Finals Week

This photo brought to you by the letter zzz and the lack of them that I’m getting.  

Reese worked her TAIL off the last few weeks of school and proudly sports a report card of all A’s abd B’s that were hard fought for. She totally bombed a Spanish vocabulary test a few weeks ago that tanked her grade from a low A to a C. Getting 100 on all of her assignments after was only enough to pull her grade to an 79.28% in Spanish III.   I didn’t understand. I watched her study for this test. She knew the material, what happened? 

What happened is that the “vocab” words she was tested on were plugged into a short story with blanks where the students had to fill in the blanks with the vocab words.  Reading and comprehending a short story with blanks in it is not an easy feat for a dyslexic brain that wants order and less abstract processes.  Filling blanks into a story is a challenge for Reese in English, let alone the added factor of translating from Spanish to English, finding the correct missing vocab word, translating that word to Spanish, conjugating the verb into the correct tense and filling it in.  But after all she could do and an A all year long, she had a 79.28%. This didn’t sit well with her because she didn’t feel like it reflected her year of effort. So she opted to take the final even though she was exempt (she had all assignments turned in and above a 75%) to right that C to match her work.  

She studied HARD. 

The test was 45 questions. Multiple choice. But the questions were “fill in the blank” with a sentence or two missing the vocab word.   

She only missed 5 and got a B in Spanish III. We are so proud of her! 

Reese has also been serving for over a year as the president of her 16-18 year olds Young Women’s class at church.  She was released from this calling today and accepted the call to serve as class secretary.  She learned a lot in her calling as President and served and loved and ministered the girls well.  She met regularly with the yw leaders, bishopric, her presidency, and ward and youth councils.  She conducted meetings for the stake and ward youth. She organized activities and navigated the pandemic like a boss. Last week, she overheard a zoom presentation from a linguistic specialist on Corbin’s Google classroom.  She thought it would be fascinating for the young women, so she emailed Corbin’s teacher, asked for the languages presenter’s (who lives in Michigan) contact info, reached out to her, and invited her to present to the young women over zoom.  The woman was friendly with the church and a wonderful and gracious guest speaker. This calling has provided countless growth opportunities and  leadership experience for my introverted girl. 

Reese is currently finishing up a BYU independent study economics course (final is next week!) and signed up to knock out Algebra II virtually over the summer.  My feelings about this are mixed, but she is excited to do it and I am supportive of her decision.