Grrr, I'm not in school any more

[jennickels]

I was just checking my email and saw one from Meagan's history teacher.  He sends them out weekly to remind us that he's sending grades home with the kids.  It came on Thursday (last day of school this week).  The title was about the grades so I almost didn't open it but I'm glad I did because the 2nd part of the email was to remind us that the kids have a HUGE Egyptian project due on the 15th.

Um, Meagan hasn't done anything for this project.  I completely forgot about it because she showed me the paper a week after she got the assignment when I was really depressed and just didn't care about anything.  Now she has no idea where this paper is because she figured it should be MY responsibility to keep track of it and make her do the project.  So now she has 3 days to write a paper and build a pyramid or something (we actually have a LEGO game that is shaped like a pyramid so she could just take that in and write the paper) but she doesn't know the details since she doesn't have the paper.

I've just spent 20 minutes looking for the paper while Meagan pouted in a chair.  I'm done with this crap.  I finished school already.  I don't want to write history papers and build pyramids. 

If I hadn't seen the email she would have "forgot" all weekend then come home all upset on Monday and blame me for not having it done on Tuesday and expected me to do it all for her (or, as she calls it, help her).  On top of that she invited a friend over for the night instead of working on this project.  She's had a full 2 weeks to do it. Ugh.

Now she's throwing a huge tantrum over it and demanding to know why she has to learn about Egypt.  I looked in her bag and it's a mess.  I found two papers she was supposed to give me and a study guide that was marked "incomplete".  The rest was such a mess I have no idea how she finds anything.

I just don't have the energy to deal with this crap.

Comments

[spiletta42.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I'd be furious. It's unfortunate that 3000 miles or so separate us, because I have shelves full of books on ancient Egypt, even a few kid-level books, as well as a few good travel guides to modern Egypt, and a nice thick college textbook on Middle Eastern history. If you want to teleport her on over . . .

(I also have a mummified chicken dressed in traditional Egyptian grave clothes. If I'd known a week ago, I could have mailed it. Or UPSed it, actually, I'm fairly certain it's illegal to mail dead animals.)

[nynaeve-sedai.livejournal.com]

Wow. That would have kicked my middle school project in the butt LOL When I did Egypt I made a pyramid with yellow posterboard and GLITTER.

O.o

[virkatjol.livejournal.com]

Does she get anything, allowance? TV time? Video games? That you can take away for bad school work? That always worked for me. Of course I don't know that I had bad school work, but that's how I was bribed to learn to ride a bike... hahaha

I always blame mom for moving things too. It's what kids do. ;) But I don't think that I even handed her my homework.

[jennickels.livejournal.com]

She's already had most of her privileges revoked because of her grades. I found out she's still missing 3 assignments in math class, too. She didn't seem too concerned since she still has a B+ in the class. Her attitude pisses me off most of all. She just doesn't care.

Then her friend was here supposedly helping her with the project (which she also has to do) but they got on the topic of grades and they have the same math class and her friend is missing 14 assignments. I was like, "and your parents let you leave the house?" She just shrugged. Meagan wouldn't step outside the house except to go to school until every last assignment was finished and turned in (even if it was past the time they could make up the grade).

She also had an incomplete on a study guide in history class (for the Egyptian unit). She complained she "only" had 3 days to work on it. WTF? Yet every day last week while I was all depressed and barely able to function she came home, dropped her bag, said she had no homework and left to go hang out.

I thought we were past this crap. She went through this phase back in 4th grade, last year was better and now we're back to skipping homework in 6th grade.

She's now lost any time on the computer except to work on her NaNo. Of course, unless I sit right next to her she automatically goes online and starts screwing around. At least she can't log into her Facebook unless I do it for her (which was intentional because I didn't even want her to have a facebook, but I needed the friends for a game, lol).

[thothmes.livejournal.com]

It is better for her to learn now, in sixth grade, when the grades will not count for her record, that there are natural consequences for disorganization and not doing her work.

Let her flunk if she doesn't do it herself.

Make sure she knows that there are consequences to doing poorly in school, like having to sit and do school work in a defined place for a defined period of time EVERY DAY including weekends and holidays until grades are back up to her usual standard, and then let her experience the consequences of screwing up.

It is her assignment, and her grade, so it should be her work.

