u/olivish

I just got an email offer for winter 2027! Anyone else? They took forever to come out but I'm so excited :)

This happened years ago but came up recently. When I was in highschool, my mom was earning a university degree. She was upset she had to take electives that had nothing to do with her major. Her solution was to reel me in with compliments about how smart I was - sooo much smarter than her - and then ask if I'd help with one of her classes by doing the online assignments. (It was a class on international relations, and I was in Model UN, so the "logic"(ha!) went that I should be able to do these assignments in a snap.)

Eager to earn points, I did her assignments (there were a bunch, all due at the end of term) - or tied to. The assignments weren't hard, just simple multiple choice to see if students had actually done the reading, but I got so anxious about making a mistake and hurting her grade that I couldn't bring myself to complete them (like, I did 90% of the work and then shut down). Then, my mom complained that she was going to miss the deadline and fail the course because of me, and if I wasn't going to do the work I should have just said so instead of "lying to her face", following up with an angry "never mind, I'll just do it myself." I was so full of guilt for letting her down but also shame for going against my values by cheating. I was also angry with her, and with me for having been roped into this in the first place. I bounced back and forth between "she should know better" and "take responsibility for yourself - YOU should know better." This is an internal debate that I still have with myself over all sorts of things to do with my mother.

This recently came up when she commented about how hard it was to go back to school as an adult. I said, yeah, I remember doing your homework for you. And then she snapped back, "yeah, and you didn't even finish it!" Like, her takaway is that I burdened her by not helping her cheat. All the while, I was killing myself at school, staying late every day, in honors everything and doing a dozen extra-curriculars that she never even asked about, let alone supported.

It's stuff like this that make me realize she really doesn't get it, and she never will. She became a mother early, and looking back I always gave her grace for just not knowing any better. But like, 20 years later she still has the exact same mindset. No growth or perspective at all.