Working Magic at the Fireworks

            As an older, full time college student, and mother of 5, I can’t help but to compare myself to the younger, “freer” students who surround me everyday in class.  I often think of the quiet, cozy apartments in which my imagination has created as their residences, and lament my 5- bedroom monster of a house that is continually abuzz with activity, noise, and chaos. I envision these young students in shabby –chic lofts with vintage furniture, Oxford- like architecture of stone masonry, and studio kitchens with appliances and hardware from the 1950’s.  The lack of commitments, obligations and children must afford these students with countless hours of quiet free time to write, study, read and ponder the mysteries of the world while drinking steeped tea.  While my mind knows this is nothing but a bohemian fantasy, my heart longs for at least some of it to be true.

            In stark contrast to these students of my imagination, my life is busy, loud, and very fast paced.  My children, ranging from ages 6-15, are involved in multiple sports that require travel, sometimes just to the other side of town and sometimes to other states.  These sports, which require daily practices, are often coached by my husband, thereby removing him from the house and carpooling duties necessary to maintain the schedules of whichever children he is not coaching at the moment. In addition to the sports, there are orthodontist appointments, tutoring sessions, music lessons, doctor’s appointments and all else that goes with raising healthy, well-rounded children.  Adding to the perceived chaos are home maintenance issues such as laundry, grocery shopping, and cooking and gardening.  Let us also not forget the obligatory school conferences, parent volunteer “opportunities” and religious traditions.  Just making this list of day- to- day activities raises my stress levels.

At times I feel my very being is the eye of a tornado and the requirements and obligations of my life are swirling around me in a vortex of force and might, together leaving a path of destruction in our wake. Finding the time and energy and creative fortitude to study, think and learn in a peaceful, Zen-inspired environment is just not possible in the eye of a tornado.  And for that very reason, I have chosen to embrace the noise, pace, and activity level of my family and create within the chaos my own little slice of “Oxfordish” academia.

This weekend was one of “those” weekends in our family life that consisted of a line-up of seemingly never-ending obligations and social commitments. Upon leaving class early Friday afternoon, my schedule for the rest of the day included attending a charitable play performance with clients of my husband, and chauffeuring the kids to two different baseball practices at two different locations, while my husband coached a third child at yet another location.  Saturday’s schedule was no better.  Three of the children had morning swim practice; two children had double-headers (different kids-different locations) while another child had a championship baseball game at yet another location.  Saturday evening brought another client obligation for my husband that socially required my smiling, happy -faced attendance.   Sunday came and went in another flurry of activity of baseball games and practices, and finally ended with the annual fireworks display in my community, which has become a traditional event for our family.

When, you may ask, did this full time student have time to study, read, write or even think? This is where I have to work my magic.  As a matter of fact, I even have a wand.  One of my friends, who felt it would require sheer magic for me to juggle my life and going back to school full time, purchased for me a beautiful resin replica of Hermione’s wand. (Hermione of the Harry Potter series.) While I have yet to make sparks fly from the wand, and have no magical time turner, I have been able to mentally be in two places at the same time.  I listen to Biology podcasts while driving the kids to and from practices.  I read books and watch my children’s baseball games at the same time. I have downloaded textbooks on my kindle and read them in doctor’s offices, and I have written papers and blogs while watching  swim meets. 

Sunday evening, while surrounded by at least 1000 people reveling and picnicking to celebrate the community fireworks, I wrote up a psychology lab on my laptop.  I enjoyed watching my kids laugh and toss a football while waiting for the fireworks to begin, and seconds later returned to the quiet ivy covered halls of my mind.  I realized then that maybe I don’t have it so bad after all. I had spent the day with my kids, soaking up the late June sunshine at their ball games and later while watching them swim.  I had accomplished all of my assigned reading and writing, and I even drank steeped tea from a packed thermos while doing it.  Someday I do hope to get to Oxford, but for now, this is just fine. 

Mommy Time and Mommy Trials......

            My first month back at college has flown by, and as I expected, adding the role of “college student” to the long list of roles I currently have (mommy, wife, volunteer, sports fan, etc.) has upset the apple cart a bit.  I had expected some of these changes, (laundry crises, too much carry-out, lack of sleep, etc) but one of these changes in particular has really surprised me.  I have somehow, in the social world of Grosse Pointe mommies, been silently removed from the group of “stay-at- home” moms.