I'll help a kid understand something that they can't comprehend. I'll help the Whirlwind (who tends to rush a bit and miss things as a result) to review her work and be certain she has followed the directions and completed all the required parts. I'll give organizational hints if a child seems to have trouble getting things together, or keeps losing things. I'll give pointers as to how/where to research something. I insist on 24 hours notice for any project/assignment/report that requires resources that are not staples in the home. I will study with them, but always with an eye to teaching them how to review for a test by themselves.

I WILL NOT DO A SINGLE BIT OF THEIR WORK FOR THEM, even if it means that they will fail. The only exception to this was that I once took content that my eldest had assembled and written (text and pictures), and with her by my side to dictate placement, I made them into the tri-fold brochure that the assignment required. I consented to do this because our opensource graphics program that we had back then was too kludgy and complex for a fifth grader to learn to use in the limited time the assignment required.

The earlier they learn that there are no shortcuts to doing the work, and that hard work is rewarded, and sloppy or inadequate brings poor grades, and that poor grades have consequences, the sooner they internalize that and don't have to be policed for it.

This means that kids whose parents do the assignments for them will get better grades than they will. I guarantee that this will all even out in college and the working world, where parents stop doing all the work, and those pampered kids are ill-prepared for life without that help.

Our house is a paradise of Egyptological reference works, including just about every book for kids on the subject that has been published in the past 25 years or so, but alas, Vermont is too far away to help Meagan.

[jennickels.livejournal.com]

The problem is now a days they WANT the parents to help. Brenna is in 3rd grade and has this salt dough map thing to do and it's a "family project" meaning the parents are expected to do part of it. It's crap. It was such a freaking pain in the ass last year with Owen. Of course he ended up having to make a map of freaking Asia. Ugh. Brenna has to do Africa which at least has more easily defined edges.

Later in the year she'll have to build a Native American longhouse. That's another "family project". When I was a kid it was frowned upon to get more help from your parents than just nudges or insight or advice. Now they expect the parents to be getting their hands dirty with the materials and doing half the work. Because that means you are an involved parent.

Meagan says her teacher said that parents are expected to help with this project. I only glanced at the paper but I don't remember it saying anything like that on there. My husband said he'd help her build the pyramid with legos but the way she's been acting I believe she thinks he's going to do it for her so she won't flunk.

She even had the audacity ask if her friend could spend the night since she finished the 5 paragraphs for the project. Uh, no. Then she was stomping her foot and demanding to know why not. I don't get her.

And she's the most studious of her friends. Her one friend is in remedial math classes and her other friend turns in less assignments than Meagan does and says she has a D in math and is barely pulling passing grades in her other subjects. Meagan is in the highly capable program so she's in classes with other kids that are above average and if she continues to show she can do the work they'll move her up to classes mixed with the other grades which she is terrified of for some reason. She keeps telling me she doesn't want to end up in a class with 7th and 8th graders. I like that the school focuses on the abilities of the kids and not their arbitrary grade levels. I would have excelled at that school.

When I was in 7th grade I was in the highest "group" for academics. We were the over achievers with the high test scores in math and reading. Math was my best subject that year. We reviewed the 7th grade math book for 2 weeks before the teacher decided that was way below our level and started us on a pre-algebra book that was supposed to be for the 8th graders. We breezed through that before the end of the year and she was going to switch us to the books the 8th graders were almost done with but it was another pre-algebra book. Instead she broke out the brand-spanking-new Algebra I books she had gotten for the outgoing 8th graders. We spent a couple months working in those books (which were a 9th grade level) before the school year ended. I loved it. By 9th grade I was in Algebra II Honors (an 11/12th grade class at my school). Although I floundered once I hit geometry and never got trig (blah).

[thothmes.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree with you. It is SO totally crap to have family togetherness homework. I guess the best you can do is hope that this is a passing educational fad that will soon blow over.

My sister (who is a teacher, and who was very bright, but the youngest kid in her class) would say that Meagan is right to fear being put in with the older kids, especially at that age. There's a whole lot of brain growth and maturation that goes on in those years, and Meagan could be bright enough to think circles around them, but still feel very out of her depth and a sea because of the social component that she would be missing through no fault or defect of her own. My sister says that it is always better for kids who are blowing past their classmates to stay in the class with their peers but be enriched (have more advanced or in depth work and learning opportunities made available right there in the classroom) rather than being promoted to a higher grade and be in a class where they are out of their depth.

