a helpful friend of older children explained to me that coursework is a completely different art from essay writing, because instead of making points succinctly you are encouraged to analyse things in depth, and show you have researched. so when the students try and use essay writing technique that is geared to exams it is all wrong for the task.
Ds is in a concert tonight and rehearsals all today, and the coursework clashes with something else important in another subject which that subject teacher is harassing him over. which explains why he has now essentially lost interest in his coursework, and is happy with what will probably be an E rather than a U. I cannot tell you how many times he has laboriously rewritten it, without knowing just how the last scene goes...I had to make him read aloud said scene two days ago, this is 6 months in! He was convinced he knew it from reading a synopsis breakdown..
This morning we had intimations of mini breakdown, ds woke up late despite being woken three times (he never is late for school usually) so the late nights are finally getting to him. He is working flat out till 11pm and then clearly rewarding himself with computer games on his laptop, and not going to sleep till 12.30ish. I was laying down the law to him to go to sleep at midnight, reminding him/threats of not going to uni if he did not get a C in music (which he cannot get if he is too shattered to work in lessons), and he alternated between apologising and flat out refusing to get an "early" night, cos I'm a teen and we stay up late...and you can't tell me what to do..etc. grrr. hopefully he has more stamina than me, and tiredness is not affecting him as much as I think (I am certainly exhausted keeping his hours)