How to raise a good writer



The true alchemists do not change lead into gold;
they change the world into words. ~ William H. Gass

This is my tried and true approach to raising a good writer.

1. Make words a fun, happy, safe, communal thing in your home. Play with words (knock-knock jokes, Mad Libs, magnetic poetry, any of dozens of genuinely fun, noninstructional card and board games, etc.). Point out clever phrasing when you notice it. Read great (fun!) novels and interesting (fun!) reference books together. Talk about how ads in magazines and signs on businesses are worded and why it might or might not generate any business. Laugh together over words and about words.
   
2. Love words yourself and let it show.
   
3. Fill your home with paper, notebooks, a large variety of pens and pencils, computers with word-processing software and access to the Internet. These are toys for writers! A trip to the office-supply store is bliss.
   
4. Learn to distinguish between writing (content), handwriting, and adherence to rules for spelling and grammar. They are very different things, and a person can be great at any one of them without having any special talent for the others. Also, real writers have keyboards and editors; your child can rely on that, or get through life with spell-checkers and grammar-checkers like most of the known universe.
   
5. Never, ever, ever point out spelling or grammatical errors in a young person's writing. Some people's passion for writing will stand up to this kind of abuse, but it shouldn't have to. Keep in mind that using creative spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure is a natural phase of early writing. Most of us do eventually learn where the period goes and that "cat" is spelled with a "c." Trust.
   
   And meanwhile, focus on content. Share your natural enthusiasm for that, and be cognizant of the fact that by sharing his writing with you, your child is bestowing an honor. Appreciate it!
   
   Note: There is one time when it's okay to offer yourself up as proofreader and that's when your kid is submitting his writing for consideration in order to meet his own goal: winning a prize, getting published, gaining admittance to college, things like that. Otherwise, wait to be asked.
   
6. Protect your child's creativity from writing curricula and well-meaning friends and relatives. The approved essay format, with its rigid structure and counted sentences and paragraphs, can stifle creativity. And Aunt Martha's kindly meant comments to your seven-year-old about subject-verb agreement might serve only to dampen a budding writer's joy in all that is wondrous about writing. Step up and step in, if for no other reason than to show your child that she has choices.
   
7. Respect every writer's privacy. The things your child writes are his to share or not share as he chooses. In the absence of an invitation—and, no, that paper or journal left in plain sight is not an invitation—do what you have to do to control your urge to peek.
   
8. After creating a home where writing is valued and considered fun, check to see if your kid is a writer right now. She might not be, and that's okay! If she is, you will know it; writers write and nobody has to make us do it.
   
   If she isn't, repeat steps 1 through 7, not with the goal of making her into a writer but because words are a playground you can enjoy as a family.

Learning mystique

On Twitter today, someone referred to unschooling as "the lazy parent's approach to school." The author's username includes "sarcasm," so I didn't take offense. But this opinion of unschooling is one we hear from time to time. It has its roots in the multilayered belief that (1) teaching is hard,
(2) the stuff they teach in school is terribly important but so obscure that no one in the real world is likely to stumble upon it anywhere else, and if they do they won't be able to figure it out on their own, and (3) learning the terribly important things must be insisted upon, enforced, and even coerced.

Viewed from that belief system, I can see why unschoolers look like lazybones. We skip the hard part, let our kids play video games if they'd rather, and don't seem to care very much about the terribly important stuff (obscure or not).

But let's take a closer look...

Teaching is hard.

You bet your ass. Teaching is damned hard. Classroom management is hard. Engaging one or two little brains that would rather be playing video games is hard; engaging 25 to 30 of them is all but impossible. Butting up against district policies that get in the way of that engagement is hard. Sacrificing class time to idiotic curriculum choices is hard. Hurting kids to make a living is hard (see the last paragraph on the first page of that link, which is the resignation letter of John Taylor Gatto, who at that time was NY State Teacher of the Year).

And at home? Sitting your kids down at the kitchen table with a lesson plan and standing over them until they complete it is hard. In many cases, it is so hard that the kids end up back in school because neither the kids nor the parents can take it anymore.

Do unschoolers skip all that? You bet your ass.

The stuff they teach in school is terribly important...

