Digital homework is now the norm
School should be last to go when cutting down on screen time
My kid’s Grade 2 teacher keeps sending home apps to download for her homework. The thing is, I don’t want my kid on the iPad. Can I tell the teacher to send home real work?
What a great question. I can understand your concern, but homework on app is just as real as the tactile homework that we used to shlep home in books! The fact is that most of your kid’s work, whether homework as a student now or their office work when they’re your age, is going to be done digitally. Just because it is a different medium doesn’t make it less onerous for them. In some ways, their teacher is likely preparing them for what the future will hold — and that is using a device to get work done.
If you are trying to cut down on screen time altogether, then perhaps the homework might be the last thing on the list to get slashed. Have a chat with their teacher and see what they think, but keep an open mind. In many ways, doing homework might feel a bit less like work if your kid enjoys the iPad. Is it OK to shop online with someone else’s coupon code?
Shopping with someone else’s coupon seems like a victimless crime. I mean, that coupon was produced with the sole purpose of spiking sales, right? So you’re merely helping this goal along, I’d say. Your use of it to shop for yourself is basically altruistic. The exception to this — and this is where I’d be so bummed out if I were the original coupon holder — is a one-time offer. Right now, I’m looking at a discount code for my favourite online retailer that can be used a whopping ONE time.
Before you venture into a store or start popping in a discount code to a retailer’s site, do some reconnaissance. Check the (literal) fine print on the coupon or the website. If it is a one-time offer, you’re asking for bad shopping karma by redeeming it. But there is a caveat. If you find this coupon on the sidewalk or the mall, finders keepers! I had a job interview by Skype and only realized later that I had laundry drying in the background of the shot. Should I call the recruiter and apologize?
Oh, dear. What kind of laundry are we talking here? Please say towels and not a drying rack of underthings. How on earth did you miss that, by the way? Let’s hope that it was, in fact, so easy to miss that your interviewer also missed it. I’d let it go and cross your fingers that it went unnoticed. If it gave the interviewer a bad impression of you, emailing them to awkwardly apologize for it isn’t likely to turn the situation around in your favour. If you don’t get called back for a second interview, don’t assume it was because of the laundry snafu. It could have been anything. But, if you have another video interview, take care to make sure that your background is just as prepared as you are. You want a nice clean sightline with your underthings exactly where they are meant to be: under your clothes and well out of sight. Etiquette expert Karen Cleveland answers your questions about life online. Send her your questions: karen@mannersaresexy.com