I used to be like that. But I also tended to fear my mother's wrath so it was probably a wash. She also told me I'd have to be twice as good to get half as far so I'm surprised I didn't have an ulcer by sixteen.

I did my homework. During my last year of high school it got up to about 4-5 hours a night plus weekend trips to the local University libraries. My first year of college seemed pretty easy.

I never developed study habits. The downside of picking up most things very very fast is if I didn't learn something by paying attention in class, I didn't know it, period. (Which explained my math teachers' confusion and distress when their brilliant little class participant regularly bombed tests.)

I'm apparently Cindy's mother. Brendon can't comprehend that at some point he won't get it just by occupying a chair in the class. He has zip for study habits.

It's kind of sad when you don't need the study habits. It's too bad he's not being challenged in school. Since he's getting all A grades on his tests, I can completely understand why he thinks it is a waste of his time to do the nonsense stuff that doesn't even count toward his grade. I had a hard time making myself do the nonsense stuff that did count toward my grade, because it counted toward such a piddling portion of my grade.

I wouldn't hesitate to tie it into his leisure activities--in a frank way. "Okay, this doesn't count at school, but it does count at home. If you don't do your homework, and bring it home to me to prove it, you don't get to do X, Y, or Z."

(Which explained my math teachers' confusion and distress when their brilliant little class participant regularly bombed tests.)

I was a good student until it came to test taking time. And then I improved. In HS, this translated into excellent O, A and S level grades. In university ... it translated into better grades than I deserved.

I don't remember much homework, but what there was I did. I coasted on everything. I didn't realize how smart I was, because I never struggled with anything--or I didn't take anything that hard. Well, I hated Algebra, because that was such an alien thing for my head to grasp. Trigonometry and Geometry were easy, and I figured my teachers were just being nice when they said I should try more challenging math subjects, because if it was important then it wouldn't be such a breeze, would it? Plus I got the tail-end of the "Girls should be teachers or librarians, math's really for boys" thing. If I'd taken Physics in high school, maybe the light would have gone off in my head that I really was that smart and I did have the talent for that sort of thing. I went through an entire year of Advanced Mathematics, including a special Engineering Careers workshop, without it once dawning on me that "This is something you could do with your life," because no one in my world could conceive of a country girl as someone who did math for a living.

Hell of a thing to discover in your senior year of college, that you'd wasted half your brain. I was so clueless.

My Soviet Dissident Literature prof got so disgruntled with my test performance that he'd hand me my bluebook with a time and date on it. I could try to take the in-class exam, but he expected me to show up in his office to explain myself.

"I don't understand how you can do so well in class discussions and on papers and then hand me this rubbish at test time!"

I'd freeze on the written test and breeze through the oral exam. He didn't do that for anyone else that I know of and I was wicked grateful.

Brendon's homework counts because he's in middle school. Hence the battle.

Oh, -t, I am so sorry about your condo. I was hoping it was going to be better news, based on what you said yesterday.

I didn't realize how smart I was, because I never struggled with anything

Never struggling with anything had the opposite effect on me. I think I would've been better off in a larger public school or a selective private school, where I would've been a smart kid, one of several competing for honors and admission to good colleges, instead of The Smart Kid, not just in my year but in the school as a whole. Between all the attention I got from teachers and my mom's loving but ill-advised way of consoling me about not fitting in (basically, "you're better than them"), I ended up way too full of myself and vain about having drawn lucky cards from the genetic lottery. My instinct is still to be intellectually arrogant, though now I realize it's wrong and try to fight it, and I still expect things to come easily for me, giving up too quickly or losing my temper when they don't.