This weekend we are torturing Corwin with his application to the university high school. Mom is in her unstoppable mode and poor Corwin is suffering accordingly (Mom and I take turns making him cry). The worst part for him has been the “character building” essays in which he has to describe an experience that helped him grow as a person. At one point he had the sentence “living with my family has caused me to become accustomed to some things and not accustomed to others”. I thought that was perhaps a bit too much information but thought it inadequate detailed for some reason. We did learn, as parents, that Corwin seemed to think we didn’t ground him often enough. I told him that I would work on improving myself in that regard which did not seem to provide him much cheer.
Corwin also discovered, independently, the font trick. His first typed draft was in 24 point text. I adjusted it back to 11pt (my preferred size — I am not so fond of 10pt) but Mom, the softy, let him get away with 12pt (technically acceptable). Corwin then complained that his text looked really short at that size. I did offer to discuss the various technical merits of the fonts he had available, having noticed that he had used the boring “Times New Roman” default font (not even Garamond or Palatino? How staid! I tend to be daring and use Old Century Schoolbook but I am not sure Corwin is ready for that kind of serific excitement).