Anything but staying at home

 Before returning to college, when asked if I worked, I would reply that I was a “stay-at-home” mom. The very label “stay-at-home” mom has always made me laugh, because in the thirteen years that I have been a mom, I have probably stayed “at home” less than one-eighth of the time. When my children were babies we would spend our time between naps involved in playgroups such as Gymboree, baby music classes, story time at the library, playing at the tot lot and playground, and swimming at the pool.  Those early days were quickly replaced by elementary school and countless hours of volunteer opportunities, such as serving as a lunch mom, a reading volunteer, chaperoning field trips and class parties, attending committee meetings for fundraisers, and just about everything else you can imagine.  During these years, the children’s activities took off at stealth speed…. Girl Scouts, Football, Little League, Swim Team, Band, Musical Drama, Sunday School…you name it and my kids have probably tried it.   Thankfully, the kids have narrowed down their interests and I have learned to say “no” more often, and our lives are no longer quite as rushed and busy.  

All Goldfish and no Glam

“Stay at home” mommies know who the other “stay-at-home” mommies are.  You can spot them from a mile away at the tot lots, playgrounds and parks. Their strollers are well worn and packed to the gills with bags, the contents of which usually consist of any number of snacks and drink items.  They often have not only their children with them, but a few of their children’s friends as well.  They are dressed for comfort not for style, and are frequently armed with wipes, sunscreen and goldfish crackers. They are almost always at the park, playground, or pool with another “stay at home” mommy that they arranged to meet, because “stay at home” mommies run in packs.  If they have one child, they follow him everywhere and worry about everything.  If they have more than one child, they are sitting in a state of sheer exhaustion on a bench with another mommy, enjoying a few minutes of “grown-up” time, while clutching their cuppa Starbucks or bottle of water.  “Stay at home” mommies make up the core base of school related committees as well.  They run the PTO, organize the class parties, volunteer as lunch moms and are the first to complain about the drop off/pick up line, the teacher, the principal, and pretty much anything else you can think of.  I can say all of these things with a smile on my face, because as I mentioned above, I was one of these types of mommies for thirteen years, and I loved every minute of it.  I have no regrets and would not change a thing about the choices I made to do so.

So that I don’t offend anyone…

It is, however, very important to note that during my 13 years “at home” I met and associated with many wonderful, active, involved mommies who worked part-time or full-time; some from home, some downtown, and some commuting great distances.  Some worked because they needed to for the income, and some worked because they felt called to do so for either themselves, or the “greater good.”  I am proud to call as my friends mommies who work as medical doctors, nurses, social workers, professors, lawyers, gardeners, artists, writers, chefs, accountants, and therapists.  Let me clearly state that their abilities as mommies are equal to that of my “stay-at home” mommy friends.  Sadly though, we were often separated by an invisible line, somehow classifying us between those who stay at home and those who do not.  

Convertibles, Charities, and Tennis

Yet another category of mommies also exists. These mommies do not work, yet they are not the primary caregivers for their children, either.  They have full time nannies, send their kids away to full time summer camps, and only volunteer when they are called upon to be an “honorary chair”, or occasionally as the chairperson for a very highly publicized, well established event. This group of mommies is a bit of a mystery to me.  They are spotted on the tennis courts and in the gym, at graduations and awards ceremonies, occasionally at the club pools, and at large scale fundraisers.  Their nails look fantastic, not a hair is ever out of place (even though they drive convertibles), and their clothes are stylish and polished.  There are not enough hours in the day to accommodate the amount of effort it would take me to come across as they do.

