Life and learning under the walnut trees
Yesterday, Jessica received notification that she passed her English Composition CLEP test with flying colors! That one was good for three hours’ credit, the American Government one was good for three hours, and the American History one was good for six hours, so for a total cost of about $330, she already has 12 hours (a light semester’s worth) in the can!
And there was MUCH rejoicing!
I think I forgot to mention that last week, Jessica had her first day of school – and I didn’t even take a picture.
She’s auditing a Chinese 2 class at MSU on Wednesdays, and as she headed out the door that day, I realized with a start, “Oh my, this will be her first day of school!” With all the incredible places she’s gone and things she’s done, until last Wednesday, she had never sat in a traditional classroom in her life.
It’s a small class of about a dozen, and I think she held her own. She’s behind the other students in not knowing characters, but she’s ahead of them in verbal understanding, vocabulary, and pronunciation. She’s studying and practicing characters on her own, and that seems to be a successful approach for Our Fair Peacock; after last Wednesday’s Chinese class she took and passed her American Government CLEP with flying colors! She devised her own study plan, collected her own materials, and disciplined herself to do it four hours a day. All that work paid off, as she now has two college classes out of the way, with more on the horizon.
I think she’ll do extremely well in school. = )
On Tuesday, February 15, Jessica took the American History (pre-Civil War) CLEP test and scored a whopping 69!!! The scoring is hard to figure out, but she passed with a very high score and will receive college credit for that class. Yee-hah!
Actually, today she and I did some high-level figuring on the refrigerator and determined the following:
The test had 120 questions.
80 is a perfect score, meaning you answered all 120 questions correctly.
You have to score 54 (out of 80) to pass GO and collect college credit.
Although it’s evident that neither of us can successfully divide 6480 by 80, we did eventually figure out that you have to get 81 of the 120 questions (a mere 67%) correct in order to pass. However, our heroine’s “69″ indicates that she got 103 of them correct for a score of 86%. Not too shabby, especially considering that (A) it had been a long time – maybe three years? – since she’d studied American History, (B) she only studied a month for the test, and (C) she put together her own study plan – four hours a day! – and did it all without any help or input for anyone. GO JESSICA!
As if all that weren’t enough to make a homeschool mom beam, in today’s mail, Jessica received notice from MSU that she was awarded the Provost Scholarship!!! That’s the scholarship for which she met all the qualifications, but for which she was late in applying, and for which she submitted letters and had an interview requesting a deadline exemption. It will provide $2500 per year her freshman year and is renewable for three more years, assuming she completes 30 hours of courses at MSU per year and maintains a 3.40 GPA.
We were squealing with delight! I am so happy for Jessica and so proud of these accomplishments!!!
One of the really nice things I am remembering about Jessica- now that she’s home for a while – is that she notices things and comments positively on them. She noticed that I organized the recipes, and she thanked me! She saw a gift I had made for someone and commented, “Oh, Mom, it’s BEAUTIFUL!”
Now, it’s not that the guys aren’t nice. They are. Very nice, actually. but it’s just different having a fellow female in the house.
Thanks, for coming home, Jessica.
I’m usually an okay waiter, meaning that I can usually endure delays (as long as they don’t cause me to be late, which is a whole ‘nother story) pretty patiently. Tonight we are enduring patiently while United moves Jessica’s flight home from Chicago later and later. The most recent estimate is that she will land around 11:55 PM, so we are sitting around the house, frequently refreshing the United flight status page, and waiting till it’s time to leave.
It will be great to see Jessica, and no matter how sleepy we get while we wait, we can’t be as tired as she is, having been in transit now for some 25 and a half hours, with probably another three or four till she’s home. That’s one L-O-N-G day, and – smart girl – she stayed awake all but two hours on the plane to maximize her chances of sleeping tonight. She’s a stronger woman than I am!
Well, I think we accomplished the goal, which was to show Scott in a big way how much he is loved and appreciated.
A number of his friends and family members sent cards with great messages, and he received several VERY special and wonderful gifts.
Having decided that shopping for Scott is a completely futile endeavor, this year I invited a number of people to email me their thoughts of encouragement, humor, and/or appreciation for Scott. I then printed them out and put them into a booklet, which I presented to My Hero on His Big Day. From the very first page, it was a significant Kleenex event. He was really touched by all those words of affirmation, and even those the tears were dripping off his face, I know he was blessed.
