I live with Kevin and Jack who are two of the smartest people I have ever met and yet the most unmotivated and lazy all in the same breath. Well, Kevin isn't lazy so much. I guess the label of procrastinator would work better for him. Jack...Hmmmm...Let's just say he is less than task oriented about most things attached to school.
Kevin is the kind of person who knows EVERYTHING about everything and nothing too. It amazes me to listen to him talk it up with someone about baseball or the latest football game when he didn't watch a minute of the game. He knows details about this and that at the drop of a hat. He can give hour long lectures about economics or historical events that are all well thought out and easy to understand. Sometimes I wish he had been my college professor for all those GE classes I slept through when I was in my late teens and early twenties. Kevin is also a very good editor. In fact, he isn't home tonight to read this over before I post it, so my personal grammar check and 4th grade writing style will have to do. Oh! And, can this man take a test on just about any subject and pass it with little to no study time! His first few years at DPHS he was getting new credentials for this and that just by passing a test. I think one day he actually took two of those tests in one day and passed them both.... But, I might be wrong about that little factoid. When we were dating he got a job at a company that hired him solely based on his IQ score! Little did they know that he was not a match for that company. Kevin is not motivated to work long hours no matter how much you want to pay him. About the only thing Kevin likes to work long hard hours on is his family and his home. That's it.
We knew Jack was smarter then the average toddler even before he could talk. It was his destiny to be Kevin's little mini-me. When he was in elementary school he would write up these legal documents stating his disagreements with everything from his little pesky sister to the fact that he had to do this or that. He also enjoyed coming up with his own companies to which he would be the CEO and would hire and fire Abbey several times a day. His imagination was amazing. As he grew his head swelled to match his smarts and the idea of organization and careful studying was lost on a young boy who had everything come so easily to him. The standard based report cards did nothing to tell us of his performance in class really due to the fact it was all Advanced. Jack spent most of elementary school quietly reading his book of choice under his desk while the teacher was teaching.
So, here we are in junior high where grades matter. Study skills matter. Organization isn't a backpack full of papers to be emptied at the end of the year or dumped on your bedroom floor every few days. I think you get the picture. I am the nagging mom getting upset about homework grades. I almost could care less that he gets an A on a test if in the same class his papers are scattered to the four winds and not included in notebook checks or turned in on time as homework. I know I need to settle down. It is nice to be surrounded by intelligence. I don't think it is wrong to hope that at least a little of my black and white determination to do things in a timely, organized manner will rub off on Jack. He does have a lot of my less than endearing quirks, so it only seems fair he should get something good from me. There is still hope. He is getting better about shutting the door when he leaves for school in the morning. I need to focus on the positive.
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