Thursday, April 20, 2006

Back to School

OK, it's official - I told my boss today that Dave and I are for sure going back to school, and I'll be leaving the company in August! Hopefully we'll be able to work out some kind of freelance deal - they were talking about retaining me part-time to do their French translations. Good deal!

In addition, I finished Freakonomics yesterday, and it was a very interesting final chapter about child rearing. Basically, the authors' point was that your child's outcome in life is largely determined before it's even born. Things like parents' I.Q., socioeconomic status, and education are all the highest factors in determining children's future success more than all the Baby Einstein tapes in the world.

Makes you want to kind of chuckle at obsessive parents.

2 comments:

Julie said...

Congratulations! I'm glad your boss took it well, and that's so great that they want you to do freelance!

As for the Freakanomics thing, how do they explain all the rich parents who have lazy kids then?

Valerie said...

I don't want to put words into the Freakonomics authors' mouths, but I bet they would attribute that to the 30-40% of your personality that they estimate is "nurture," not "nature."

Rich kids can often be pampered by their parents without ever learning how to work for themselves, and it's also possible that the kid is reacting to something in the way the parents brought him up (see rich kid in "Mystic Pizza").

Also, maybe his parents were themselves lazy & got their riches through inheritance, and the kid is getting that behavior by the parents not expecting anything out of him.