You may remember being given a doll of a baby back in your school days, with the seemingly simple yet deceptively difficult assignment of caring for it for a few days.
Olivia Galloway, daughter of Lawren Galloway, received one such task on a Friday.
The 14-year-old was charged with caring for robotic baby William as part of a class on early childhood education at her Richmond Hill, Georgia high school.
She is the oldest for 4 siblings, with the youngest, Violet, being just a month old, so it makes sense that she’d need this type of lesson the most – and learn that lesson, she did!
Olivia only had to look after the little baby for a weekend, with the assignment beginning at 8 o’clock at night on Friday and ending at 5 o’clock in the morning on Monday.
Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong!
As Lawren shared in a hilarious Facebook post that has since gone viral, it was anything but easy.
William, the little fake baby, cries just like a real-life one, and he also needs to be regularly changed and fed.
And, just like a real baby, it can need these things at any time – even in the middle of the night, and even an hour later after that middle of the night cry.
Since Lawren was busy with baby Violent, Olivia was completely on her own in completing the task.
Lawren would often hear Olivia sobbing at night as she begged William to just burp, get full, or simply stop crying.
She became progressively more exhausted until she began to look just like any real new mother.
She rushed back and forth between bathroom trips, her hair got messy and greasy, she didn’t look well put-together, and she had bags under her eyes.
It took ages to deal with William and satisfy him.
He’d need to be fed for 20 minutes. He’d need his diaper changed. He’d need to be rocked back and forth for more than 10 minutes at a time. He’d have to be burped.
And usually, these things happened when Olivia was the most occupied! Her meals were delayed as she dropped everything to care for him.
Olivia was extremely relieved when Monday rolled around, and she rushed out of the house in a messy outfit and barely awake.
The worst part is that all the effort she put in didn’t even net her a very good grade, and she received a measly 65%. Yikes!
Funnily, Olivia was originally going to take a class on engineering, but worried that it would be too difficult and switched to this class.
She’s probably feeling pretty bad about that choice now!
Still, it was a good learning experience – one that Lawren believes all students in high school should go through.
Lawren’s post about Olivia’s awful weekend received more than 125,000 shares and many more likes and comments.
Lots of people shared their own experiences with this type of assignment, and many joke that this may just put Olivia off having babies forever.
Maybe she’ll just adopt a much older child when she’s ready one day!