I was personally quite relieved to get out from under the burden of all that algebra and enter the wonderful world of geometry, which it turns out I came hardwired to comprehend and do. Geometry, pre-calc, and calculus were my finest hours, mathematically speaking, geometry because my brain was apparently born to do that, and pre-calc and calculus because I had a wonderful teacher (the same one both years) who had a true genius for explaining math for the literarily minded (that would be me) as well as also being able to get the ideas across equally well for the more traditionally mathematically minded.

[jennickels.livejournal.com]

I think she's worried she'll be like the only 6th grader in a class full of like 8th grade boys or something, lol. I'm pretty sure the class would be a lot more mixed with mostly 6th and 7th graders.

She is one of the youngest kids in the school, though, so I guess I can see that being an issue. She has a late June birthday so whereas her two best friends are 12 (well, one is turning 12 on Thanksgiving) she won't turn 12 until the school year is over.

But she is very mature for her age for the most part. One of her other friends is 13. She's also got a summer birthday so she's in 8th grade but just turned 13 this summer. BUT she's as tall as I am. Actually she might be taller than me. The two of them together is just hilarious. Meagan is the size of an 8-9 year old at 11 and Bailey is the size of a full grown adult (and looks like she is at least 16) at 13. She's a full foot taller than Meagan but they get along great. Bailey reminds me of me when I was that age. She gets along great with the younger kids and likes to hang out with Brenna, too. They just sit there and chat and she adores Jack. I'm thinking of asking her to babysit him so we can go out alone for a lunch or something. Of course the other kids would be there but she'd be one more set of eyes and ears on him. We actually left the kids and her at home for like 20 minutes while we ran to the store one night and when we got back she had organized the kids to clean up the kitchen and the house was all straightened up. And Jack was still alive, lol. I wished I had some change that day to give her because she did a good job.

Anyway... math... I just didn't get geometry. Well, I got it but the teacher I had was a stickler for the proofs and showing ALL your work. Too bad I did half of it in my head and would forget to write it down since, well, I did it in my head so why write it. I ended up getting a C in the class because of incomplete proofs even though I got the correct answer which ticked me off.

Then the week we started trig junior year I was out sick. I didn't know we were skipping ahead to the end of the book because the ACTs were coming up and we needed to know trig for them. So I missed almost the entire lesson and had to learn it from a book (I was never good at asking for help with anything and by then I was so far past what my parents knew about math--my mom stopped helping me in like 4th grade and my dad couldn't help after 6th grade). I never really got it so pre-calc senior year was torture, lol. The only upside was two of my best friends were in the class (which was mixed juniors/seniors) and we had lunch together right after. I passed the class with a B but the stuff never really stuck with me and I had to take the same basic class over in college and still didn't get it.

But that might have been because I was too busy playing footsie with my boyfriend during class to pay attention.

I owe my love of algebra to the great teacher I had in 7th grade. She told us to forget the book. We only looked at it for the problems but we NEVER looked at the explanations for the lessons. She said they made no sense and there were easier ways of learning it, ways her professor taught her in college. She said before that she would have never thought to become a math teacher and then she had that great professor and it all just clicked. She taught us the way she learned and it all just made perfect sense to me.

I always explain Algebra as being a big logic puzzle. My brain likes logic puzzles with logical solutions that are usually easy to figure out if you know the rules. I can't wait for Meagan to get to algebra. I'll have to relearn it all but I'm sure I'll have fun doing the problems along with her.

[thothmes.livejournal.com]

I scored in the 98th percentile for spatial relations. I just came understanding geometry intuitively. I can't really take any credit for doing well in that class, it's more a case of being able to just see it, and the real scandal would be if I managed to do badly in it, given the brain I came with.

Whenever we were tested for aptitudes, the results always came back saying I should consider becoming an architect. I can imagine no job to which I would be less suited, although I would have a real talent for the spatial part of it, the other parts of the job would drive me nuts, since part of it entails keeping track of many small details. Not a good thing for the sort of person whose issues with algebra included losing track of the odd negative sign. I'm much more of a big picture than a picky detail sort of person.

Oooh, Bailey sounds wonderful, and a good babysitter is worth her weight in gold!

[jennickels.livejournal.com]

I always scored high in everything on those tests. Up until the end of high school I was just a good test taker. Around 11th grade I think I just got tired of tests and bubbles and #2 pencils, lol. My test scores started to go down and I even froze up during a make-up math test and only finished half of it. I just apologized to the teacher and was like, "I don't know what happened," She told me it happens to the best of us, lol.

