Vent Repentant

Venting

Exams are over!

I’m feeling a little bit guilty about my earlier vent. Life is picking up. The car has been taken to the repair shop. I chose not to include details in my last blog of how I had rammed it up the back-end of a pick-up truck as part of yesterday’s independent jaunt. A few other life-niggles are getting sorted out, and most importantly, my gorgeous little Betsy has finished her IB exams. Woo hoo!

I had no idea I was even stressed about Betsy’s exams, but the sense of relief I feel now is immense! She has worked her socks off, done her absolute best, hasn’t stropped (much!) and I feel massively proud. We’ve had a nice lunch, I treated her to a new top (which she may or may not wear for after-grad) and she is now watching Mamma-Mia 2. Life doesn’t get much better than that! She has big plans to make no plans, so who am I to argue

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Learning from your Mistakes!

I have big plans to try and learn from some of the mistakes I made when Annie finished her IB two years ago. This is what not to do:

• On the afternoon of the final exam do not suggest any of the following as possible activities for your child:
• Throwing out and organizing all their IB revision notes into piles to keep, recycle or return to school.
• Tidying their room or sorting out their wardrobe.
• Joining Goodreads, (or completing a reading challenge) now they have time to read.
• Completing an AppleMac clean-up programme and deleting old files.
• Fixing all the ICT glitches of your own, that you’ve been waiting for the exams to finish before asking for help with.

Should you mistakenly do any of the above and get negative responses definitely do not persuade your child to hang out with their friends so that you can get them out of the house in order to complete the follwing yourself:

• Throwing out your child’s revision notes
• Tidying your child’s room.
• Signing them up to Goodreads.
• Stealing their laptop and running an Apple-Mac clean-up programme.

Trust me this is not well-received. Equally do not, upon their return sigh repeatedly, in their presence, as you try to fix those long-standing ICT glitches you’ve been putting up with whilst they have been legitimately too busy to help you with!

OK, I didn't do all of those things (just some!) and at least I’ve learned the error of my ways. Betsy and I have had a great post-exam afternoon of fun. Just, though, in case you are the parent of a Year 12 IB student, a little further advice for next year: do not and I repeat do not, under any circumstances, suggest that together you complete a detailed calculation of worst case and best case likely IB final attainment point score. Also, definitely DO NOT take out of your handbag a shiny new notebook, bought especially for purpose. Not sure why, but apparently it isn’t, it seems, the best choice of pastime.
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IB may be over, and I no longer have kids at school, but it would seem I still have a few things to learn! Maybe it's time to add in a 'Repentant Parent' chapter to our IB book! In the meantime I might just vent about it!