The Class Picnic

There is a tradition in the Pointes that during the last two weeks of school every grade in every school celebrates the end of the school year with a picnic at a local park.  It is an undertaking of love by the room-moms to organize all of the food, paper products, games and treats, and (god forbid) rain plans for this much- anticipated day. I have been to more picnics than I can count, and to be truthful am not very fond of “fun” in the “forced togetherness” variety. I must admit that for the first time in 13 years I had a great excuse (college) not to attend my 6 year olds picnic, and I was secretly glad.  Having not read the flyer that come home detailing the picnic, I sent my son off to school that day with no lunch, expecting him to eat at the picnic. Big mistake.  The phone calls starting coming in by 10a.m. that my son had no lunch, and the picnic was being moved from the park to the school due to a large thunderstorm.  I was in class and missed the first two calls.  By the third call, my son was upset.  Upon listening to the voicemails left for me, I became upset not only because my son was upset, but also from the condescending tone of voice from the moms who were at the picnic and had left me the messages.  Thankfully, I was able to locate a “stay-at-home” mommy who was kind enough to make a lunch and run it over to my son’s school. 

And Now I have Guilt

While no one would ever say it to me in person, I know that I have now crossed that invisible barrier into the world of “those other mommies” who do not stay-at home. I will not be a room mom, attend field trips or be a Girl Scout leader any more.  I knew deep down this would happen, and even discussed it at length with my children and my husband.   I didn’t, however, think about the other mommies and how they would think of me.  I was OK with the choice I had made to leave home and attend college full time.  My family was OK with it.  Why, all of a sudden was I allowing other mommies opinions to effect me? 

Time Trials

This weekend I stood alone with an umbrella in the pouring rain at my children’s swim team time trials.  I noticed that all of the “stay at home” mommies were volunteering by timing the events, grouped together under their umbrellas laughing and having a good ole time.  Just as I began to feel sorry for myself, two mommies approached me and struck up a long, funny, and thought-provoking conversation.  One of these mommies is a M.D. and the other has a PhD.  We laughed about our children, the swim team and our husbands.  They gave me advice about class choices in my program and the best place to complete my practicum.  I was engrossed.  I was entertained.  I was happy. And most importantly, I was still a mom, and a good one, too. 

Rant and Roll, Baby

Mommy back at College is having one of those kinds of weeks, and feels the need to rant.  I know it’s small and really unimportant stuff we are talking about here.  Given the state of the world, I should be grateful a tornado has not swept me away, the stock market did not completely crash and I am not dying of cancer. I get it.  I should be incredibly thankful that I have five beautiful children, a loving husband, all of my faculties, and a relatively normal group of friends.  Call it midterms, call it lack of sleep, call it stress, and call it downright selfishness, but today I am in the mood to rant.  And what does misery love? Company. 

Mommy Back at College Rant List for June 2, 2011

                                                            Set them Free

It’s June, enough already with school (for my kids, that is). Why they stretch the school year out for two additional weeks JUST so my already overly socialized children can go to the zoo, have picnics and clean out the teacher’s cabinets to organize and put away her text books, is BEYOND me.  Maybe I’ve been a mommy too long and have moved to the dark side of the happy scale, but enough already.  Field day, scavenger hunts, road rallies, class parties, trips to the park, trips to the ballpark, and trips to Cedar Point are just a few of the items on my kids’ agenda in the next two weeks. Truthfully, they would rather stay home, sleep in until noon, play X-box and hoops and chill out before the summer sports and commitments begin.

Trust me, you don’t want to see my thighs.

Is there such a thing as a normal length pair of shorts anymore?  I don’t want to look like a grandma, wearing shorts down past my knees, and I don’t want booty shorts either.  What ever happened to somewhere in the middle? Trying to find shorts in that “middle “range for my daughter (age 10) has been even more difficult.  I don’t want anyone looking at either of our legs. (Albeit for very different reasons.)

It really is a little sick if you think about it.

When, exactly, did it become “Ok” for 14-16 year old girls to stalk 13 year old boys incessantly? Don’t these girls have any self -respect?  These girls were calling/texting my son at all hours of the night, so we took his phone away.  You would think that would stop them, but oh no- now they call the house phone at all hours of the night.  And if we turn the house phone off- they call my cell phone!!!  ENOUGH ALREADY!!! Get a summer job! Go tryout for American Idol, join a team, sign up for summer school, I don’t really care what you do, but please leave my son out of the picture!  I saw a nun on campus today.  She was wearing a beautiful all white habit, head- piece and all. She had a cross necklace and a rosary, and I’m sure she had just finished doing wonderful things, like helping the sick and poor, and saving the world.   I think the church should be out there actively recruiting the girls of my neighborhood because clearly these girls have way too much time on their hands, and my son most definitely needs saving!

