Next month, I will begin a review class for the Principles and Practices Examination necessary to become certified as a Professional Engineer. The other requirement is a minimum of four years of work experience in your particular field of engineering.

The exam is eight hours long, open book, and multiple choice. Sounds sexy, right? Well consider that being multiple choice isn’t really a blessing, because the choices are like:

a) 100 feet per second
b) 101 feet per second
c) 102 feet per second
d) 103 feet per second

So I’m sure you can see the need for accuracy. Anyway, the review class is every Tuesday evening from 6:30 – 9:30, May through October. Yeah.

And, oh yeah, there is about 8 to 10 hours of homework each week. Grrr. I haven’t had homework since college. This is going to totally suck. Because when all is said and done, homework and me? Not friends.

The first day of first grade, my teacher, Mrs. Levin gave us a simple homework assignment. We had to take a paper home to be signed by a parent. The paper dealt with the rules of the class of whatnot.

I forgot to take the little fucker home.

So the next morning when Mrs. Levin is walking around asking us to pass up our signed papers, I panicked.

A few minutes later, Mrs. Levin called me over to her desk.

“Jeffrey, did you get the paper signed by your mom?”

I hesitated. “Yes.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “And is this your mom’s signature?”

I looked at the paper and shook my head in the affirmative.

She frowned and handed the paper back to me. “I want you to take this home and have your mom sign on top of what you wrote.”

“Okay,” I said and took the paper back to my seat.

That evening, after getting my mom to sign the paper, I was treated to a stern lecture on the evils of forgery. Phrases like “Do you want to end up in jail?” and “How could you think this looks like my signature?” come to mind.

The next morning before I handed in the twice-signed paper to Mrs. Levin I carefully examined it to try to realize my error.

Apparently, my mom, like most adults, does not sign her name in big block printed letters written in thick pencil.

Lessons learned, people.

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