So when you have a high school senior, they get a LOT of e-mails from colleges.

This, today, from UPenn:

[quote]

86% of students have an internship to compliment their studies while enrolled at Penn.

Yeah, well, nothing like a major usage faux pas to draw the applications from the 'best and brightest' eh?

DD remarks:

Who would my internship say all these nice things to, anyway? Is this like complimentary hotel chocolates? 'oh, you don't look fat! Eat me!'

2 somewhat funny snippets:

Ds6 had finished almost all his math assignments from school on the computer. Last week, he took map testing. Monday, he asks, "mom, can I finish the math? I wanna know what happens when I'm done."
He logs in. (Map had linked to the program. He has new assignments.) "Mommy, look! I have new assignments. I can't wait to see what they are!" I had to peel him off the computer 2 hrs later.


Ds3.5- at the bookstore, talking to a nearby grandmother. He overhears her talking about Santa. "Santa's not real. Neither are the elves. He has no magic sleigh and can't really fit down our chimney."
(We have told him we believe in Santa. My 6 yr old does- or atleast tells me he does.)

DD14:


"Ferris Bueller is my spirit animal."

Love the part about finishing it before she has to go to college.

Animal spirit brings me to this fun anecdote:

I am not living with a little human boy, but rather a batling. DS2 has spent the last 3 weeks fully immersed in his alter-ego role of a ghost-faced batling. When he half-wakes at night to nurse, I get, "Mummy bat, can I please nurse?" He even talks in his sleep about echolocation, finding nectar, and dodging around stalagmites in "our cave." I have to hand it to him, he's committed to the role.

At one point I forgot his species and mistakenly called him a Jamaican fruit eating bat, but I was given a stern talking-to about how he uses echolocation to eat insects, not find fruits. Yeeesh, Mum, try to keep up will you?

DS4 has been telling his three year old friends that they are going to die. "But don't worry," he reassured one little girl, "I'm going to die too."

Death has been on his mind a lot lately, and he's also concerned about growing up and having to move out of the house someday. He told me not to worry though, that he would call me every day.

Does this kind of reassurance work? I can so picture my DD3-6yo telling agemates that kind of thing... and me apologizing to their horrified parents. Not that such a thing ever happened. {ahem}



DD shared this with everyone this morning-- I thought about just PM-ing it around, but it was too darned funny not to share more widely with this particular group!


http://themetapicture.com/scientists-tell-the-truth/

I found the Fisher, Reviewer 1 and Tom Petty comments particularly amusing. They all sound like snarky things that I've actually heard (or thought).

In fact, I'm recalling a musing "So how do you say 'With all due respect, why was Reviewer 2 even ON this paper? Clearly s/he lacks the necessary background to understand the work,' without being obnoxious??"

This was apparently my function in most workplaces I've been in, actually; finding ways to state the unthinkable without actually doing so. LOL. There's certainly an art to it.

Reviewer 2 was on this paper because I'd asked 6 other people to review, of whom 2 said an immediate no, 3 failed to reply to the review invitation despite reminders, and one promised a review "tomorrow" every other day for a month #overlyhonesteditors

LOL-- also true.

Reviewer 2 was actually the least senior graduate student in the lab, because the others already have research assistantships, thereby eliminating a meaningful means of coercion in terms of forcing a review of this paper, and it's not as though I actually review things myself, but I rationalize this as "training" for the students and post-docs #overlyhonestreviewers

If the reviewer has been reading my paper at one page per month they should be done with my paper any moment now. #overlyhonestauthors