Sophia, you just made me weep a little at my desk.

JZ, that sounds horrible and frustrating.

Sophia, I'm boggling. she's a college senior and her mom's written all of her papers? What was the mom thinking -- how does that help her daughter one bit, and wouldn't that be considered cheating?

Well, around here all you hear about is how, once you're vested, unused sick leave becomes part of your service time once you retire. No word about how you must retire from this place; the magic phrase always used is just "vested" (10 years). And when I left for the bed rest and then Matilda, the HR people here hustled me through the short-term disability process at the speed of light, told me something different every time I asked about combining sick and vacation leave and disability, and didn't tell me until three weeks before my time was up that since I'd been on disability I could no longer use any of my sick leave. I would have used that FIRST if anyone had explained that in clear, simple English. Or even muddy, verbose English. I can man up and take on a few polysyllabic paragraphs, provided they contain some actual pertinent information.

I ended up scrambling to find daycare, leaving home a month earlier than I'd planned, and spending the next year in a financial sinkhole. It doesn't seem like that much, but an extra month of full-scale pay without having to worry about day care? It might not have made that much difference, but at least maybe I wouldn't have had to sell off my vintage dresses to pay the gas bill last winter.

I'm sorry JZ, that sucks. I wish the HR people would have been on the ball.

I wish the HR people would have been on the ball.

Unless they have a secret "confuse people and prevent them by any means possible from using the sick leave they have coming to them, thus saving the university a bundle of money that can then be shoveled into incentive pay and mansions for prospective vice-chancellors" policy, in which case they're right on the ball.

I'm trying to imagine a world where my mother would've been willing to write my papers for me. It's even harder to imagine a world where I would've wanted her to. I was in college! 900 miles from home! I didn't want to run to mommy for anything.

I did get my brother to help me with calculus, because he was teaching it at West Point while I was taking it at Penn, but that was always, "I don't get this concept," not, "Here's Problem #6. Will you solve it for me?"

I'm a rage bomb about mommy writing papers for her daughter. RAGE BOMB.

Apparently her mom has been writing her papers all along, but now that they are about Shakespeare and such, she can't do it any more!

JZ, that just plain sucks. When I left my CT school, I had 80 DAYS of unused sick time. Frustrating as hell to not get a penny for it, but I would have been even more pissed if I'd had a situation like yours.

Recently CJ was upset about us checking his homework because "if we told him what he did wrong then it wasn't his work". We tried to explain we were more checking to make sure it was done and legible than what the answers were.

But we also explained that there are times where it is good to brainstorm a problem with someone else and discuss the concepts behind a paper. As long as the person assigned the work is doing the actual work, it is ok to get ideas from others.

So tricky.

JZ - I didn't mean to imply that you were wrong to be upset. You were given such bad information when you went on leave.

RAGE BOMB.

Word.

I think the daughter should (a) be reported to the Dean of students; and (b) fail.

Either or both would do. What the hell kind of parent thinks this is a good thing to do for your kid?