Let's do a little experiment. Yesterday, somewhere between playing Minecraft with some friends from Not Back to School Camp and looking at vlogs, Chloe learned about Queen Ranavalona the First.

So, let's pretend I'm the school board and I have determined that it is terribly important for people your age—yes, your age, the exact age that you are right this minute as you read this blog post—it is terribly important for you to learn what Minecraft is and how much it costs, what the policy is on bedtimes at Not Back to School Camp, and all about Queen Ranavalona and why she might be of interest to an unschooler.

What's that? You don't think those things are terribly important? Welcome to the life of a schooled child.

But since we're pretending, let's pretend that one of those items in my little curriculum has piqued your interest. Maybe you're a teen or the parent of a teen who is interested in attending Not Back to School Camp and you would actually like to know about the bedtime policy. Or maybe you've never heard of Minecraft or Not Back to School Camp or Queen Ranavalona or vlogs, and I've made you curious.

Welcome to the life of a lucky schooled child.

But what about the basics?

They call them the basics for a reason. To reach age 15 without learning everything that is taught in elementary school is virtually impossible, provided no one has gotten in your way.

Don't believe me? Take a look at the typical course of study for grades 1 through 5.

But what about math?

At the very first LIFE is Good, my friend Mary Lewis gave a talk about math in which she discussed the work she was doing teaching math to math-phobic adults—that is, adults who had been through 10 to 13 years of school math and were so traumatized by it that they would freeze in terror if someone asked them to add some numbers together. Mary said these people would be far better off if they had never had a math lesson. This article by David Albert certainly makes her point.

But what about core concepts/a balanced education/learning history so it doesn't repeat itself/etc.?

I could argue (and if I can find an article I read recently about the origins of the phrase "balanced education" I just might). But let's say I concede the point. Let's say there is a core set of knowledge that an educated person must have. Terribly important stuff.

...so obscure that no one in the real world is likely to stumble upon it anywhere else...

But the obscure stuff—like Queen Ranavalona to your average American—is stuff that doesn't belong in the core set.

...and if they do they won't be able to figure it out on their own.

The rest? The not-obscure stuff? Kids will encounter it in the real world. When they do, they will have a reason to learn about it, and they will seek out the latest information about it instead of relying on some possibly propagandized, probably censored information they got a decade or more ago.

How will they do that? Well, let's go back to our pretend school and find out. I am your teacher now, working from the curriculum I've received from the school board, here to give you your assignment for the day: Open a new tab right now and find out who Queen Ranavalona was. If you already know who she was, find out the bedtime policy at NBTSC or how much Minecraft costs.

Everybody, get to work! You have two minutes.

Two minutes later... I suspect at most a third of you have done your assignment and the rest of you are faking it and hoping there won't be a test.

But even the fakers should be able to get my point here: what a person needs to know, she finds out.

Learning must be insisted upon, enforced, and even coerced.

Today, after hearing a radio snippet about the U.S. cutting aid to Egypt, Emma asked why we send money to other countries instead of spending it here. Why did she ask me that? Because she didn't understand. Because she was curious. Because it's relevant to her life, being related to current events that we've been discussing a bit here and to the financial situation of people she knows who are struggling in the recession.

Also today, Chloe finished reading "Lord of the Flies." Why? For entertainment. Because it's relevant to her life, having been mentioned in a vlog she's been enjoying. Because it's classic fiction that gets mentioned occasionally and she was curious.

Also today, you are reading the blog of an unschooling parent. Why? Why are you here? You don't have to answer that. Just think about it. What drove you to come to this page of the Internet? No wait, I changed my mind. Leave me a comment and tell me why you're here. I am curious.

And that's the answer to the test we're not having: Human beings are inherently curious. We seek out new information instinctively, even greedily. Learning does not need to be coerced; it is a given.

The greatest trick the educational system ever pulled was convincing people they couldn't learn without it.

The school system is not what it appears to be. It is past time to start looking beyond the disguise.



Point, meet counterpoint.

The other origin of unschooling as "the lazy parent's approach to school" is the idea that unschooling is easy. Umm, no. Unschooling is fun, make no mistake, but it is also quite a lot of work. My post The cons of unschooling describes some of the work that is involved.

