So, a few months ago, both of my parents caught covid.  I was fortunate enough to avoid it because they were careful to stay away from me, but that meant I had no one to take me to school, and I had to stay home for about a week. I tried to keep up with my assignments while at home, but couldn’t do a lot for science as we were finishing up testing for our bridge projects and my bridge was at school.  As the testing finished, the teacher was discussing the due date for the written portion of the project during this time, and I completely missed it. The week after that, I had planned to meet with my teacher about it, but in the chaos of meeting with five teachers a day to make up for my missed classes, I overlooked the summation report. 

The next few weeks were fortunately less eventful, and I thought about the project from time to time but I didn’t work on it because I thought I still had a while until it was due. About two weeks later on a Sunday, I was checking my assignment center and saw the project was due the next day. I immediately scrambled to check on what I had already written, only to realize that the only words I’d written were on the title page. I hurriedly began writing the report from what I could remember, and my dad asked me what I was doing. When he found out I was doing the work last minute and stressing about it, he told me to focus on it for an hour or two and I would be done. I managed to “finish” it in about a half-hour, but when my dad checked it he told me there were a “few” things that I should fix. I remembered that when my dad said “a few things” he could mean anywhere from two punctuation errors to completely rewriting the paper. My stress and frustration at having to re-do it got the better of me and I refused to work on it, but he insisted I could improve it. 

I retreated to my room to escape him and thought about it for a while. I remembered him saying one time, stress is in your head, it’s not something that comes from an outside source. I immediately dismissed it as a useless thought and went back to sulking, but then I thought that if I just ignored everything, including his advice, and added a few things to the paper, I might still be able to earn an A. Of course, it wasn’t enough and I ended up back in my room. So this time, I continued to try ignoring his advice and tried to convince myself this was my own idea, so I didn’t have to admit that I was listening to him, because, of course, that would be brilliant. You can guess where that landed me. After coming downstairs for the third time, I decided that I might as well try what he said, and low and behold, it actually worked. I accepted that I caused my own stress by first forgetting about the assignment until it was nearly late, and then by rushing and not applying my best effort, causing me to have to re-do it. That realization itself released some of my stress and allowed me to focus and do a more thorough job.  

Now, the moral of the story: parents aren't always right but I guess sometimes they give you some excellent advice; Even more important, check your assignment center, because you never know what you may find.