2.17.2007

Homeschooling Mom Finds Peace In Spite of Terrible Admissions Week!



A went to fencing this morning, and I hit Barnes & Noble Booksellers. I could not help but look at the Dale Carnegie book. No, I am not losing my mind, I told myself. Other people live through terrible news. So will I. And anyway, our status quo is still our status quo. We've lost nothing.

So, in the effort to make myself happy and kick away the worry, I bought tickets to a film today (click on image to find out which one). I highly recommend it for the adults. As one critic wrote, I simply did not want this film to end. It was that good. I also noticed what may have been the director's staging of an inside joke.*

Back at the fencing club, I avoided PEC like the plague. She was just waiting for me to beg for her advice on getting A through the second admissions cycle. I wanted to tell her to stick the private school system, and her exorbitant "consulting" fees, up her arse. What sort of world is it where it is so competitive that you have to hire a, ahem, professional, who charges thousands of dollars to get you through the bulls&*t? And I can't help but wonder how the private schools benefit from these "consultants"?

No. LaMai is done flirting with ManhattanPrivateSchoolandia.

One fencing instructor did chat with me and recommended his placing a call to a school in New Jersey on our behalf. "Very good school," he assured me, "that is a feeder to Princeton. And they have a very strong fencing team." I thanked him and sent him the obligatory "thank you" e-mail afterwards. Let's see if he actually makes the call.

Tonight me and A watched "An Inconvenient Truth." I highly recommend it to everyone, young and old. I also recommend I go live somewhere green. Like New Zealand.

*Anne-Marie Duff appears at the end, on a bench. She played Queen Elizabeth recently for a BBC series (and did amazingly well in that role). There are two other "Elizabeths" in the film - the older one having played QEI in "Shakespeare in Love" and the younger having played QEI in 1998 and now recently in "The Golden Age." Another QE1 who could have appeared is Helen Mirren -- but her film was likely in production at the same time as this one.

3 comments:

L said...

Damn. Sorry to hear about it, La Mai, but you know A will be a success regardless of the educational path he travels.

We watched An Inconvenient Truth too. I bought it while in FL just in case we couldn't get it here. Jorge hadn't seen it and was debating the veracity of all claims made. I watched it again with him the other night. He was speechless.

When I start getting homesick or annoyed with the locals who love their rules and regulations far too much, and abide high levels of gov't intrusion in every aspect of their lives, I remind myself: We are safer here.

(NZ is still cheaper though, and in one year and 3 months after we complete our citizenship requirements here, I'm still thinking that may be the place.)

LoganUry said...

Hey!

I write for the Harvard Crimson and I'm writing an article about homeschoolers at Harvard. I'd love to interview you. Are you interested? Email me at LoganUry@fas.harvard.edu

- Logan

la Maitresse said...

Hello, Logan at the Harvard Crimson!

Sure, I'll talk to you, but I do not wish to misrepresent myself. I am not related to any homeschoolers currently at Harvard, nor do I personally know of any homeschoolers who have successfully matriculated at the H-bomb, nor do I have any comment about Kaavya Viswanathan. Oh, right, she wasn't a homeschooler...

maitresse_at_gmaildotcom