A Must Read for newbie unschoolers

A few weeks ago, Chloe and I attended a talk by Blake Boles. He's a staffer at NBTSC and an advocate for unschooling and teen (ad)ventures of any stripe. During his talk, he recommended Drive by Daniel H. Pink. I put a hold on it at the library and have been waiting my turn.

Well, I started reading it tonight, in between trick-or-treaters and football plays. In the first few pages, I found all the reassurance I would have needed back when I was a newbie unschooling mom.

You should read the book. But I think this is too important not to summarize.

In the 40s, Harry Harlow and a couple of other researchers gave some rhesus monkeys some mechanical puzzles to play with. Their intent was to give the monkeys time to get acquainted/comfortable with the puzzles before they began testing their ability to learn to work the puzzles. They thought that without basic-needs motivation (food, water, sex) or extrinsic motivation (punishment or rewards), the monkeys wouldn't learn. What happened instead was that the monkeys learned to work the puzzles just fine, thank you very much. Just because it was fun to work the puzzles. Just because they were curious.

This was a major psychological and cognitive discovery: intrinsic motivation not only exists but works.

But what really surprised the researchers, and what would have made a big difference to my nervous newbie self, was that when they began their formal study of the monkeys' learning and began to introduce rewards, the monkeys' performance got worse. Harlow wrote, "Introduction of food in the present experiment served to disrupt performance..."

For some reason (and maybe Pink attempts to explain it later in the book), our educational system has completely ignored this research. Our educational system is entirely based on extrinsic motivation.

But unschooling? Unschooling is entirely based on intrinsic motivation.

Q.E.D.

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Update 11:09 p.m. -- A friend directed me to this cool animation based on Drive.

New connections

We were looking at one of the girls' old picture books today, "Animalia" by Graeme Base. It is a unique and beautiful alphabet book with dozens of starts-with-the-letter pictures to discover on each page. Today, about ten years after we first read this book, we made a new discovery. On the D page is a drawing of a Dalek. Chloe gasped and then whooped when she saw it.

It's but a small example of how our perspective and knowledge base change as we tuck more years under our belts.

Tiny tidbits: Learn Nothing Day, Part Trois

Tara commented on my previous post that she doesn't participate in Learn Nothing Day because she doesn't like failure. It made me chuckle, and then it got me wondering: Why do I participate? Why do I, in fact, look forward to this day with moderately gleeful anticipation?

Part of the answer probably stems from its being a rare opportunity for my psyche to experience failure without trauma. But more than that, I enjoy the way it attunes my brain to the learning I do just via my regular activities: tiny tidbits of learning that happen so naturally and so without fanfare, most days I am oblivious to them. I think (and the point of Learn Nothing Day is) that these tidbits are unavoidable. They happen to everyone no matter where they are or what they are doing—even kids in school!

What cannot be predicted is what those tidbits will be. Oh, schools try to control this, with their curricula and textbooks and lectures, but they can't really. Even the learners can't control learning. In many respects, our brains are the sponges they are so often compared to, and like real sponges, they will soak up pretty much anything.

In chemistry class, I learned how to disguise my papers so that I could write notes to Linda instead of taking notes on Mr. Smith's lectures. I also learned that this one nerdy kid was a pretty good friend, that I enjoyed balancing chemical equations, that clocks move more slowly in 6th period, and that the chemical name for lead can be remembered by thinking of Pencil boxes.

In the last couple of days, I learned that "stop" is not a (Merriam Webster) dictionary sense of "enough" (perhaps because MW says interjections are "usually lacking grammatical connection"). I learned that some people believe "exaggerate" is an antonym for "control." NOT. I learned that there are two ferries from Anacortes to Sydney, BC, each weekday and that a 16-year-old can walk across for $13. I learned that the yurts at Kayak Point are extremely popular and run $50 per night. I learned that the Centennial Trail runs from Arlington to Snohomish, and that they are planning to extend it farther north. I learned that Microsoft HealthVault is really pretty cool, that you can upload data from your health-related devices (pedometers, blood-pressure and glucose meters, etc.) to the site, and that some pretty prestigious medical facilities are using sites like these for remote patient monitoring.

Today, I learned that Sandra put up a temporary banner on her unschooling page for Learn Nothing Day, that there is a web site where one can set up a custom marquee banner, that I still love Pachelbel's Canon, and that at least one of my friends, Alex, visits Sandra's site often enough to have discovered the new banner. I learned that Tara doesn't like to fail. I learned that Antonio Meucci got robbed.