I like logic puzzles. I used to buy magazines with them just for fun. But I also used to love to draw (not that I was ever really good at it but I enjoyed it) and I obviously have the creativity down with my writing. I SUCK at technical writing and hated doing research papers in school but give me a creative writing assignment and I would rock it.

[thothmes.livejournal.com]

Oh, I always scored high on everything on those tests too, except for one test: Clerical Speed and Accuracy. They tested it by giving us an already filled out bubble-test type sheet, and handed us an empty sheet, and told us to copy it.

I scored in the 40th percentile.

I always worked hard at school, because that is what one did, I suppose, and always did well. My dad's best advice to me was when he dropped me off at college, he told me that he knew how hard I worked to get there, and that he was incredibly proud of that, but that if I only did that here, I would be missing a large part of what this experience was about. I relaxed a bit after that, and became a bit more human.

My mother graduated first in her class from the same college I did a mere 18 years before me. We had many of the same teachers and textbooks. She was a Greek major and took Greek 001 and Greek 101 co-terminally! So imagine my shame when I got strep throat, and as a result of only being able to get good sleep in the morning when my fever was down, I missed quite a few Greek 001 classes. I came back just before the midterm, and crammed all night to study for the exam.

It was a disaster. I went into the exam, and every fact I'd worked to memorize just vanished out of my head, I was so tired and stressed. When I got the exam back, it was my first-ever-in-a-lifetime failure. And it was a doozy. On the top of the page in bright red pen was an "F - -" When I fail, apparently I FAIL. I sat down with my prof after that, and she worked with me, and I pulled the grade up to a 2.7 for the semester. I went sheepishly to my mother with this bit of information, and she pointed out that, yes, same class, same classroom, same text book, different prof. My prof, a notoriously tough grader, and a long-standing family friend (my grandfather taught there before he retired, my grandmother was Admissions Director for many years, and my aunt and my dad grew up on campus), had been on sabbatical the year my mom took it. Still, she did it with baby me to take care of, while I only had myself to organize.

[jennickels.livejournal.com]

OK, that test would have killed me. I'm sure I would have gone cross-eyed trying to fill in bubbles.

I was one of those kids (like Meagan) that breezed by in school doing minimal work. I wasn't a straight A student because I just didn't care to be. I knew even back then that stress and me don't mix and I wasn't about to jeopardize my health stressing over tests in high school that really didn't mean much in the end when I could just get a B without really studying and worrying. But I knew when I needed to study and when I could just glance over some notes to refresh my memory before a test.

My friends in high school were mostly classic over achievers, top of the class. I hung out with some really smart people. My one friend missed Valedictorian by just a few grade points which she attributed to some health problems she had one year (she passed out in the bathroom and smacked her head on the sink so they had to call and ambulance--I was out sick that week, she was seriously anemic). Most of my friends were in the top 3% of our class, National Honor Society, straight As, taking AP classes.

I think I graduated with a 3.3 GPA and ranked like 130something our of 408. That was good enough for me. I carried that attitude over to college. My grades were good enough but that dang Spanish score kept pulling my GPA down so by the time I quit I only had a 2.8. Shrug. I had finished my last semester of Spanish, though, so I probably could have pulled that up over the next 2 years. It was just too much stress for me, though. It came down to working enough hours to pay my rent or staying in school and possibly living in the library. I chose to work full time and quit school.

Well, I had planned to transfer at first (to Southern Illinois University which I was accepted into) but then decided the only reason I was even in college was because my parents expected it and I wasn't really getting anything out of it. I was just there and bored and not interested in school any more. That was 1997 and by 1999 I was engaged, pregnant and planning a wedding.

I also had no support system back then. My parents were 350 miles away and neither had gone to college (my dad tried community college after Vietnam but couldn't get into it and my mom never graduated high school), I didn't have any close friends at school (except my boyfriend which I won't get into--tool) and there was no internet back then.

Well there was but it was dial-up and I couldn't afford it, lol. I was so completely isolated and on my own it wasn't even funny.

[thothmes.livejournal.com]

The Valedictorian and Salutatorian in my class achieved their status because classes weren't weighted ( at the high school here, honors classes add points, as do some other classes considered above average in difficulty or amount of work), and they didn't take risks. Our senior year they took only 2 or 3 classes, so they could be sure to get all A's and keep that top spot. I had a full eight classes all four years plus some independent study. I graduated 13th out of a class of either 233 or 244 (one was my high school class, the other my college class, and I can never remember which was the larger of the two).

