Pauline, you are SO sweet! Thank you very much... I have saved it and will pull it up "whilst" studying for my Exam on the plane for motivation! I know MAT loves hearing of new topics that he might not have encountered, and my agenda today gave me a chuckle with how some of the topics sound, so I made a list I found funny... Wake up, brush teeth, shower. Kiss and feed doggedties and kittoes and check the garden with a couple. Grab a coffee drink and check work e-mail and the forums. Use the encryption modulus: 14423118116103878456275736627220315029625755387443832298910751006678535354074654 042928147183738663805778840499199825925881487774161275939083 and the encrypting exponent: 65537 to encrypt a three-letter English word that names an animal. Use the Russian Peasant algorithm to calculate 849 x 3217. Reproduce all the lines of the calculation in the answer. Crank up Pink Floyd on the car stereo and head to Panera's with BeeBee and the laptop. Order lunch and a latte. Construct a Moore recogniser to process strings of zeros and ones. The recogniser should recognise those strings that have exactly three ones in them and reject all other strings. Write a URM program which adds the contents of register 3 to the contents of register 4 and places this sum in register zero. The program should not change what is already in registers 3 and 4. Close up laptop and head back to the garden. Film more of the neighbor's kids' Sonic the Hedgehog movie in B&W on the cell phone :) etc, etc. Oy I'm such a nerd but I love this stuff! Gotta run. Happy Day everyone!

Well, I just calmly asked DS when he got home about the math project, he started crying and said that he was afraid that if he didn't do well it would bring down his grade. I told him we'd email the teacher and ask, but I thought that this was an opportunity for extra credit, and that it wouldn't hurt his grade if he didn't do well. He agreed that it sounded interesting, and even after she emailed back that it would be graded, wouldn't tell us how much weight towards final it would be, he still thought he'd try it. We have never put much emphasis on grades, I don't know where he gets his anxiety and perfectionism from but as I said it's been from a very young age, well before school. But it's like anything he's afraid to do - once he tries it, and does well, it'll give him confidence. I told him if he doesn't do well on this project, he doesn't have to do any more "challenges" this year. I think DS did well on the tests and in school b/c we do take time to explain things to him (again from a young age), read to him (and now he reads by himself) all the time, and take the kids to places like the science museum and the art museum, not just "children's museums". Really I don't want to push him to take tests and do more work, but this was an opportunity to do a research project, gather data, analyze it, and draw conclusions from it - much more challenging and "real-world" than rote arithmetic. The teacher said that it would take the place of up to 2 nights' HW per week for the next 5 weeks, so it was not "extra" work piled on. My kids love learning and are definitely opinionated, but DS tends to be a bit "lazy" (maybe b/c he hasn't found his passion - except Pokemon?) and I'm just trying to challenge him to go beyond the bare minimum he needs to do in school - not that he does just "passing" work but it could easily slip into that as the coursework gets harder, if he doesn't get excited about *something*. If he never learns to study and research, what's he going to do in HS and college when he finds that he can't pass a test just by having done his HW up to that point? "Good enough" is good enough in some things, but there should be something that he can get passionate about (like when he was little and devoured the whole "100 Things You Should Know About..." series on his own). Maybe by extensions and modifications to the easy (boring - he never talks about school) classes he's taking now, he can *find* something to get excited about. Maybe not this year, but maybe in Jr High or HS? Maybe in a summer program? I don't know. I'm just afraid he's already gone on academic autopilot. He asked us to stop reading him bedtime stories when he was about 6-7. I have to screen a lot of the books in the Teen section of the library for him, b/c the content is too mature. But when I find a good book or series (he loves fantasy series) I get them for him. As I said, he found The Hobbit on his own, he read Narnia years ago, he's read Twain and T.H. White (was really into Merlin about 2-3 years ago). Occasionally I'll hand him a nonfiction book - he read A. Lincoln and Why Evolution is True this summer. He's still very interested in paleontology, archaeology, and astronomy, whenever I find an article in the WSJ on a new discovery or theory I point it out to him and sometimes we'll do research online to find out more. But it's not like he'll just pick up a nonfiction book on his own anymore. So I'm hoping that by requiring more research of him for his science and social studies classes, he can be motivated to explore more and maybe rekindle those interests (or find new ones) without me having to "find" interesting stuff for him. The kid is a walking encyclopedia - I don't think he forgets a single fact about nature or science or history once he's read it. It's just that "commitment to exploration" that's missing. And it's been creeping up on him for the past few years - seems like the longer he spends in public schools, the less interest and effort he puts into anything. When he was a toddler, preschooler, kindergartner, even 1st-2nd grade I'd say, he was just interested in *everything* and always wanted to find out "more". Now he seems apathetic about learning most of the time, unless DH or I point out something about a new scientific discovery and then help him research it. Most of the time he just wants to read (or re-read) fantasy books and play Gameboy. I hate that thing! My mom got him a used one at a yard sale last summer, then he begged us to let him use his own $ to buy a DS (but we gave it to him for Xmas instead), and now he takes it *everywhere* (except school). He plays it in the car on a 15-minute drive to go out to dinner, to my parents' house, etc. and plays it all weekend and nights after dinner, except for when he's reading. Of course I don't mind him reading LOTR, but I think he can stop re-reading Redwall and Warriors and other series that he read years ago and find something *new* and maybe a bit more advanced? I mean, I have my favorites I used to like to read over and over again (anything by Michener!) but I'd go a year or more before rereading a book - there were so many *new* books to read!

" Her dad thought that since she didn't get in there, then go to a more affordable lower ranked school. " Cost isn't necessarily proportional to reputation and as before, it can be cheaper for a family to send a kid to a top school with generous endowment and scholarship sources than to even a state school. And a lot of middlin' private schools are as expensive as much better ones, definitely not a good way to spend money. " Attending Georgetown with the intention of working in the literary field and then teaching HS English is simply a poor investment decision. " Not every college choice for every family is an investment decision but I understand the sentiment. If Georgetown (a terrific school, I know a few alums) was unaffordable for the family, then it was perhaps a poor choice for that reason alone. A classic example of paying too much for education for too little ROI are the people who go to culinary schools. Paying $30K-$60K or more for programs that qualify the graduate for a job that pays something less than $20/hour makes no sense. Many other similar examples, even like drama or art programs at mainstream schools, can be found. There's nothing wrong with pursuing a dream, but apprenticeship programs or jumping in feet first may be a better approach than having a degree in a field that doesn't require or respect degrees.

I took the M-B in grad school as well and retook it recently. The results were the same. I had a harder time answering the questions for some reason. I saw so many more possibilities and circumstances than before. ENTP in the mid 90s and ENTP now. (My husband in an ENFP.) I am a JD/MBA who worked on politics and journalism with some time spent in securities law. I did not enjoy practicing law at all. I loved my work in politics and journalism. I have no idea how the MB results reflect, or do not reflect my career choices. For me they described my ways of approaching problems and situations, more than my competencies and preferences in work. While I think Smiling' and Sue's description of what they got from the JO testing is quite compelling, I think it is hard to beat putting yourself out in the work world to see what you like and what you don't. I was a fantastic law student who practically started drinking when I did my first summer clerkship. OTOH I thrived on political campaigns and in newsrooms. Two of my sons are very set in their career paths. Two are more questioning, though they all have very similar academic strengths. I am going to have DS 3 & 4 do the JO testing this fall for sure. I am grateful you brought this up. I may even have 1 & 2 do the testing. Smiling's point about gaining insight into what was easy for her, but not necessarily the way everybody else functions, is super important I think for someone starting out.