Good morning everyone, it’s that period of the year for all school-going students in Singapore, where weighted assessments are due. Are your little pandas also struggling with all the upcoming assessments?

My Giant Panda doesn’t seem fazed by exams nor deadlines, and that is what is stressing me out. I have no issues with tests and exams, I just let the little pandas deal with it themselves, and I don’t even ask about their grades. The problem is that weighted assessments these days are made up of projects and assignments with deadlines. Giant Panda was late or handed in some rubbish for his weighted assessment earlier this year, and he got a big fat 0 on part of them. Giant Panda does not have a problem understanding the work but he seems to have a problem with work itself.

The ever-patient teachers, in order to help our problem child through this round, sent us a personalised email with all the relevant deadlines.

Despite that, for an assignment given in May and due today, Giant Panda only decided last night that he would start working on it. He worked late into the night and only managed to do ~10% of it, and sent a really shoddy piece of work partially pilfered from the internet to his teacher via email. This morning, I asked him about it, he said it’s done, and luckily, I decided to CHECK the assignment.

At 6 am, we entered into a frenzy of setting up the computer, and trying to get the work done. He missed the school bus at 6.20 am, and we managed to hit the “print” button at 7 am before sprinting towards the carpark together.

To be clear, I in no way helped with the content or writing of his assignment. The assignment was to present the information in the format of a z-fold brochure, and that was what I helped with, on top of adding a few borders around the text.

In the afternoon, Giant Panda came home, and first thing he said to me was, “Luckily you made me hand in my assignment, Mama. J got a really bad scolding from the teacher because he did not bring his z-fold brochure.”

One scolding avoided, many many more potential ones to fend away.