Needless to say, back in the mid 70's when women's lib was just beginning to take root, I was too frighteningly bright to get any attention from the boys. I am well acquainted with the tones that Regency bucks must have used when they talked about bluestockings.

Fortunately, my college self-selected for frighteningly bright women and my husband's did the same for men. We found each other there. Besides, by then I'd been the recipient of my father's good advice, and scaled back on the academic overdrive a bit. Basically, I got a life.

My mother went to college, met my dad as a freshman (he was a junior), married him, had a little me 11 months later, and then went back and got her degree from our alma mater when I was 4. I saw how hard it was for her to do that, so I refused to get married until I had that A.B. degree in hand. I'm 3 credits and a Masters Thesis short of an M.A. in Classical Art and Archaology.

My grandfather the college prof. was so disappointed that neither my mother, my father, or I ever got the PhD. My mom never finished her PhD dissertation because she had too much to do with taking care of her 4 kids, and my dad got an M.A. in Creative Writing, and that was all he needed for a career as a Creative Writing professor.

[jennickels.livejournal.com]

I think we came very close to having a tie for Valedictorian my senior year. But we were an academically minded all girls school full of over achievers. That was the norm.

In the Catholic school system in Chicago there are certain schools that are known for sports and those that are known for academics. Ours was kind of both when I went there (we had star volleyball and basketball programs the 4 years I was there) but if you asked around anyone would tell you that my school was for the smart kids or it was "too hard" and no one wanted to go there or they thought it was too hard to get in (we had to take entrance exams and score high enough).

That was in the early-mid 90s (graduated in 95). I only ever applied to one college. I knew where I wanted to go, studied their entrance requirements which I more than qualified for and was confident I would get in. And I did. I took mostly easy classes my first two years, just pre-reqs I needed for later courses although I squeezed creative writing in there (which was a 300 level course that I took the 2nd semester of my freshman year). But I took as many credits as I could the 2nd summer because I was living off campus and paying rent so I might as well do something (I wasn't working and my dad picked up my $165/month rent, electric and cable bills for the 2 months).

With my summer work I was slated to graduate a semester early. I had it worked out that if I took the regular amount of credits both semesters that year and full courseload the next summer I would have graduated in December 98 instead of May 99 but the last semester I would have only had to take like one or two classes because I'd only need a few credits. Of course that was if I could get all the classes I needed which never happened, lol. I would have had my BA in English.

I was going to major in Linguistics when I was going to go to SIU and either minor in creative writing or anthropology. Those were the only things that really interested me but the stress...just wasn't worth it.

[cschick.livejournal.com]

But we were an academically minded all girls school full of over achievers. That was the norm.

And so was a great amount of academic dishonesty in the top 3% of our class.

[jennickels.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there was. Wasn't me, though. I don't remember cheating because I really didn't care.

I do remember trying to get out of doing service every year by making up anything I could think of. My mom didn't care so she always signed the sheet that said I did my service hours.

I never did them. Maybe 3 hours the entire time I was there (I actually enjoyed standing on the corner of 63rd & Cicero to hand out suckers for Misericordia).

[cschick.livejournal.com]

I was just kind of giggling at some of your above, because I remember some of the other stuff going down with a subset of those in the say, top 15 of our class. Like one of them had her sister, a graduate student at U of I write every single English paper she turned in for four years, and she had the entire English staff completely convinced she was the second coming. Or the two who took the exact same set of classes for all 4 years, so they could divide the work load in half and spend the rest of the time drinking/getting high.

I don' t know whether anyone in our group of friends participated in any of it (none of the three mentioned above were in our group of friends) ... I do know I was kind of considered the uptight straight arrow and thus I kind of just watched all the nonsense but was never approached to participate in any of it. The only way it ever affected me was when I was grilled by several members of the administrative staff/college counseling staff during late senior year because they didn't understand how someone who was "only" 25th in the class was testing so well. It's always wonderful to have a member of your school staff tell you that you don't deserve to be a national merit scholar ;)

[jennickels.livejournal.com]

OMG, they said that?

I never really suspected any of our group. I just figured they were all typical overachievers. I always felt I got some odd looks because I never studied and still maintained my As and Bs so I wasn't well liked over that, lol.

I always worried about you, though. You were way too stressed out in school. I'm pretty sure I told you a couple times to just chill out.

