My normal Wednesday routine has been kicked into touch. Late yesterday evening, around 11.00pm, I went to the kitchen to sort out a few things before heading for bed and suddenly found myself vomiting into the kitchen sink! Well, that was a surprise! I’d felt a little shivery earlier but that was all. Throughout the night I woke up every few hours and vomited into a bucket next to the bed! Apart from the throwing up interludes I slept until almost 10.00am. Good grief!
I’ve only thrown up once since then - touches wood, crosses fingers - and now I am ensconced on a sofa, feeling a little sorry for myself!
Goodness knows what has caused this but I must say that I am not impressed.
Consequently, my trawl through the papers for interesting stuff has been quite cursory. Here we go.
According to columnist Zoe Williams, “Parents are now asking for “exam leave” from work to get through their children’s GCSEs and A-levels. The sheer emotional investment – never mind the time, energy and organisation involved these days – is extraordinary. So I have to note from the outset that this is a choice: there was a time in living memory when parents just left kids to it, and we all survived.”
Goodness! My parents always used to say, “Just do the best you can”. And I shared a bedroom with two sisters so there was no quiet private space for me to do my revision. And when I decided to do A-level Italian as a mature student, I didn’t have exam leave apart from the actual day of the written exams.
One factor that made things easier, more acceptable, more normal for my generation was that we had regular yearly exams to assess our progress. It wasn’t all left until public exams came along. We sort of took them in our stride, albeit still a rather nerve-wracking stride.
Do we perhaps mollycoddle today’s teenagers?
Here’s a link to an article about attitudes to the Gaza genocide.
That’s all. I am retreating to my novel and the occasional snooze!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment