I know it was only the first day, but Ethan is feeling overwhelmed, just as I thought he might. Especially if he actually puts his nose to the grindstone and actually tries to get decent grades this year. He’s talked to some of the teachers where he knows he could possibly struggle, and he says he’s going to stay after school and get help this year. That has always been available to him, but I’m hoping he takes advantage of it this year.

So. What does this do to the job. He just wanted to quit. But I told him lets try and find some middle ground. Where he works, they are really good about working with these high school kids, scheduling them to what works best for the them. So, he’s going to talk to his manager, and see if they can work out a weekend schedule, and that he could work 1 or 2 days (evenings) during the week, and those days would need to be either Monday, Thursday and/or Friday. Tuesday’s, he has Barbershop practice. But, he doesn’t go until 6:00, so he has 3 hours to do homework. Wednesday, he has GAP and Praise Band practice. Again, he doesn’t have to be there until 6:00. Its the going straight from school, and having to be at work by 3:30, and not getting off work until 8:00, 9:00 and having to do homework then. I understand his feelings, so if he’s willing to try and work weekends, and a day during the week, then I’m good with that as well. And then after Christmas, we’ll see how he did the first semester, and see what we need to do about Forensics. There are alot of Forensic meets on Saturday. But. We need to get through this first semester and see what happens, and deal with next semester later.

I was a little concerned to how he was going to balance all of this. I really don’t want to see him quit all together. If he could make enough to put gas in his car and pay his insurance, and maybe a little extra, that would be good enough. Even if he quits now (well, giving his two weeks), he will have paid off his note for the damange he caused backing into someone’s van. So, he did good this summer, and accomplished what he set out to do. But, I would like to see him still try and balance both. But not to the extreme. We’ll just have to see.