@thingamajig I sent you a PM. I do agree with you as I think it is going to be a long summer also 
My son comes home next Friday and doesn’t go back to middle of August. Oh 3 full months of figuring things out!
Maybe his Calc 3 teacher sucks! My DD had to retake her Calc 2 class in summer school because she got a D and needed a C- to be able to take Calc 3. I was all kinds of mad at her thinking she wasn’t studying enough but she kept saying her teacher didn’t teach them anything. Low and behold she got an A in Calc 2 in summer school, and after researching and reading reviews on teachers, took a good one for Calc 3 in fall and got an A in that class too. So sometimes it could be the prof’s themselves aren’t up to par. Just adding another perspective to the discussion.
1st update. Final grade in and he failed Hebrew as expected. I really do not think he thought he would fail. In a last ditch effort he did a homework assignment and sent it to the teacher today. The teacher replied and said that he was sorry but this is not going to bring up his grade 
Awaiting the math grade. He said he thinks he did well on the final so time will tell! So far only other class that has a grade posted is English, got a A-. Hopefully all other classes will be good so his GPA doesn’t drop further. We do have an appointment with the advisor in 2 weeks do discuss language options.
Your son is extremely bright and loves his school. When you are having the talk this summer, I think the key is to stress that he will not go back to that school if he fails in the fall. Period. He will have to go to CC. You can’t have another semester like this one. He didn’t think he’d fail his class, because he’s probably always been able to get through without a lot of effort. That F may be a HUGE education.
I can understand the prof saying it would not change his grade - LOL. Kid didn’t try all semester and now sends in HW after classes are over!. Oh boy. I feel like he will wake up and smell the coffee.
Thanks for the update @Nurse001. Grades just came in for my son as well and he’s in a similar predicament. He had an A in a class two weeks before the end of Spring semester. But then he decided not to participate in the service project and his A plunged to a D. He had another class in which he was barely passing with a C- but then he actually missed the last exam before the final. He ended up with a second D! When I asked him what happened, he said he didn’t understand the weight of the service component for the one class, and he mistakenly thought there was only one exam during final week for the other class when there were actually two.
I’m thinking his judgment sucks, and he appears to have no organizational skills. Still, I try to keep it all in perspective. I have a friend who lost her daughter to sickle cell last month, and last week, a seventeen-year-old neighbor was struck by a car and died. So, I’m sorta at a more considerate place right now because in the grand scheme of things, I’m good. My child is healthy, his grades are still in good standing, and he gets to go back to school in the Fall and have another run at it.
@evermom1 - I am so sorry about your friends child. That is incredibly sad.
You are so right as our children are healthy and that is the most important thing in life! I love your outlook on your sons first year as he gets to go back and have another run at it! My son will go back as well and hopefully not repeat the same mistakes
Not to state the obvious, @Nurse001, the classes your son seems to be struggling with are those that typically require keeping up with the day to day workload and homework, classes that are progressive in nature - math and a language, Hebrew. To be successful next year, he’s going to have to find ways to stay on task with assignments and with time management, the stuff that can seem like drudgery some times. I’d suggest that you require him to seek out regular study skills support as part of his conditions to return in the fall.
You need to establish clear conditons to his return to his school. Think about it so that it makes sense, and include the summer as a “test” -ie., he has to take steps over the summer to show he is changing his ways and handling his part of the deal, or you don’t pay next semester’s tuition. One semester’s tuition if he doesn’t change his habits day to day is money thrown out the window.
It could be, simply, to take a class over the summer and go for office hours every week + tutoring, even if he feels he doesn’t need it or feels it’s a waste of his time. The point being to get him into the habit of doing it, not “if he feels like it”, but every week, as a matter of course. And no absence allowed, even if the syllabus allows him to. Proving he can stick to the plan for ONE class would show he’s serious about improving.
Can he “repair” classes at a CC or does it have to be at his university -> find out quickly, because if he can “repair” his F or D grades in Hebrew and Calc 3 over the summer, he’d actually start next Fall on the right foot.
(He probably is a bit immature, since that “Oh I did some extra work” last-ditch stunt after classes ended is the type of things a 9th grader would pull, thinking it’d actually help “since they showed good will and effort”… - but most young adults recognize it for “too little, too late” and know such a behavior isn’t appropriate for college - either the professor felt insulted or laughed at his immaturity.)
Thank you for the update. I have been thinking about you. Hopefully, the rest of his grades come in okay, especially Calc. You have the summer to regroup and come up with a plan. It sounds like he definitely needs better organizational and time management skills. One thing I learned is this generation is not very good at managing email–and colleges and profs rely heavily on email to communicate. This generation is all about texting, SnapChat, etc - Both my S and D have confessed to having “missed seeing the email about that” - whether the change in the due date for an assignment, an opportunity for extra credit, an invitation to interview for an internship, etc. Helping him learn to organize and deal with emails - and setting up a digital calendar / To Do list that perhaps you can request he share with you weekly in the fall might help.
It sounds like he will have a second chance. I wish you well.
It would seem that depression affects Executive Functioning (the part of the brain that plans tasks)…
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10071094
I would start with getting the depression sorted first.
OP, thanks for the update, and yay! that things could be worse, and aren’t. Glad to hear you have an advising appointment all set up already.
I’m going to encourage, again, that you think in terms of support-by-support, not support-by-setting-conditions. It is almost impossible for people who have executive function to understand what students without it are like. You can set conditions all day. You can issue requirements/ultimatums and have long conversations. The student looks like they get it. Their regret is real. The promises to do better are sincere. The visioning of consequences is properly intimidating (and sometimes, it is debilitating). But adults with poor EF and organizational skills simply can’t get There from Here. There’s this huge chasm between intent and follow-through and they are NOT doing it on purpose. (Okay, mostly not on purpose).