Mail me a Ticket when he makes it to the Big League.

Yes, this is for all of you baseball mommies out there.  I am the mother of five baseball players who collectively play on nine different teams.  My husband coaches two of those teams.  Two of my children are on travel teams.  I have been all over this state and beyond it, giving up a lot of weekends, staying in crummy motels, all to watch children play baseball.  I can say with pride that some of my children are very talented players.  However, I completely acknowledge that NONE of them are ever going make it to the Big League.  Or even the Minor league. Odds are they will not even play at the collegiate level.   That is why it is so important for my husband and I to enjoy every minute of every day that our children are on the field.  It will be over in a heartbeat and all we will have left will be a box of dusty trophies in the attic and a mind full of wonderful memories. Why on earth do other mothers and fathers not realize this?  Why do they yell and scream and make COMPLETE fools out of their selves?  THIS IS LITTLE LEAGUE people.  Sit back.  Smile.  Laugh.  Enjoy the sunshine.  Eat a hotdog.  Don’t start stressing until it’s time to sign a Major league contract. 

And Lastly………

While I am grateful and happy that in my first month back at college I have made many new friends who were born in the early 90’s, I am not willing to be your “mother” at school.   Please stop asking me to borrow a pencil or a scantron, to copy my notes, to give you a ride, to give you quarters for the vending machine, or to repeat something that was said 5 times or more in the first week of class and is on the syllabus.  One of the girls even picked me out of a lecture class of 100 people (during the lecture, I might add), to see if I had a tampon. When I had to uncomfortably whisper to her that I didn’t need them any more, she had the balls to say  “Oh yeah- I guess I should have know that.”  Really?   And why exactly should she have known that I don’t have those parts anymore?  Do I really look old enough to have gone through the change? Jesus. I spent the rest of the lecture focusing on how I need to buy better skin care cream.  GROW UP people! Unless your mother is going to come to my house and start doing my laundry, I am not interested in replacing her role for you at school. 

Ahhhhhhhh….. I feel so much better now! Need to Rant?  I would be happy to read all about it.

Digital Media Interruptions

                  “You are not reading your textbook, you are reading your facebook” and “get off of Google and get on to your homework” are comments heard regularly in my house.  I most often give these directives to my teenage children, and am usually somewhere between yelling and screaming in terms of volume and emotion.  It is a mystery to me why anyone would want to sit at the computer for hours at a time, completing homework at a snails pace because of regular intervals of texting friends, facebook status updates, and tweeting.  I just don’t get it.   That is, I didn’t get it until this weekend.  Now not only do I get it, but I am guilty of doing it.

  Much like any other college student, I find the weekends a very important time for reading, researching, writing and studying.  Long blocks of time uninterrupted by class lectures give me a chance to take thinking to the next level, to not only read about another’s argument, but to think about it and to develop my own opinions and express them in my own pieces of work.   I even find the distractions to studying that I face surprisingly similar to that of a younger, more traditional student.  The noise and commotion of dorm living are replaced by the family noises of children yelling and arguing.  The temptation of going to watch school games and sporting events are replaced by attending my children’s games and practices.   Participating in drinking and partying?  These things occur at any age. I had anticipated all of these distractions, and even built in safeguards against some of them.  What I did not anticipate, in any way shape or form, is the role that digital media would play in interrupting my study sessions.

                  Let me preface my argument of digital media interruptions by telling you that a few significant things occurred this weekend in the community in which I live.  Firstly, The Principal and Assistant Principal of my son’s high school, the former a friend of my husband, resigned their positions because the Michigan State Police caught them in the “sharing of inappropriate e-mails which violated the school’s acceptable use of technology” agreement.  http://www.freep.com/article/20110522/NEWS02/105220600/Grosse-Pointe-school-administrators-resign-over-inappropriate-images-found-their-computers-district-says?odyssey=nav%7Chead  This is big time news in our relatively small, tight knit community.  Secondly, between my five children, our family had fifteen baseball games on the docket for the weekend, none of which I was planning to attend because of the large amount of homework due on Monday.   As you can imagine, I was constantly interrupted from my work by text messages updating me about my children’s games, facebook updates chronicling the community reaction to the loss of our school administrators, and my own following of the news media reports on the story.  Who could have guessed that the mom who continually yells at her children for “being on facebook instead of in the textbook” would be committing the very same “crime”? How could I possibly get to a higher level of thinking when I was tweeting every ten minutes?

