Tuesday, July 08, 2008

What a day!

Last week I had a filling fall out of one of my molars and had to get it fixed. While I was there I scheduled a cleaning for Katie and I for this morning at 8am. What was I thinking? That is too early for summer. Tom came with us to watch Katie in the waiting room while I was getting my teeth cleaned. Well Katie had the staff and patients in the waiting room laughing at the things she says. She is a mini grown up. I'm older and my cleanings take longer than hers. So when I got out, she said "It's about time! What took you so long?" The hygeinist told me she had to look at Katie's chart again because she just couldn't believe she was only 5. She was amazed at how intelligent Katie's conversations are.

Brittanie started the "Jump Start" program at USC Sumter yesterday. It is a 4 day a week program in the month of July that prepares incoming Freshmen for college classes. It is from 9 to 12:30 and half of the morning is English and the other half is math....her two strongest subjects. She wanted to do it just to be extra prepared before she starts the real classes. The first day she was stunned that people in her English class didn't know what a thesis statement was. She said "How do you graduate high school without knowing that???" She has found the math rather easy as well. But she understands that math can be a mental block for people so she isn't as judgmental of people who struggle in math. She thinks English is just a free subject because it is so easy for her and she can't imagine people struggling in it. But they do in her Jump Start English class. Today was her second day and already everyone knows her name and she was approached by a member of the school newspaper basically recruiting her to write for the newspaper. She told him she didn't know if she would be interested. I think she is afraid to overload herself because she doesn't know how hard her classes are going to be. But she is definitely interested. I told her it would look great on her application to transfer to Columbia next year. She could definitely do it. Yesterday her Jump Start English teacher told them to write an essay on Education....anything you wanted about education. You had an hour to write it. She wrote an essay that was 3 1/2 pages front and back! She said some people only had half of one page as their essay. She is a born writer. I was the same way growing up. We had to write stories in 7th and 8th grade using our spelling words. I could knock out my story each week in 10 minutes and it was a very creative and interesting story. One day in 7th grade a guy in my class offered me a dollar to write his story and word soon spread and I was pulling in $5 to $10 a week! LOL Before you goody two shoes out there comment me to tell me that was cheating, just remember I was a kid. And I used the money to buy stuff at the canteen for my friends. I was an entrepreneur. They were the cheaters. See it's all about perception. LOL

After Jump Start, she went to get a copy of her Social Security card in Columbia (we lost hers) and what an ordeal that was. There were no parking spots open so she had to ride around the building 100 times until someone left or park at Finley Park and walk the 1/2 mile back to the building. She just rode around it. Then she went in and set off the metal detector with her studded belt. She watched a Marine get chewed out by a security guard for being on his cell phone inside the building. She didn't understand why they have to be so anal retentive. She was only 4 1/2 when the federal building in Oklahoma City was blown up and add to that the attack of 09/11/01 and I can surely understand it. But she found the whole experience stressful. That's life. You can't be too careful.

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