We were not able to meet a fourth time until we met Wednesday, November 9. We had trouble meeting between the two meetings because we were both really busy over the few weeks for different reasons. Nevertheless, we were able to meet at Einstein’s Bagel Company again.
We began by telling each other what we’ve been up to over the past few weeks. I talked about how my fall break was and how I’ve been busy in my engineering classes with the next cycle of tests. She complained that she was really tired because she had to help her daughter earlier in the week on a group project that turned into a project for Jeanny and her daughter. She explained that her daughter tried to get the group together to work on it, but none of the girls ever responded. Jeanny even tried to email the parents, which worked well enough for one of the two girls to show up at one meeting. Jeanny said that even the part that the one girl completed was not that good because a lot of it was from Wikipedia. Jeanny said that she ended staying up all one night and working on that project for two days straight with her daughter. I agreed with her that that was very unfair of the group to not want to do anything early and even worse that the parents did not even encourage the girls to help out.
Jeanny then went on to describe herself as a very hands-on mother. She went on to say that she always asks her daughter how much homework she has and makes sure that she does her homework. She also said that she makes her daughter read at least one hour a day before she begins watching tv. However, even when she watches tv she sometimes learns. Jeanny explained that her daughter liked to watch the Japanese cartoons and has nearly learned Japanese just by watching these shows. I told her that my mom was very much the same way. She would always ask about my homework and check on me to make sure that I did my homework. She would also be the mom to help my youngest sister, a sixth grader, complete her project without the help of the group if need be. The thought of how they were similar made me laugh, especially knowing that my mom is the exact same way when Jeanny was describing herself.
Jeanny then began to talk more about her daughter’s classes again. Jeanny tells me that daughter won an award for her art at her school, but she jokes with her because her daughter was never great at art in Korea. She mentions that art is a major thing in Korea and a big part of school. This was completely different for me since I didn’t take any form of art since like fourth grade. Another thing that was dramatically different was the emphasis on music. Jeanny says that her daughter plays clarinet and hopes that it helps her once she starts applying to schools. She also explained how her daughter was in the advanced science and math classes for her grade, but was in the regular history and English classes. She had a tutor to help her writing papers and for other aspects of her English class. She explained while in American papers the teacher expects us to pick one side and argue for us, in Korea they usually just go down the middle explaining the pros and cons to both sides. In addition, they usually don’t have a conclusion for their Korean teachers either. I thought this was interesting since we are told to write all papers in the same manner at a young age and that never changes, it only gets longer as you get older.
I enjoyed listening to Jeanny talk about her daughter because I could really tell how much she loved her and wanted the best for her daughter. This reminded me of my parents and made me even more excited to go home for Thanksgiving break since I hadn’t seen them since I moved into Tom Brown Pete Wright back in August.
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