell phone and set it to vibrate, grabbed my keys and headed off to school at 8:40 a.m.
According to the Rand McNally website and its driving directions program, it is 13.7 miles to school and takes 21 minutes and 50 seconds. I find that to be an accurate account of my drive.
It was during during the last 50 seconds of the drive that it occurred to me that I had left the house without my daughter.
I left the house without my daughter!
She only has a learner's permit, and no car to drive, so it's rather necessary that I drive her to school. The primary reason she is attending this college for her dual-enrollment is so she can ride along to school WITH me.
Needless to say, when I got out of my car, I grabbed the cellphone from my backpack and sure enough, there was a voicemail from her, "Um, did you forget something?" Fortunately, her older sister does not have class on Monday and Wednesday mornings and was able to drive her to school. I should note here that she rides with me to my 9:15 a.m. class, but does not have her class until 10:30 a.m., so she had plenty of time to get there. WHEW!
I COULD NOT BELIEVE I DID THAT!
Tuesday morning, I dropped her off at a friend's house where she does housekeeping twice a month. When I got home from school, I spent a lot of time on my homework, which consisted of memorizing an 8.5 X 11 page summary of Physics formulas. These summaries are a regular occurrence in my Physics class and they count as a Quiz grade since we have to write them all from memory when we arrive in class. The summaries can be quite complex. In the past, I always considered memorizing my home phone number a challenge, so I always feel intimidated with the prospect of memorizing new summaries. It is my routine to wake up two hours early on the day of a Physics Quiz in order to rewrite the summary several times before arriving at school.
Fast forward to Wednesday morning. . .
I got up at 6:15 a.m. in order to spend my time practicing the Summary before heading to school. I had my foo foo coffee using the frothed milk from my Breville Milk Frother. I ate my piece of toasted wheat bread with peanut butter, and sat down at the dining room table to study. At 8:30 a.m., I packed my backpack, brushed my teeth, picked up my cellphone and set it to vibrate, grabbed my keys and headed off to school at 8:40 a.m.
It was during the last 50 seconds of the drive that it occurred to me that I left the house without my daughter.