So some people call it helicoptering, or enabling, or whatever, but often as parents of these kids we have to become the safety net. The weekly phone call , the rote learning of routine (check your email every day at 8. set an alarm, etc…), yes, the grade checkers, the schedule keepers. Keep asking what would help him. Keep at it, and expect setbacks. If he doesn’t accept help, or want to discuss it, then you have a problem, and need to be thinking ahead to what he will do if he leaves this school. (and that wouldn’t be a disaster)
As was said – I have friends whose children have died young. What they wouldn’t give to have a problem like this .
^ 'conditions’can be, in fact, ‘Checks’ ro help him - like requiring attendance or going to office hours even I’d he doesn’t feel he needs to.
Seeking assistance with dealing with executive functioning can be a condition. I think “support by support” goes without saying as a parent. I don’t think it is enough given the situation and seems a bit of a copout to me, frankly. If I am shelling out $65K a year in tuition, room, and board (or even a fraction of that) I do expect some performance measures, both qualitative and quantitative. That doesn’t mean I am not there supporting emotionally and in other ways.
^^ this is the sort of thing I mean. No offense, meant and I’m not trying to argue, just clarify. Some students are not going to respond to performance measures or the threat of withdrawing the investment because you aren’t getting what you want out of the investment. Is it sometimes going to help a lazy student who only went to college to party, and because Mom and Dad wanted them to? Absolutely. Is it going to help a student in trouble who needs some sort of organizational backup from another person. Not at all, and it usually makes things much worse by driving them underground as they perceive the “performance measuring” to be a demand they could never meet. The trick of course, is figuring out which kind of student you have
“requiring attendance or going to office hours” doesn’t work, in my experience. The gulf between intent and execution opens up, and your student falls right in. You can’t actually make them remember to do it, or get over the shame of needing to, or even get over the feeling that everything is going to be just fine. Misplaced optimism is very much an ADD/EF symptom. Which the OP’s son is not diagnosed with, so pardon the tangent.
@greenbutton I hear what you are trying to say and I’m not saying just pull the financial rug out from under one’s child but why throw money away if the student isn’t getting some help? That’s not the same as being unsupportive or viewing “performance measurement” only through grades, as I said both qualitative as well as quantitative. It could mean taking a semester or two off to work on the depression, executive functioning issues or whatever the case may be because it isn’t exactly clear here. Most of us, even those of us who are full pay, don’t have endless resources to pay for expensive colleges. Having to pay beyond a typical 4 years equates to tens of thousands of dollars. That budget can be spent more productively by insuring that the issue is addressed with a plan of execution. No one is saying to withdraw all support emotional and/or financial. More like, hit the pause button, assess what is going on, figure out resources to help address the issue, and make sure those resources are being used.
Final grades are in. So my S got a D in Calc 3. I was so relieved he did not fail it. While his GPA is not very good he is above a 2.0 so he will still be in good standing. Like I said in my last post he did fail Hebrew so he is going to switch to Spanish in the spring. This way there is much more support for that language.
So glad the 1st year is done. We have an appointment with the Advisor in May and see the new Doctor in 2 weeks!
Hope everyone had a great Mother’s Day
Thank you again for the update. I’m glad he finished above 2.0. It sounds like you have a plan in place. Good move switching to Spanish as well. Have him look into the free language lessons online at Duolingo over the summer - or consider purchasing Rosetta Stone and have him devote a little time each week to getting some of the basics down. If he can get a bit of a jump start over the summer, it will help in the fall. And please keep us updated.
Glad to hear he pulled a D!
What’s the plan to ensure the same problems don’t occur again?
What “checks” are you going to have to help him get help, go to office hours, go to class, etc (I know he’ll be all for it now, but there’s usually a gap between wishful thinking and action).
Are you going to check his choice of classes before you pay for them, or discuss his schedule with him?
Whew on the D in calc. I second studying or reviewing material over the summer. Is he planning to retake Calc 3? I don’t know if this is helicoptering but I would have him take a noncredit online class (think Coursera or Khan Academy) - have him set a schedule and work with him to stay on schedule. Really, the class isn’t as important as the skills he needs to deal with the class and any bumps he encounters in a tough class.
It may very well be that he needs to be taught what seems like “common sense” to other people. Summer at home seems like a good time for you to provide more oversight and guidance without doing anything.
Hi, I wanted to give an update on my son. So he came home for the summer and let me tell you…it was a hard summer. Two weeks after he was home he got into a car accident. Thank gosh noone was hurt but he totalled his car. He also lost some life long friends during a fall out during the summer.
We took him to the doctor to get him reevaluated for depression/ADD. That was long process and alot of money. For most of the summer he worked and remained home trying to sort out things and rethink his path.
He reenrolled in his classes for Chapel Hill. We told him under any circumstances that if he did not do well we would not pay anymore for school.
A pleasant surprise that he got a call this summer if he wanted to be a RA. They had an opening and he said yes. So he left for school 3 weeks ago, had RA training and started classes again this week. He is full of hope and excited that he got the chance to go back for sophmore year and do it better this year.
One thing we found out during his retesting of depression that he did not have that and he was taking medication for no reason. Actually once fully off the medication he said he felt like the window was less foggy meaning for the 1st time in 2 years he could actually think clearly.
Here is to a great sophmore year