Becoming the Housewife MacGyver ACADEMICALLY

It's August which means back-to-school is just around the corner! At our house, since my husband is a teacher, this calls for a hip hip hooray! And that's HIM hipping and hooraying, not me. :) Well, I am too, but mostly him. We love summer but we really thrive with just the little bit of structure that come from daddy coming and going to work. :)

With this back-to-school time in mind, August is our month to MacGyver our brains -- to become more like the Mac academically (both in and out of formal classroom settings).

So what is academic self-reliance? As with most of our month themes, the definition and application of academic self-reliance is individual for each of us and our families. I'll tell you what it means to me, and you tell me what it means to you!

For me and my family, academic self-reliance is, firstly, using our brains to do our own thinking. Our brains are our #1 resource in any situation, but so often we just float through life uninformed, apathetic, and disconnected. Okay, maybe y'all don't, but I sure do!

Secondly, academic self-reliance is using our brains in different ways, both in and out of formal classroom settings. By stretching the limits of our brains (even just the 10% that we actually use ;), we can deepen our talents, develop new talents, and discover what we, both as individuals and as families, succeed at and love to do! Isn't that all anyone can ask for?

So, with my definitions in mind, my academic goals this month are to

1 - Keep up with the news. As connected as I am (or at least as I feel) online, I tend to skip over the nitty gritty of the world, the economy, the news and jump to the fun stuff like my blog reader full of craft and recipe blogs... which means I can come up with 15 different ways to repurpose an old cookie sheet (using just a glue gun and Mod Podge) but I don't know diddly squat about anything in the news.

So, I will read the news (at least the front page) every day and then talk with my husband about it over dinner. (He watches Good Morning America while doing his lesson prep in the mornings, so he's covered ;)

2 - Spend more time reading and playing academically with my son. We read and we play, but he is at the age where he is picking up on EVERYTHING so quickly, so it's important to me to not lose this opportunity to have him soak up the smart things along with the fun things. With this baby coming any day now, it's not realistic for me to plan too much structure, but we'll be taking every opportunity to talk about shapes, colors, letters and numbers.

via flickr

3 - Write more. I don't mean blog more or write myself more crazy notes and lists (which I will promptly lose), but write more to use my atrophying technical writing (and editing) skills. I am a technical writer by training, but I haven't kept up hardly any practice in the 2.5 years since I finished my degree and left my job to stay at home with my son. I keep wanting to do so some freelance work and just feeling too rusty, so I'm going to get the gears oiled up so I'm ready for freelance!

So now, tell me -- what does academic self-reliance mean to you? And what are you going to try this month to become more MacGyver?

This post is part of the Housewife MacGyver series on just Lu. Read more about Housewife MacGyver and see all the posts in the series here.