I also learned that I didn't gain any willpower while I was sleeping, and that I still find cruising Facebook and writing blog posts WAY more fun than working. Shocker. And I learned that Learn Nothing Day provides a fun and unique opportunity for looking at learning.

Unschool is an intransitive verb

I am not entirely comfortable with the phrase "I unschool my kids."

It's not something I do to them really. It's something they do for themselves, in the supportive environment Frank and I have created and continually adapt to their changing needs. If I say I unschool them, it feels like I am taking credit for their learning and accomplishments. I know this is semantics. But I think using more precise words here can help with the same sort of mental shift as the one from 'teach' to 'learn.'

I often say, "We unschool," on the other hand, referring to the whole family. And we do! Unschooling is about much more than learning, and there is no other word that describes our all-encompassing lifestyle so well.

Nevertheless, the shorthand provided by "unschool" as a transitive verb can be handy, and I once titled a talk "Unschooling teenagers." But I was at least aware of the variety of ways to interpret that title. :-)

Freedom to learn

I have a problem or six with this quote from Ayn Rand:

"The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life—by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past—and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort."

The entire quote smacks of kids needing something done TO them: teach, develop, equip, train, "has to be taught." It's completely antithetical to how we approach the world. We believe our kids arrived in our lives as complete people. They learn from what they see, do, and experience, just as adults do, but THEY own the process. Our part of it is simply to make their home and lifestyle as kind and fun and resource-rich as we can. What they take from it is completely up to them.

It's that old question about whether there is anything that kids MUST learn. I think the answer is "no," because as soon as you put something on that list, you take away from the kids the unfettered, creative right to determine for themselves what has value in their lives. And learning *that* is the most important learning of all.

Just sing

My elementary school had a well respected choir. The choir director, Miss Brittingham, would hold rehearsals each year, and a select group of 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders would be chosen as that year's choir. Being in the choir was a Big Deal. Choir members got to be out of class each week for rehearsals, they got to go on field trips to performances, and—best of all—they got to say, "I'm in the choir." I tried out all three years I was eligible and got in once. I was thrilled the year I got in, of course, but what I remember more is the years I didn't. Not making the cut was pretty traumatic. I wasn't good enough.

I took choir classes in middle school and junior high, but the choir directors were uninspiring at best and pompous autocrats at worst. They did not improve my singing ability or my self-esteem, and by the time I got to high school, I was done. I had decided that I was, at best, a mediocre singer and that I should limit myself to singing along with the radio.

(I wasn't really wrong, by the way. I am a mediocre singer: my range is pretty limited, and my ability to sing on key... well, it fluctuates.)

So there I was, going through life as a mediocre singer—or rather, not thinking of myself as a singer at all—crooning rock-n-roll lullabies to my babies, belting out classic rock during my commute, shouting out Christmas carols with daughters and nieces who were quite happy to be off key with me.

And then one day at LIFE is Good 2009, Frank and Jeff and Russ said, "Hey, we're doing 'Gloria' for the talent show, and we need backup chicks."

And just like that, I became a backup singer. I've spent the last year singing. I've performed shows in public. I even sang lead on one song in January and plan to do so again in May. It has been pure, perfectly imperfect fun.

And the really interesting thing is that now, in my 40s, because I am doing it, I am becoming a better singer. I have learned so much about technique and breath control and harmonizing and taking cues from the musicians and my fellow chicks. My range is still limited, but it's enough. And I've discovered that when one is performing live music with a rock-n-roll band, being off key now and then is not the end of the world. Usually nobody notices.

G. K. Chesterton said, "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." What he could have added is that by doing, you might find "badly" changing to "better and better," and even if you don't, it can be a helluva good time along the way.

Mindful learning

I mentioned a few days ago that I am reading Ellen J. Langer's book "The Power of Mindful Learning." It is proving to be a fascinating read, despite some muddy writing in places. The book contains a lot of information about numerous studies that show how learning really works, and I strongly recommend that you read it yourself if you're so inclined.

Here, I'm going to pull out a few excerpts that really resonated with me, and that support her contention that some of the deepest rooted beliefs in education are myths.

