Applied and Non-Applied Smarts, According to Parents

I, for one, have sat back and laughed more than once at my parents. They're funny people, but they're funniest when they don't realize it.

I'm your typical A/B student. In high school, I was a straight A student who surprisingly picked up salutatorian in my twenty-seven student class.

That act won me my parent's approval - ya know, the look that says, "Wow, I raised a smart kid." That smile that's authentic. That nod exclaiming, "Excellent job!"

Those nods and looks are worth all the hard work, says me. But then once you work hard and make those strides, you might find yourself in a bind when you can't meet up to your once high expectations.

Another word for this could be "college."

*Sigh* yes.

Freshman year, well, I had no other choice BUT to meet those expectations. I didn't struggle since I was taking basic classes, and since I didn't have a very busy social life that year, grades were no problem.

But then sophomore year, reality hit in harder classes and more complicated relationships. My grades began to fall to levels that they had never hit before. I had never ever intended to view those things on my report card.

Suddenly the nods, the smiles, the looks weren't what they used to be. I wasn't the smartest kid anymore, and this, well, was a disappointment to someone who wanted to please her parents, at least in a round about way.

Now let me turn the tables for you. When it comes to academics, my grades, obviously turn my parents' heads one direction or another. But smarts includes more than academics . . .

You have the important things, like text-messaging, loading pictures from a digital camera onto the computer and putting them into files, fixing a printer, working a DVD player, making a picture slideshow, transferring pictures onto a CD . . .

Yeah. I love the generation gap + technological transformation. Those are my tools to proving my smarts. Actually, I don't really have to try.

My parents not only offered - but PAID - me for loading pictures onto a computer for a couple hours. Time equaled money, so I accepted it this time, but wow . . .

For the first time, maybe ever, some kids - in a technological sense - are outdoing their parents. Parents are going to their kids for help instead of vice versa. If there's a different time to live in, we certainly live in it.

I find it hilarious that I can work my butt off for all A's and maybe a B or two, but get the same kind of response from my parents for sending a text message or loading pictures.

I wonder why I don't get quite the same response when I exceed the monthly text limit . . .