                   Nicholas Carr writes in “Is Google making us Stupid”: “I’m not thinking the way I used to think.  I can feel it most strongly when I am reading.  Immersing myself in a book or lengthy article used to be easy.  My mind would get caught up in the argument and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose.  That’s rarely the case anymore.  Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages.  I get fidgety, lose the thread, and begin looking for something else to do.”  Hearing my text message alert ding, while a call comes in my laptop via Skype simultaneously with my facebook account generating me an e-mail that a friend has updated their status, I can only agree with Carr all the more!

                  However, using the armchair quarterback approach to evaluating my weekend and the use of my time, I am quite pleased with the results.  I completed all of my assignments.  This was no easy task as they included a lengthy reading, two lab reports, studying for a huge exam that will cover 215 pages from textbook,  reviewing a documentary film and writing a critique, reading three articles of average length, as well as writing this essay.  By any standard, that is a lot of work, despite all of the digital interruptions. Was this amount of work completed in spite of the digital interruptions or, in part, because of the digital interruptions? Digital media does not shut out the possibility of high level thinking and production; rather it enhances it, often producing fantastic results.

                  In almost all of my academic assignments this weekend, I had to research a word or concept of unknown meaning or origin in order to proceed.  My preferred mechanism for this research is Google Scholar. Many of the sites I looked at provided hyperlinks to other sources of information, sometimes close to my original question, and other times not, nonetheless broadening my exposure and understanding of the related topic.  In her introduction to the book “Broadening the Medium”, Janet H. Murray argues both the humanistic and engineering viewpoints of the computer.  She mentions the work of two philosophers, Deleuze and Guattari who in the 1980’s developed a new model of written organization to replace the print-based world, using a rhizome as the visual model.  Murray writes:   “The potato root system has no beginning, no end, and grows outward and inward at the same time. It forms a pattern familiar to computer scientist: a network with discreet interconnecting nodes.  Here was a way of constructing something new.  The humanist project of shredding culture had found a radical new pattern of meaning, a root system that offered a metaphor of growth and connection rather than rot and disassembly.” Am I rotting my brain by exploring the Google links and hypertexts related to my queries, or developing a deeper more complex understanding of the subject mater?  Much like the potato root, I was expanding, growing and becoming more connected in my knowledge base.

                  While it may be argued that social digital media sites such as facebook and twitter do nothing to expand the roots of ones level of knowledge, they do, in fact, expand and strengthen our connections to others.  In his introduction to the book “The Best Technology of 2009”, and in reference to the constant skimming of the internet, Steven Johnson writes: “The benefits of this new consciousness go far beyond skimming, of course, especially when you consider that many of the distractions are not tantalizing hyperlinks, but other human beings!” Would I have been better off holing myself up in my study room this weekend with no connection to the members of my community or my family?  I would argue not.  I was connecting with real people in real time, listening to their arguments and once again, broadening my own thinking.

                  One disadvantage to digital interruptions is the amount of time they take up.  If I had shut off my phone and internet access, using my computer only for word processing, I would have undoubtedly completed all of my assignments much faster, possibly allowing me the time to attend a few of the baseball games. Would I have learned as much? No.  My knowledge would have been limited to the textbook provided information alone, some of which was unclear to me.  Would I have even been aware of the crisis unfolding in my community?   Possibly, but my exposure would have been limited to the few I came into contact with at the baseball games, not the news media coverage, or the thoughts and feelings of my community at large.

