1. Introduction
1.1 Identification. These are requirements your family is levying on you as a condition of their ongoing support of your college education. They constitute a set of deliverables for which we are holding you accountable as part of our continued willingness to shell it out. How about that!?
1.2 Scope. These requirements are applicable to you as long as you are working on your undergraduate degree and want continued financial support from us. Feel free to ignore them if you want to strike out on your own.
2. Documents
2.1 Applicable Documents. Documents? We don’t need no stinkin’ documents. This is a family for heaven’s sake. Who on earth would apply formal documentation to family life!?
2.2 Reference Documents. Well, perhaps there are a lot of these, ranging from Dr. Spock’s Baby Care Book to You Majored in What!?. Truth is, I’m making this all up. It’s what they taught us in lamaze class.
3. Requirements
R0. You shall submit a report to your father each month summarizing what you did during the previous month.
Rationale: We worry when we don’t hear from you. We’d like to hear from you more often, even though our parents didn’t hear from us.
R1. You shall include in your monthly report one or more photographs taken by you representative of your college experience.
Rationale: You’ll be sorry later if you don’t do this, so we’re gonna make you. One photgraph per months isn’t too much to ask — or give us back that camera!
R2. You shall include in your monthly report a summary of one more more conversations with your family other than your father.
Rationale: Do better than your father. Enough said.
R3. You shall include in your monthly report a summary of your academic progress in school.
Rationale: This one doesn’t really need any further justification, does it? Does it?
R4. You shall include in your monthly report a summary of one more more things you have done in the last month to enrich your life outside of school.
Rationale: Smell the roses. Don’t let them pass you by.
R5. You shall include in your monthly report a summary of your current thinking about your life after college.
Rationale: The great fear of all parents: boomerang kids. This is how we’re mitigating this risk.
R6. You shall include in your monthly report a summary of where you plan to work next summer.
Rationale: From here on out, buster!
4. Verification Requirements
VR0. Requirement R0 shall be verified by demonstration. The demonstration will consist of the arrival of a letter in your father’s mail box, arrival of a letter in his email inbox, or a phone call to his home or cell phone.
VR1. Requirement R1 shall be verified by inspection. The inspection will be deemed successful if your monthly report includes one or more physical or electronic photographs taken by you (or a link to one or more photograph taken by you).
VR2. Requirement R2 shall be verified by inspection. The inspection will be deemed successful if your monthly report includes a summary of one or more conversations with specific members of your family drawn from the following list: your grandmother, your grandfather, your mother, uncles, aunts or cousins.
VR3. Requirement R3 shall be verified by inspection. The inspection will be deemed successful if your monthly report includes a description of one or more of the following things: grades on papers written, grades on quizzes or tests, mid-term grades, other feedback from your professors.
VR4. Requirement R4 shall be verified by inspection. The inspection will be deemed successful if your monthly report includes a story about one or more extracurricular activities drawn from the following list: musical events, invited talks from respected academics, speeches by well-known celebrities or college alumni, or original art rented by you from the college museum and hung in your room.
VR5. Requirement R5 shall be verified by inspection. The inspection will be deemed successful if your monthly report includes a discussion of one or more of the following topics: what major you would like to select, thoughts on how what you are learning/doing could be used as a credential in some future job search or application to grad/med/vet/dental/law school, or what courses you would like to take in the future along with a discussion of how those courses make sense for your future.
VR6. Requirement R6 shall be verified by inspection. The inspection will be deemed successful if your monthly report includes a discussion of one or more of the following: thoughts on where you might work, people who might be good recommendations for a summer job or internship, thoughts on general categories of summer jobs and how they might apply to your life after callege. Alternatively, the inspection will be deemed successful if you get a summer job.