Friday Fragments

Brookdale had its scholarship awards ceremony this week.  

If your campus has anything similar, go to it at least once. There’s a sweetness to it that will win you over.

Students who have won scholarships are recognized individually. They (mostly) dress up, and many bring family members or significant others to cheer them on. A fair number of donors attend, too, and the best part is seeing the donors meet the actual students they’ve helped.  That never gets old.

As the ceremony started to break up, I saw the woman in the row behind me sitting with her two kids, both of whom had won scholarships. She declared proudly “I’m both parents!” and gave them both hugs as they all smiled. I had to smile, too.

Call it corny if you want, but I like it.

--

The Girl came to me last night asking for help with her math homework. That’s unusual for her, since she rarely needs help, but I thought it was sweet. I congratulated myself on being a good Dad, agreed to help, and took a look at her homework.

As Scooby-Doo used to say, ruh-roh.

She’s starting to hit the level of math at which I can’t just look at it and get it.  It’s the level at which I have to sit down with pencil and paper and rethink the logic before I know what to do.  

Happily, I remembered a trick that I used when The Boy hit some tough math. When he pointed to a problem that was giving him trouble, I’d ask him to narrate his steps verbally as he worked it out. Hearing it spoken out loud, slowly, one of us is likely to catch the dropped negative sign or the mis-copied exponent. 

Her style of mistakes is the same as his, which, in turn, are the same ones I used to make at their ages. I knew we had a family writing style, but it didn’t occur to me that we have a family math style.  Who knew? 

--

Is there a long German word for the feeling of being torn between feeling the need to watch the news and feeling complete revulsion at the prospect at the same time?