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Don’t Help Your Kids With Their Homework

Don’t Help Your Kids With Their Homework:

Robinson and Harris posit that greater financial and educational resources allow some parents to embed their children in neighborhoods and social settings in which they meet many college-educated adults with interesting careers. Upper-middle-class kids aren’t just told a good education will help them succeed in life. They are surrounded by family and friends who work as doctors, lawyers, and engineers and who reminisce about their college years around the dinner table.

As part of his research, Robinson conducted informal focus groups with his undergraduate statistics students at the University of Texas, asking them about how their parents contributed to their achievements. He found that most had few or no memories of their parents pushing or prodding them or getting involved at school in formal ways. Instead, students described mothers and fathers who set high expectations and then stepped back.

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Beautiful Fall

I visited my mom at home today. Took a long walk in the unseasonably warm weather. Checked out her bathroom remodelling. Got to talk like we haven’t talked in a long time. It’s a new perspective on time: you value the people in your life when they are taken from you for a while. Suddenly you see that things are always changing, that you must seize and savor the good moments.

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Cold Milk

The milk is turning to slush in the fridge, which is odd, because the kitchen itself has been over 80°F for the majority of the day. Is the cause high humidity? Mykala has been pounding through a tremendous amount of end-of-semester work, and is currently right in the middle of another paper. Her perseverance amazes me. I can’t offer her much, other than moral support and shoulder massages. And (apparently) very cold milk.

1826 Pages

The picture below is a stack of the materials I covered for 3 of my 7 classes this past fall semester. I read, generated, or memorized every single one of the pages below.

papers

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Stairs

Just attempted to walk up the stairs. Tripped twice. Given my apparent lack of cognitive essentials, the homework prognosis appears dire.

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Biochemistry

Studying for a biochemistry exam tomorrow is like undergraduate déjà vu. Like that old Garfield and Friends episode:

Déjà vu… the feeling you are doing something you have done before…
Déjà vu… the feeling you are doing something you have done before…

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Overwhelmed

Today was fail. Tomorrow we try again. Tonight, we prepare for tomorrow. This weekend… well, I haven’t thought that far ahead. Also: this text brought to you by a first-person plural personal pronoun used in the archaic (for English) T-V distinction.

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Bugs, Money, & Water Bottles

I’m filing my own bug report for tumbledry here. Has anyone noticed that when you mouseover Dan’s comments, there’s a thing that says “A partial iron” instead of loading an image? Well, that’s not the intended behavior of the comment code - it’s a rounding error that should never have made it past bug testing. Nevertheless, here we are, months after I recoded the ranking system… and this ugly bug pops up. I’m working on a fix, and more pictures. So that’s good.

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Multiple Species Reading

Multiple Species Reading

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Noticed These At Home

I went home for fall break a couple of weekends ago, and while I was studying for my cell biology at my old desk, I opened up the file drawer on it. In it, I have a hanging folder folder marked “sentimental” in which I have an entire scrapbook worth of old scraps of paper I saved from high school and junior high. I’ve got band concert programs, my valedictorian speech, the brochure I received at the Sears Tower during my junior high trip to Chicago, and so much more. It’s grounding to occasionally return to these scraps. I know times were “tough” in their own way during the years I gathered these scraps, but the human power of retaining the good and forgetting the bad charges this eclectic stash with sentimental value.

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Why Did I Take This Picture?

Why Did I Take This Picture?

Too Much Homework

Too Much Homework

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Unbelievably well done article on Wikipedia

Unbelievably well done article on Wikipedia - It’s about enzyme kinetics. It rivals my biochemistry textbook (allowing for its limited scope and the foibles of online “publishing.”)

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Too Busy

If I did anything other than write this sentence to keep my promise of one week of consecutive updates, I would be wasting time I could be spending studying.

NMR Rules

NMR Rules

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Doodling

Doodling

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Ring Donating Groups are Electron Pair Donors

Ring Donating Groups are Electron Pair Donors

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Let There Be Desk Light

Let There Be Desk Light

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The Answer Key

The Answer Key

It’s Greek to Me

Reading Plato’s Republic, I called Mykala over to share a passage with her about Plato saying “But I am too stupid to be convinced by him.” I never got there because the “him” was Thrasymachus. Now, while reading the passage, I went with the pronunciation Thrassy-maykuss, which caused both of us to halt a minute or two later. “What?” Mykala asked, genuinely puzzled by my pronunciation. “I was just trying to read through it and get to the point,” I replied. Mykala took one glance at the page and said, “Oh, Thrasimakiss.” Stunned silence from both sides.

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