iPractice makes iPerfect

The end of the month is nigh.  I finished the two classes for January and discovered that I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to try out the new iPad for the next month. This blog entry is, in fact, being typed out in the notepad on the iPad from my sofa while I drink tea and watch Law & Order: Criminal Intent.  It is pretty cool; I must admit.

Photo by Jeff Wilcox

I have some nice and relaxing plans for the weekend.  Practice with the iPad, fun times with friends, and then class on Monday, two in fact.  Next month will be a long month.  I have two classes next month, luckily, but they are split shift.  I'll start at 8:30 in the morning and end at 10 at night.  That is another reason I am thrilled to be able to play around with the iPad.

This month, I can use the iPad and get the practice I need in the four hour stretch between the classes.  I can already tell that I am going to love this.  I was able to get onto Project Gutenberg and download two classic favorites of mine: Phantom of the Opera and Persuasion.

Jane Austen is one of my favorite Victorian writers.  I think she gets a bad rap for being insipid and dull.  If you read her with an eye toward her actual purpose, she's absolutely hilarious.  Much like Swift's Modest Proposal, Austen wrote with an eye on satire and mockery of "polite society" and the common roles women filled in that society.  I am really looking forward to reading it again as well as checking out the possible uses of an e-reader.

The e-reader vs. book debate will be one I weigh in on later.  Right now, I still side heavily with the paper form of books.  At the risk of sounding like an old woman, these new fangled e-readers need to stay the hell off my metaphorical lawn.

Willful, stubborn, bullheaded and smart

I've been working with Little Guy on the fundamentals of writing.  Things like how to hold a pencil, how hard to press on paper, the basic of basics. We've been working on tracing in his workbooks and he likes to count the lines as he traces them, but he gets bored with it easily.  Yesterday, after trying to get him to trace the final group of diagonal lines, I put the workbook away and gave him some paper to draw on.  He proceeded to draw letters out on his own. 

They were a stereotypical large and childish attempt at letters, but you could see what letters they were.  And while I am proud of him, this concerns me for a number of reasons.  I am thrilled my son is smart, I am thrilled that he catches on and figures things out quickly. But his dad and I are smart too, and I recognize the dangers of things coming so easily.  Already I can see some of the more treacherous aspects coming through. 

When he tried to write a word out and realized he couldn't, he got frustrated and tried to have me do it for him.  When I told him no, HE needed to work at it, he threw the pencil down and ran out of the room.  He's learning that, because he is a smart kid, things tend to come easily to him.  Unfortunately, he's also decided, like most smart people, that because so much comes so easily he doesn't want to waste time on the things that don't come easily.

He likes to read, he likes to draw, but if he can't get it right away, he doesn't want to wait.  That, unfortunately, he gets from me; a short attention span and a severe lack of patience.  He wants it and he wants it now, and if he can't have it now, the world will pay.  It is good that he is stubborn.  It is good that he is smart.  I just wish he hadn't inherited the character flaws. 

What I need to do is buckle down and make him work.  But I am also afraid that I will turn education into a punishment and he won't find enjoyment in it.  Finding some sort of balance between needing to work and enjoying the effort is difficult with a 4 year old.  And then I worry that I push him too hard.  He can count to 100, is reading some things all on his own, knows colors, letters, sounds, can sound out words and is no slouch in the imagination department either...  Am I pushing him too hard?  Or should I feed the beast and keep him working at it?  How do I make sure it's enjoyable without scaring him off?

Being a parent of a strong-willed, stubborn child is difficult.  Finding the path through those minefields is dangerous and exhausting.  As I tell him regularly, there's a reason why animals eat their young, he's lucky he's so skinny and worth keeping around. 

We took him to breakfast and then a trip to Barnes and Noble today.  I had finished A Clash of Kings and had to pick up the remaining two books of the series.  Normally, we'd hit the Bargain Books store, but they didn't carry the series and I needed the books. Right now, while I type up this entry, Big Guy is finishing up the last book in the Temraire series and then will likely pick up the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire. 

We've forced Little Guy into nap-time.  He's getting willful and fractious and that generally means he's tired.  Small wonder, since he went to bed at 1:30 this morning and was awake and excited before 9 am.  Soon, I'll snuggle back with my book, A Storm of Swords, and undoubtedly burn my way through that one as well.  Sadness for me when I finish it.  What will I do after I finish this series?  What shall I read next? 

Embracing the nerd within.

I've been burning through A Game of Thrones and actually finished it last night, curled up in bed with Big Guy.  I imagine by the time the weekend comes, I'll have finished the second book.  I just need to prepare myself not to complain or else Big Guy will mock me. 

As it is, he's very insistent that I am a nerd like him.  He uses my reading against me.  Of course he also uses the fact that he dragged me into the gaming world against me.  He tried to use my video gaming against me, but I was able to point out that gaming is actually a pretty cool thing to do.  He then had to point out that most of the video games I enjoyed were pretty nerdy. 

He said even my movies were nerdy.  This is not true.  He tried to say that since many of the movies I greatly enjoy are based on books, it made me a nerd.  I disagree.  I think it means I know what I like going in.  Yes, I have watched more than one movie based on Shakespeare.  And I have done so of my own volition. Yes, I enjoy movies based on Jane Austin novels.  That is not nerdy.   He then tried to use my love for the English language against me. 

He said the simple fact that I teach courses in Lit and writing makes me a nerd.  He said no one but a nerd would harbor the deep emotions I hold for literature and grammar.  When I protested that English was cool, he said my arguments to the contrary (and my correction of his word choice) only served to enhance my nerdiness.  I'm sorry, but you can't use odorous when you mean onerous. 

I disagree most strongly with his views.  English and the study of grammar and literature is not nerdy but "muy awesome".  We even watch the TV show Castle where the main character (played by the sexy and also awesome Nathan Fillion) tends to make me squeal like the grammar fan girl I am.  If discussion on proper word usage and how to properly define "irony" are so nerdy, then why are they discussed by such an awesome character?  And if loving English is wrong, then I don't wanna be right. 

Of course, in a world where the average American reads at a sixth-grade level, maybe being an English nerd is not such a bad thing.  In the long run, it doesn't matter how nerdy others think I am, I know I'm cool and I know what I enjoy.  And, besides, I will never be as nerdy as Big Guy.

OK, maybe I'm wrong.