All you former and current graduate students can relate to this.
Graduate students, especially those who work AND go to grad school will readily admit that it is very hard to do without support and understanding from the family, both spouses and children. Even your friends get tired of the excuse, "No, I can't come over and watch the show tonight, I have a paper due in the morning and 3 chapters left to read before morning."
However, sometimes their help and support comes in the form of holding us accountable.
My favorite story comes from my son when he was in the third grade. One Sunday evening he was playing computer games and I started nagging him about homework. "Do you have your homework done?"
He never looked up from the computer. He just replied, "Have you got your dissertation done?" Now, I knew he didn't know exactly what a dissertation was, but he did know that I had a huge homework assignment that I wasn't working on.
Racked with guilt, since I hadn't touched it for weeks, I put the newspaper down, slinked over to the desk, opened up the laptop and three-ring binders and started in. I never said a word to him about his homework.
But, I noticed about 15 minutes later he had all his papers out on the table and was working quietly on his work.
Sometimes accountability is a mutual task.
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3 comments:
Could you send your son to my house to motivate me!!!
My 3rd grade daughter was out of town last week, and called to talk with me. In the middle of the conversation she said,"Do you have your Wednesday night homework done, and did you get it in on time?" Accountability!!
It's amazing what our children pick up from watching our every day lives.
My favorite line from that graduate list I posted was this one..
you have accepted guilt as an inherent feature of relaxation.
Tony,
You will never have guilt-free relaxation again until the dissertation is finished!
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