Ultimate Blog Challenge - Not my circus, not my monkeys

Welcome back to another edition of the Ultimate Blog Challenge!

This post is about one of the hardest things a teenager's Mom gets to do: 

To watch their child run into the open knife.

It's not that he hasn't been warned and offered help of course. But let's start at the beginning.

Colin is in his last year of junior high school. Part of their last semester is the completion of a project as their final paper. They had to brainstorm and come up with a topic either alone or in groups of two in February. They were given guidelines, timelines, you name it. They were given a bunch of scheduled days off class over the course of several months.

You can feel it coming, right?

They were taking it very easy. How hard can it be to put together a school paper? That was what they chose to be their project. 

Their classmate, who is obsessed by all things NASA, built his own rocket and had the best time. He actually launched it and showed us video footage. I was fascinated!

Other kids organized a volleyball tournament, made their own lavender oil or constructed a pinball machine. 

Spring break came and went, and Colin and his friend didn't have a single interview scheduled, let alone article written. They had no offers from printers, and they had no sponsors to pay for the magazine.

For a while I subtly nagged. I mean, I tried to encourage him to get started, no matter how small. Write an introduction, do one interview, anything.

The fact that his project partner is an unmotivated follower didn't help, Once they met to work, they basically hung out, raided the fridge and watched crap on their phones. 

It hurt my core so much for different reasons:

• Creating a magazine is a great, great project - one I would love to do myself actually!
• Colin wants to become a journalist. How great would it be to have a first reference project to mention in his CV?
• Since he's little I have been trying to instill the work before fun motto. 

Their last two consecutive project days, a Monday and a Tuesday completely off class, were on June 26 / 27. On Monday I didn't go into the office but left the house several times during the day to run errands. 

Every time I came back, they were watching Netflix, eating ice cream or playing hockey. In the living room. They broke a glass and had to clean up the mess. For the first time in their life they operated a vacuum other than the handheld one. 

"Where do I plug it in?" Colin asked.

In a socket, I suggested.

"But there is no cable."

The cable is coiled inside the vacuum cleaner, it even has a symbol that gives you a hint where it might be located.

He found it. 

Proud Mom. Not.

I was sort of fuming. They have been wasting so much time, and now they were wasting even more.

My son and his friend just about made the Thursday deadline to submit their document to the print shop. Their only sponsor is hubby, and he's also the one who came up with a last-minute company to take on the printing. They did have another contact, but they were sort of inflexible and expensive.

Friday, 11:55am, Colin called his Dad. "Hey, do you think they've already started printing? Cause I found a couple typos... Can you call them and ask if there's a way..."

Hubby cut him off and told him if anybody was going to call the printing company, it was the young people who had a deadline to produce a school paper.

So my son called, and fortunately they accepted the edited document.

The boys  had to hand in their project on Wednesday. Tuesday around 5pm the delivery guy pulled up in front of our office. A sigh of relief. The magazines are here! 

I was so curious to read it, and given the fact I witnessed the degree of effort they put in, my expectations were, let's call it realistic. 

The quality of the content was very diverse. It ranged from brilliant to mediocre, and then there was the one article that musthave gotten forgotenwhenit came to editing. Itlackedspaces and cotaind severl typos. 

Oh. My. God.

I should have insisted they let me go over it.

Wait a minute. 

No, I shouldn't have. 

Actually I did great! 

At some point I stopped asking about their progress, I didn't interrupt when they were watching a movie instead of working. I kept saying to myself "not my circus, not my monkeys" even though it was so hard. 

And it wasn't over. They had three more assignments: 

• They had to write an eleven pages long document summarizing their process. How did they come up with the idea for their project, how did they structure their tasks, what pitfalls did they experience, what turned out great?
• They had to exhibit the project at the event. It's also where they handed out their magazine.
• They had to talk about their project for about seven minutes in front of parents, fellow students and some teachers.

Let's just say the best part of the presentation was the fact that they were brutally honest and basically told the audience that they were being lazy slobs, and they learned to start earlier, make a plan and stick to it. Never again did they want to experience the stress and pressure they had to endure.

Well, I do hope they will remember these learnings next time in life.