ASSIGNMENTS:
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"Give advice to your mother, father, or grandparent in the past"
Kristen Meinzer
Brooklyn, New York USA
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REPORTS:
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This is an assignment inspired by #53 from LTLYM ("Give advice to yourself in the past"). Choose either a specific age or a general period of life, but this time for a parent or grandparent. It must be from a time when you were not yet in the picture. Begin the list with this header: "Advice To My Teenage Grandfather" (or "Advice To My Twenty-something Mother" or "Advice To My Grandmother As A Young Girl," etc.). Be very specific with your advice, for example, don't just say "Hold on to your dreams," but instead say "Do not give up painting for that job on the railroad." While this assignment is, in part, about you and the people who will later raise you, try to approach it as more about your subject and understanding and/or having compassion for him or her. Do not write an essay, make it in list form.
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Example:
Advice To My 21 Year Old Mother
1) Go to college. And don't just take a couple of classes. Go until you graduate. If you have to take out loans, do it. Don't be intimidated by your father into thinking you're too stupid to learn. You're not! You are smarter than you think and smarter than he gives you credit for. And don't ever give up your own right to an education so that you can support a man's education instead.
2) Quit your job at Montgomery Wards. You've already been there five years. I know you love the place and that you have lots of friends there and that you feel "part of something." But quit and try something more challenging. Or at least cut down to part-time and do something more fulfilling on the side. If you don't leave your comfort zone now, you will be working as a shop girl for the rest of your life.
3) Do not marry that guy in the automotive department at Montgomery Wards. You know how controlling and verbally abusive your father is? Well, this guy is going to be ten times worse. Plus he will hit your future children. And did I mention that he's a pedophile? And eventually he will cheat on you and leave you for a younger woman at the office. I know you're freaked out because your younger sister Elaine is getting married (at 18!) and that you're feeling like an old maid. But you're not. There's plenty of time to get married and many better men with which to do it.
4) One more thing on marriage. You need more than three months to get to know someone before you decide to get hitched. (This advice will apply to more than one husband.)
5) Get past the Catholic thing immediately. Learn about Buddhism now. Read the I, Ching. Expand your spiritual horizons. Don't spend the rest of your life being resentful about what the church and the nuns did to you.
6) Travel. And not just that one trip to Seattle with your girlfriends. Go abroad. Specifically, go to England. You are an anglophile. See the place in person that inspires you in your dreams.
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