Myth #1: The basics must be learned so well that they become second nature.

"The standard two approaches to teaching new skills are top-down or bottom-up... I sought a third alternative...

"Sideways learning aims at maintaining a mindful state. As we saw, the concept of mindfulness revolves around certain psychological states that are really different versions of the same thing: (1) openness to novelty; (2) alertness to distinction; (3) sensitivity to different contexts; (4) implicit, if not explicit, awareness of multiple perspectives; and (5) orientation in the present... Learning a subject or skill with [sideways learning] makes us receptive to changes in an ongoing situation. In such a state of mind, basic skills and information guide our behavior in the present, rather than run it like a computer program."

Myth #2: Paying attention means staying focused on one thing at a time.

"...when children or adults are distracted they are paying attention to something else... Being distracted, in short, means being otherwise attracted." (emphasis mine)

She discusses how studies have shown that attention is really more effective when we or what we are focusing on is changing, shifting, moving, and that the whole concept of attention as something that should be fixed or static or focused is faulty. Then she has this to say about ADHD:

"Mary Ford found that attention increased when third and fourth graders diagnosed as having ADHD were working with computer softare that used a game format. Frances Cripe found that children with ADHD demonstrated decreased activity and increased attention when listening to rock music as they performed their task. And Sydney Zentall found that when the stimuli were in color, attention increased.

"Some of the problems associated with treating ADHD and other attention problems may result from a lack of appreciation for the importance of novelty. Hyperactivity may be the child's implicit effort to increase novelty. If so, the advice to sit still and pay attention may be counterproductive." (emphasis mine)

Myth #3: Delaying gratification is important.

"If we don't open the presents until Christmas, or if we plan a trip for after the new year, aren't we delaying gratification? We are not, if the anticipation itself is positive... it is merely being gratified by anticipation as well as by the actual [event]."

"There are two approaches that educators and parents typically use to encourage children to engage in a disliked activity... They promise children that rewards (or punishments for noncompliance) will follow, or they add fun elements to the unpleasant task. In both cases they reinforce children's presumptions that the task is odious."

Myth #4: Rote memorization is necessary in education.

"Education traditionally has given students packages of information that are largely context free. Even when context is provided, the manner in which the information is presented still encourages mindless processing. Saying, for instance, that there were three reasons for the Civil War omits both context and perspective. What did a fifty-year-old Southern white man think the reasons were? A fifty-year-old black? A young Northern woman? And so on... Even if information is given from two perspectives, if the possibility of additional views is not intentionally built in, the tendency of students is to consider these two just as rigidly; there would simply be twice as much absolute information to memorize."

"[In a recent study] students who learned the material in the traditional manner and were told of an impending test performed worse than all other groups...

"...we found that the students who did not rely on memorization outperformed the others on every measure..." (emphasis mine)

Myth #5: Forgetting is a problem.

This section covers a lot of ground.

"Perhaps when we can't find our keys it is because we were thinking about more important matters when we put them down. If that were not the case, why would we forgive the geniuses among us for their absentmindedness... Geniuses or not, once we recognize that we have forgotten something we need, we become oriented to the present and reinvent or rediscover what we need to know. In this sense, forgetting provokes mindfulness. Memorizing keeps us in the past; forgetting forces us into the present." (emphasis mine)

"The prepared group [group that had been shown examples] came up with two solutions; the unprepared group came up with ten."

"These results support the view that cultural beliefs about aging play a role in determining the degree of memory loss that people experience in old age."

Myth #6: Intelligence is knowing "what's out there."

"Many theories of intelligence assume that there is an absolute reality out there, and the more intelligent the person, the greater his or her awareness of this reality... An alternative view, which is at the base of mindfulness research, is that individuals may always define their relation to their environment in several ways, essentially creating the reality that is out there." (emphasis mine)

Myth #7: There are right and wrong answers.

"Much instruction...[r]ather than allowing an individual to generate new hypotheses that may be mindfully tested... assumes that the objective is apparent and that only the means of achieving it remains obscure to the naive observer. Teaching from this perspective consists of presenting step-by-step methods of problem solving, making possible an essentially mindless type of success.

"If we can shed this outcome orientation, we may discover that the freedom to define the process is more significant..."