However, all that was small potatoes compared to Jessica’s gift. She created the most amazing video for her dad. She knows that he really likes one of her piano pieces (I think it’s called “Sundown”). She recorded herself playing it, and then laid video and text over the music. Oh. My. (BTW, she used Josiah’s wireless head phones INSIDE the piano to do the recording. Creative lady.)
She put together an incredible collection of crazy, tender, and funny pictures and videos, some going back more than 15 years. Superimposed over them she wrote the sweetest comments to share her love for her precious dad. Well. I don’t know what else to say, except that I’m honestly not sure that I have ever see Scott so deeply moved. WHAT a remarkable and treasured gift!
Side note: It was heartening to realize that I had taken many of those pictures. = )
So, when all was said and done, although our celebration of Scott’s #46 was a bit unconventional, I think he truly felt our love for him. It was a very teary-eyed, very happy birthday.
I’m sure Jessica will correct me if Google translate didn’t do that title properly.
I am incredibly proud to announce that on Monday, March 8, 2010, Jessica successfully COMPLETED Rosetta Stone Chinese – and the crowd goes wild! Yes, that would be three years of Mandarin Chinese study, and as the Rodgers and Hammerstein song from “Oklahoma” says, “she’s gone about as far as she can go.” At least with Rosetta Stone, “the world’s #1 language-learning software,” because it only offers three years of Chinese, and she did them ALL!
Of course, she still converses regularly with her tutor and daily with her dad (sometimes to the frustration of the rest of the family. . . “what are those two talking about anyway?”) and I assume she will get in plenty of practice while she’s living in Hong Kong later this year.
I just think it’s super nifty that she has voluntarily applied herself to learn the language that 18% of the people on the planet speak! The US government’s world population clock claims the world’s population on this very day is 6,807,579,922, and far more of them speak Mandarin Chinese than any other language.
1. Chinese (Mandarin) 1,213,000,000 18%
2. Spanish 329,000,000 5%
3. English 328,000,000 5%
4. Arabic 221,000,000 3%
5. Hindi 182,000,000 3%
6. Bengali 181,000,000 3%
7. Portuguese 178,000,000 3%
8. Russian 144,000,000 2%
9. Japanese 122,000,000 2%
10. German 90,000,000 1%
Way to go, Jessica!!! Zhuhe!!!
| 1. Chinese (Mandarin) | 1,213,000,000 |
| 2. Spanish | 329,000,000 |
| 3. English | 328,000,000 |
| 4. Arabic | 221,000,000 |
| 5. Hindi1 | 182,000,000 |
| 6. Bengali | 181,000,000 |
| 7. Portuguese | 178,000,000 |
| 8. Russian | 144,000,000 |
| 9. Japanese | 122,000,000 |
| 10. German | 90,000,000 |
Three cheers for Jessica, who on this very day (DRUM ROLL, PLEASE) completed her final module of high school science! You heard right, she has FINISHED Physics – with a score of 88.5% – and she did it all on her own.
An era has definitely ended. Unless asked to help a brother, Jessica will never again crack an Apologia high school science book. Dr. Jay Wile’s General Science, Physical Science, Biology, and Chemistry (all with Josiah), and Physics have officially been very successfully conquered.
Congratulations, Jessica!!!
Today I am the proud and happy mom of an eighteen-year-old daughter. Well do I remember her arrival in this world, and many are the memories of innumerable special and funny times with her in the intervening years. I am again so grateful to God that we have been able to have her at home with us all this time. What a blessing and delight Jessica is!
This afternoon, when Jessica arrived home from her birthday camping trip, (the reported details of which may someday be shared in another post – or possibly on her blog: http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/mime4jesus/), she received an email announcing her ACT score.
Scores on this set of exams range from 1 up to 36, with 36 being a perfect score and the national average being about 20. Only true geniuses and/or people who take the test over and over to improve their scores get a 36. Jessica took it once and scored a 32!!! That means that she tested higher than 99% of the the students who took it. Wow! It also puts her well above the thresholds most colleges use in determining eligibility for academic scholarships.
I am so VERY proud and happy!
Way to go, Jessica!
Hear ye! Hear ye! Jessica has completed both the SAT and the ACT and she will never take either ever again in her natural life. Scores on the SAT are expected circa October 31, and ACT scores will arrive by postal mail in “five to eight weeks.”
