<p>Wow everyone. I greatly appreciate the support I’ve been getting, especially here.</p>
<p>As an update to my situation, I’d like to say that I did some more discussion with my family and showed them this thread. They each read what other parents were saying, weighed it against their own beliefs and told me they would think about what they could do for me. Eventually, my dad came around and decided to tell me two days ago that he got approved to get off work for orientation and he will take me himself. It seems my parents still aren’t very supportive of my plans but they’re going to “let me do what I gotta do.”</p>
<p>I just gotta say, it’s quite a frightening experience for me knowing I’ll soon be on my own, but support from my friends helps boost my confidence.</p>
<p>Thanks again everyone, and I hope this thread also can serve to help other students with family disagreements.</p>
<p>camera, so glad your parents are rethinking this and most impressively that your dad is taking you to the orientation. Stay the course you have planned, all the best to you!</p>
<p>Op,
YAY!I am so amazed and impressed by your dad for taking off 2 days from work to accompany you to orientation. That is very generous of him. Hopefully, he will learn more about the college by being there and will get more supportive about it. Maybe he will even get excited about it.</p>
<p>That is fantastic!
It’s so great that your parents have changed their minds; they really are trying to do their best for you.
In case your parents read this thread again, I’d ike to congratulate them for raising an ambitious, determined self-starting kid!</p>
<p>i am glad your stood up for yourself. Sometimes as a parent you want to see how much the kid wants something before you agree to it. A small example is that is if I can talk my kid into going to school when they don’t feel good, then i know they are not that sick. But if I can’t, i know they are really sick.</p>
<p>Great news - I’m very happy for you. It’ll also be an opportunity for you to bond with your father and show him where you’re going, where you’re going to study, etc. And, as Hunt says, if at the last minute he can’t go… just take your car and drive yourself there. Send them a text to say you got there fine. :)</p>
<p>OP – check back in with us during the semester. It will be different from what you expect. Almost everyone has down moments in their first semester of college. But you will do great. And we can help you see the forest for the trees.</p>
<p>I’m happy to hear this is working out for you! Just FYI- TTU has an incredible support system through their alumni and parent organizations. I work with several TTU grads and they are so proud- and rightfully so- of the networking they have in place to support the students and parents. Suggest to your parents that they join the parent association, I believe they will find a tremendous amount of information to help them help you during your college career. </p>
<p>Keep an open line of communication with your parents. As a parent who never took a SAT, applied to college or attended college I can say it is a scary time for some to go through this experience. There is a wealth of information out there if you just look. Help them educate themselves on the process if necessary. </p>
<p>You should be proud of yourself. Good luck to you. </p>
<p>As an added bonus to this thread, I think I should follow up on how orientation went today.</p>
<p>Initial impression, the campus is a lot more prettier than I remember it being–I truly felt like a college kid there. It was just a one-day orientation session which means that I got there early in the morning and left for home later in the day. The staff was incredibly helpful and courteous and I don’t think I could ask for more knowledgeable people to assist me through everything. I’ll admit I was incredibly nervous going into such unfamiliar territory mostly by myself, but I relaxed more and more as the day went on. Eventually I began thinking, “Yeah. I think this is the place for me.” :)</p>
<p>But now to the bad stuff. We began building our schedules this afternoon and unfortunately there were almost no spots available for anything I truly needed, due to it being August already. I could only manage to scrape up 6 hours of classes I NEED. Everything else was closed. I couldn’t even register for 15 hours. Needless to say my schedule is just four classes for the whole semester amounting to 12 hours. So two classes are actually related to my major and two classes are random liberal arts classes because we couldn’t find anything else to put me in since I’m an incoming transfer with so many hours. Of course, there’ll be people who get dropped for non-payment but there are still more orientation sessions with more people who need classes just as much as I do, battling for those precious spots.</p>
<p>In regards to housing, I don’t think I’m getting anything on-campus. Reportedly, Texas Tech is currently experiencing the most enrollment they’ve ever had in their history and since freshmen are required to live on-campus, they get prioritized over transfer students. Thus, they’ve been highly suggesting that transfer students and anyone who doesn’t need to live in the dorms seek housing elsewhere. I did a little investigation on the apartments close to campus since many of them had representatives that were at the orientation fair this afternoon. And unfortunately they’re experiencing a high demand for housing as well. The representatives either told me they were absolutely full for the next year or were on the verge of being absolutely full.</p>
<p>Now, I want to clearly emphasize I’m not blaming Texas Tech for these things. In fact, I felt completely at home there and hope I can follow through with attending in the fall. But it puts me in a hard decision–do I want a schedule full of almost-useless classes where I’m wasting a semester of my 2-year scholarships? Or should I emergency last-resort to plan B where I switch universities? I have a few weeks to decide, but at this point, I’m engaged with following through and registered for mostly filler-classes and nowhere to live. Obviously, without saying much, I’ve got a lot of hard decisions to make in the coming weeks.</p>
<p>But once again, I would like to thank everyone for their support because without it, I would have never experienced such an inviting orientation experience.</p>
<p>I urge you to think of your non-major classes as something other than “filler.” That’s what education is: broad intellectual exploration, as well as depth. In addition, think about developing skills and knowledge that can help you in a potential career: research, writing, languages, and so forth.</p>
<p>What are your chances of getting the classes you need next semester? Is there some kind of housing exchange where people find roommates for off campus apartments?</p>
<p>If you have a couple of courses in your major that your really need, you may be able to have an advisor help you with that. Were you assigned an advisor that you can contact? Maybe see if they can do some kind of force-add type of thing for you. Good luck. I hope this works out for you.</p>
<p>If you can get 3310, that is probably the most important course from a prerequisite point of view. If you have had it already, you should have lots of choices – are the upper division math courses really that full?</p>
<p>Op,
About classes being full that you need…I will describe what worked for me at UCLA. I’m not sure if it will work at Texas tech but you should ask your advisors and profs.</p>
<p>At Ucla, many students start off in a class and then will drop it just before the drop deadline (say week 6 of a 10 week qtr, iirc), usually because they are not doing well in the class so they don’t want it to show up on their transcripts. So I would talk to prof at the beg of the qtr, find out if many people usually dropped the class. These were bigger premed sci classes, lower division . I would be on the Waitlist and would then attend every class and take the exams, periodically talking with the prof about my interest in finishing the class etc. then on week 6, when everyone started to drop the class, the prof would enroll me. I never did not get enrolled. But it took lots of faith and hard work without a guarantee of an outcome, but it did always work out.</p>
<p>This might not work in upper division or small class sizes or at Texas tech. But ask your advisors or profs to see if it would work.</p>
<p>Email the professors whose classes you’re interested in and indicate which classes you’ve already taken & grades you got. Say. you’re a math major and hope to go on to a ( masters, PhD … ) in. math. or explain what motion you fine especially interesting and hope to pursue. Start with Dear Professor and end with 'respectfully , ’ Ask whether you can enroll in their class. By the way if you hope to get a masters or PhD you’d need to learn French or Germa or Russian. Of the three French is the easiest but I doubt all three are full so you could take that for your 5th class.
What’s your schedule like ?
check out the Housing web page there should be a link to house shares /looking for roommates …</p>
Ask whether you can enroll in their class. By the way if you hope to get a masters or PhD you’d need to learn French or Germa or Russian. Of the three French is the easiest but I doubt all three are full so you could take that for your 5th class.