                  As a Sociology major, I am compelled to look at digital technology and it’s role in interrupting higher thinking through the lens of the Functionalist approach.  This theory is also represented in the world of Psychology as the Gestalt Theory.  Both disciplines define this theory or approach, as “the sum of the whole is greater than the parts.”  Each individual hyperlink, when looked upon as one unrelated text, provides nothing but a distraction.  However when applied to as part of a larger, more complicated thought process, hyperlinks promote learning and further understanding.  The same can be said for texts, and social media.  One tweet about an event or occurrence does not an opinion form. Several texts or status updates can provide us with a glimpse of the thoughts and feelings of a group at large.

                  As this weekend comes to a close, I am tired, but in a good sort of way.  I have completed all of my assignments, and in several cases took my learning to the next level via hyperlinks, all while staying in tune to the happenings of my friends and community.  Facebook and textbook working together?  It turns out it’s a good thing after all.  Please just don’t tell my kids! 

The A.V. Guy

     My second week of school, much like the first, has pushed my lack of technology experience and knowledge to the top of my worry list.  The first assignment given to me in Sociology class was to present to the class a chapter from the textbook.  My presentation was to be in lecture format, supported by a PowerPoint presentation that incorporated video, audio and still photos to help inform the listeners of the necessary points of the text (study and research results), as well as to emotionally engage the listeners to a level of interest sufficient to participate in discussion questions.   The theme of the chapter was socialization, and addressed the problems of institutionalized children, foster care, and the developmental stages of socialization.   Given that my last name begins with an earlier letter of the alphabet, of course, I was assigned to go first.  

     Under normal circumstances, "going first" is enough to cause any student angst.  Going first, and being the "old woman" in the class takes angst to a whole new level.  I am happy to say, however, that I was not the least bit worried about the assignment.  I have had a fair amount of experience with public speaking and as luck would have it, I also had experience as a foster mother.  In the two years leading up until now I fostered four children in addition to my four biological children.  One of these children still lives with me today.  Yes my friends, it's easy math. Eight children! If I could run a household with eight children while navigating the Wayne County Foster Care System, I could surely handle one thirty- minute power point presentation.  The rest of the class of early twenty-something’s were only learning about socializing children of different backgrounds from a textbook.  I had lived through it! Deep down, I must confess, I pitied the poor sap that had to go after me. 

     As expected, I had no difficulty preparing the lecture, and was finished with that portion of the work within one hour.  The PowerPoint, however, was an entirely different story.  I will spare you the embarrassing details, but let's just say I had to learn as I went, and it took hours just to get the bullet points and still photos into the presentation. The real problem, however was taking a video off of YouTube and inserting it into the PowerPoint.  That seemingly small task took two out-of-state phone calls and four back and forth e-mails from my "techy" friends to maneuver! 

     Finally the big day arrived.  I had my presentation saved on my laptop, and at the advice of a friend, I had even saved it on a flash drive. That morning I shed my "back at college uniform" of jeans and a sweatshirt, and actually put on make-up, and a long plaid skirt with a nice sweater. Save for a comment from one of my beloved children about my skirt looking like Nanny McPhee's, the morning went well, and I felt great and ready to go.  

     When I was in jr. high and high school (back in the 1980's), there was always what we called an "audio-visual guy" in school.  The A.V. guy was that shy, quiet boy who never had much to say, but who could always be counted on by teachers to make what was then the "latest technology" work.  He threaded film reels into machines, figured out how to make the sound come on, and how to make the overhead projector light up.  I think A.V. guys existed in high schools all across America at that time.  Thank God, twenty years later, a modern day A.V. guy was sitting in the back row of my Sociology class. Upon taking my place to begin my presentation, I soon discovered that the necessary cords to connect my Mac Book Pro were not available.  Ok, minor setback.  I had it on a flash drive.  Nerves then turned into panic, as the flash drive wouldn't load into the classroom computer. I could feel tears at the back of my eyes and my face burned with shame. I knew the young students were inwardly laughing at my complete lack of tech knowledge.  At that moment, a knight in shining armor (my new name for the A.V. guy) awkwardly appeared from nowhere, pushed this, typed that, and shazam! My presentation was on the screen. I wanted to kiss him dead on the lips. I restrained myself, and got through the presentation, even though the embedded YouTube video didn't work.  And the girl after me? She did a great job, and the A.V. guy had to help her too!