"She's Growing Up..."
Caffeinated Geek Girl has a great post about that starts off with her talking about feeling like an outsider in the family. I certainly relate to that. I've written before about being the first to go to college, and while my family has, of course, been supportive and encouraging, it was obviously in the abstract. College was not in our world, so no one knew how to talk about it in any concrete way. It was always that thing over there.

My niece is in her first year of college, attending the two-year school near our hometown in Texas. Almost two years ago, my sister had some surgery that was relatively routine and went well, but she was not in her usual form for a few weeks, so my niece and nephew had to step up and take care of things for a bit. And since then, I've really seen her grow up. She was not a star student, but she did her work. At her graduation last year, she admitted that she didn't challenge herself and wished she'd had to be better prepared for college.

She did fine last semester, and she called me night before last. After some talk about other things, she asked me if I've ever had my students write a research paper about a book. Well, yes, I have. She had one due yesterday, and she had some questions. Yes, I'd told her before to call me in advance, but do college students listen these days, whether in our families or in our classrooms? Still, when she told me the paper was on The House on Mango Street, I laughed. I told her I'd taught it before, and she said, "Really?" She had some articles but didn't know what to cover. Her professor, who sounds much better than the one from last semester, gave her some ideas, and she was following them.

It was just funny because she seemed surprised I knew the book and could talk about certain sections and characters. I even brought up that she might want to talk about how and why Cisneros talks about feet and shoes, and she said, "I have a whole article on that but I didn't know how to use it!" Frankly, she was trying to cover too much and didn't really have an argument, but I hope I helped her get away from summary and more into analysis. Still, it was just cute that she called about this.

She told me that she waited on this because she had a psychology paper due on Monday. She's a nursing major, but she said she loves psychology and is thinking of minoring in it. It's nice to see her excited by something. She really does seem to be growing up. In many ways, she grew up as a princess, and I wondered at times if she would ever grow beyond that and mature. And, yeah, I don't think that's going to be an issue.
- posted by Nels @ 9:55 PM | | | Link |