But, then again, I wasn't a merit scholar and didn't care to be one. I was happy with my slightly above average grades. I definitely felt out of place a lot of the time because I wasn't in the top 10% but, eh, it means nothing now.

There was a lot of pressure at the school to succeed and I'm sure parents really pushed a lot of the girls to do whatever they had to do to get top grades. My parents weren't like that.

Of course, I always like to point out to people who think private school is so much better than public school that all the same crap was going on at our school. The drinking, drugs, cheating, teenage sex, partying, fighting, etc.

That wasn't me either. I was so freaking boring in high school. I never went to a single party, drank, smoked or did any of that teen stuff. One of my best friends went to Peace (she was 4 years behind us, though) and she told me her parents never knew about all the while parties she went to, coming home hung over and pretending to have the flu. She ended up pregnant her senior year. And she was the top of her class, all AP classes and stuff.

She's now a teacher (at a public school) and is terrified of becoming a grandmother at 34, lol. Her daughter is 12 now and a good kid. But so was she at that age.

[thothmes.livejournal.com]

My degree was in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. It makes me really good at researching things in libraries, noting stylistic evolution and differences, evaluating evidence, and structuring cogent arguments.

It also makes employers' eyes glaze over when you tell them what you majored in! Unless you want a job at a museum (for which I'd be underqualified without a PhD), there are precious few employers who are looking for that sort of degree!

I wanted to be an Egyptologist, but I got into the two best places to study that as a grad student (University of Chicago and University of Toronto), and my husband was waiting listed at Northwestern and Toronto. Toronto takes 9 med students out of province let alone out of country, so we went off to University of Michigan, the only med school outside of Texas (where he went to high school) that he got in. Michigan had no Egyptology, so I did Classical Art and Archaeology there. Texas had good Archaeology at UT Austin, including underwater archaeology, but at the time they had no med school there.

The icon isn't expressing an opinion. It's just Egyptian. It's Bes, a friendly little god who looked over household concerns and warned away evil.

[ami-ven.livejournal.com]

The attitude I can't help with, but the lost paper, maybe so. Something I learned in college (after spending most of high school losing papers) was to have one folder, a different color, for each class. Every single piece of paper I got for that class- the sylibus, assignment papers, stuff to turn in, stuff the teacher had graded and given back- everything went in there until the class was over. Then, if I needed anything, even from the beginning of the year, I knew it had to be in that folder. The folders got a little thick, but I never lost anything!

[jennickels.livejournal.com]

Meagan has a binder because that's what was on the supply list. She didn't need any folders but after I saw the disarray of her binder last month I pulled out the folders and told her to use one for math. She refused because it's not on the supply list. Oy.

There's also the issue with the fact that she has to carry all her supplies and books around to every class every day. They don't have lockers. Everything they have (all books for all classes, binder, paper, pencils/crayons/gluesticks, assignments, projects, gym clothes, lunches, coats, hats, etc) stay with them from 1st period through lunch and all the way until the final bell. Then they have 5 minutes to get to the bus so there's no going back for stuff at the end of the day.

She only weighs like 55lbs and her bookbag weighs at least 20lbs right now. She can barely carry it and there are times she loses her balances and she tips over. She even said she doesn't put it on the ground in school. She sits down in her chair with it on and slips her arms out so that when it's time to go she can just slip her arms in and stand up because it's hard to pick it up from a standing position.

[ami-ven.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd forgotten how heavy backpacks can be when you're little. And I'll bet they've only gotten worse since we were in school. Why do they need to give kids these huge (useless!) text books? Either that, or it should count as gym credit.

[sacredclay.livejournal.com]

Aw, hun! I really sympathize with you there as my son do the same thing. I still have to be on his ass to make sure that he is doing his HW. If not, he loses all screen privileges, including Itouch, games, etc. Only allow to read books from school and has to study everday for an hour. My daughter wouldn't listen to me at one time and for a week she flaunted it. Until I deleted her FB account on my computer. She got it back but only after she realized that I wasn't messing around. Make your daughter sit at the table and go no where until the project is done. Don't care if she already have something else planned. She's grounded. Mine also wait until the last minute to let me know about a project and I tell her that it's her responsibility, not mine to get her act on straight. Keep whittling away privileges until you find the one that affects her the most. For my son, it was his books. For my daughter, it was being grounded. For me, it's Prozac and Bailey's Irish Cream. Good luck!