Three Minutes A Parent

It's parent-teacher conference day, and for my trip from way West Midtown to my daughter's conference on the Lower East Side, I got 3 minutes (timed with a stopwatch) with each of her core teachers.  Which, by the way, makes me lucky, since the timeslots filled before many parents could sign up at all.

I have been dealing with short conference times for pretty much the whole time my kids have been in school--probably the longest ever was 12 minutes--so 3 was not really a surprise (and since I got to see all four teachers, plus the French teacher, it was really a 15 minute conference, just split up!).

I am happy to report that my daughter is doing fine--whatever concerns about homework I chatted about with other parents clearly aren't influencing how she is doing in class.  And while I was certainly happy to hear that her grades are good, I was even happier to hear her teachers call her respectful, responsible, and helpful to other students.  The academic skills are absolutely important, but the fact that she has life skills as well makes me think that maybe, in all the chaos, we have done something right.

So it turns out that 3-minute conferences were actually okay. And as I rode the bus home, I thought about how many things we do all the time in 3 minutes, from brushing our teeth to reading a newspaper article to making EasyMac to telling our children to "have a good day."

And if you were given the choice of doing something in three minutes or not doing it at all, what would you do?