"Intelligence testing, which focused first on such skills as bisecting lines or judging weights and later stressed problem solving, now emphasizes the ability to acquire new skills. In each case the objective—physical motion, problem resolution, or skill acquisition—is preselected by the intelligence expert.

"When students are assessed in this way, they are not given an opportunity to choose their own objectives, nor are they allowed to explore processes that are outside the experts' repertoire of valued skills."

"...the ability to maintain stable categories is often critical for the expert's authority."

"Although social scientists recognize that applying statistical data derived from groups to individual cases is problematic, this recognition does not appear to restrict attempts to [do so]."

"For some... [uncertainty] represents an absence of personal control. From a mindful perspective, however, uncertainty creates the freedom to discover meaning. If there are meaningful choices, there is uncertainty. If there is no choice, there is no uncertainty and no opportunity for control. The theory of mindfulness insists that uncertainty and the experience of personal control are inseparable." (emphasis mine)

"When we are mindful, we recognize that every inadequate answer is adequate in another context... If we respect students' abilities to define their own experiences, to generate their own hypotheses, and to discover new ways of categorizing the world, we might not be so quick to evaluate the adequacy of their answers. We might, instead, begin listening to their questions. Out of the questions of students come some of the most creative ideas and discoveries." (emphasis mine)

Water

I feel like blogging more but can think of nothing to say. "Water" keeps featuring in the titles I come up with. Maybe I'm thirsty.

On an unrelated subject, I've just eaten half a box of Aplets & Cotlets for dinner. Yum! One of Washington's finest products! That I managed to do this even though Frank and MJ are watching the remake of "Dawn of the Dead" downstairs, and I have seen and heard enough gushing brains to make me a little queasy, is a testament to the fine work done by Liberty Orchards for the past 80 years or so. Their history is fascinating and can be found here.

Chloe has vanished into her room, having discovered some forgotten treasures in my (deep) closet, which used to be her bedroom. I finally cleaned it out some last summer and organized her things-left-behind, but I guess I hadn't told her, because she was quite pleased when she went in there today. She found stuffed friends, the puppets she and MJ inherited from Lynn and me, various small mementos, and so on. It's like Christmas!

Earlier, she was rereading one of her books by Silver Ravenwolf, a magik/Wicca author, and was distressed to discover that Silver got her Norse mythology wrong. Chloe has done quite a bit of reading on/of Norse myths since the last time she read Silver's book, so she was able to immediately recognize the error when Silver said Freya was a moon goddess and Odin's wife. Not!

Me, I wouldn't have known the difference.

One of the concerns about homeschooling is that the kids will learn only what their parents know. Laughable concept to those of us living the life.

Another is that they will think only what their parents think. *snort* *snuffle* *guffaw* If that were true, most of my conversations with MJ in the past week could not have taken place, and the recent rather heated talk that MJ, Chloe, and I had about school would not have inspired me to introduce a talking stick into the mix. (We didn't have a talking stick handy, so we used my inhaler. This produced much laughter, but it did the job.)

How do I know what a talking stick is? I have no idea. I just picked it up somewhere. Maybe my kids told me, but I have the feeling the knowledge is older than they are. Maybe I saw one in a movie long ago. The closest I'd ever come to using one before this was passing around a little hacky-sack-type thing so a hearing-impaired coworker would know who was speaking.

Last night, Jon Stewart did this little "Devil Went Down to Georgia" thing to explain Georgia's runoff election process. MJ knew the song. How? I have no idea. Well, I have some idea: this is a woman with a serious passion for music. But this is also a 30-year-old novelty song! A country novelty song! Nevertheless, she got the joke.

Sandra Dodd has said that a lot of learning is about getting the joke, and vice versa.

Did you know I have a calm energy? Caren said so. It was news to me, but it's an interesting idea: Ronnie as calm person. Sometimes I probably manage it. And, hey, I have long fingernails now!

A new hopeful sign: Some abortion foes shifting focus
"...a growing number of antiabortion pastors, conservative academics and activists are setting aside efforts to outlaw abortion and instead are focusing on building social programs and developing other assistance for pregnant women to reduce the number of abortions."
Now maybe we can get something done.

Lieberman is being welcomed back into the fold. Ick.

Oops, gotta go, Chloe wants to use the computer. Later!