What Is Thomas Up To?

Here is Thomas, busily working on a Wombat article after school yesterday. The Wombat is his school's newspaper, and he is one of the writers for it. He told me last week that he desperately wants to be picked by Mary, his teacher and the director of the newspaper, to be her co-editor. Apparently she told him that she would pick someone who is willing to work hard, enjoys writing, and is dedicated to making the newspaper an excellent literary piece. Ever since that Thomas has been doing backflips to get her notice--he writes an article every day after school, he speeds through his lunch to race back to class to work more, he skips his recesses to get to his articles in progress--he even wanted to stay after school the other day to do more work. I asked if anyone else wanted to job and, according to him, no one did. Trying to ease his anxiety a bit (without getting his hopes up only to be dashed--been down THAT road before!) I said, "Well, then your chances of being picked are pretty good. I think you can relax and just enjoy your writing. You don't want to burn out." He disagreed, saying that he had to prove to Mary that he knew how to work really, really hard. [Aside: Just so there is no confusion, Thomas is 10 and this is a "newspaper" for the middle school only, is published about 4 times a year, is about 4-6 pages long, and is filled with articles about recent school events, cartoons and such. He's already prduced enough material in this past week to fill 5 editions.] I had visions of him losing sleep (and he is--he stays up in bed writing until midnight or later every night) until this gets settled. I then asked when Mary is going to make her decision. "January," he replied. SHIT! We'll never make it!

MEANWHILE, his percussion teacher, Alyssa, emailed me last night to ask if Thomas would join the Flint Philharmonia, the orchestra for middle and high school age kids, run through the Flint Institute of Music. It seems that percussionists are in short supply and Thomas's sticking is desperately needed. Thomas was flattered, and excited but also a bit nervous. (And I didn't even tell him the part that they will tour in Spring and have a series of performances in Chicago--I'll leave that off until the night before.) Orchestra practice will be on Thursday, from 6:30-8:30 at night--and this is on top of his weekly piano, percussion and bassoon lessons. How will he survive? There's only so much Thomas to go around!