MODERATOR’S NOTE: Agreed - please get back to the original topic of the thread.
I wasn’t mature at 18, but necessity saved me. 18, with a single mother who was ill, no place to live, completely on my own. Eating was my first priority. I was a national champion in my sport in high school, so off to school on athletic scholarship. Slept on the locker room floor until the dorms opened up. My goal was merely to stay eligible under NCAA rules, but was sadly disabused of this notion by my tough academic advisor who told me with my academic credentials that a 3.0 was necessary to compete (and in my case, live and have a roof over my head). Not surprisingly, I went above that 3.0 quickly (the school is one of the two top 10 USNWR schools that give athletic scholarships). As far as the OP staying at a liberal arts college if failing to meet minimums for merit aid, that would be a disservice to the kid. If he fails to meet the standard, I would insist on him getting a job, only living at home for 90 days, and so on. By the way, internships were not as common in my day. I worked summers as a Teamster driving a forklift. My adult Teamster co-workers, all parents trying to strive for their kids and tough as nails (an understatement- I learned to keep my mouth shut often), would have given me untold amounts of grief had I not gone back to school and done well. Lots of good people around imposing necessity and accountability - while I am a big fan of self reliance, there were caring adults who saved me by not enabling irresponsible conduct.
Its curious, He don’t have ADHD to go to parties and the beach.?
The problem with him is that he knows that in his family they do not need the scholarship to pay for college.
So to be fair to the kid, who had shown some warning signs in high school and who, as a result may have had some parental oversight and structure, college is a different experience from high school.
In hs, classes meet daily and the workload is meted out in daily doses. Read 15 pages, answer questions 1-8 and listen to the teacher talk about it for 45 minutes. A bright kid with a good memory and some parental structure can do well with this.
In contrast, at college, student can miss lectures (which cover different material than the reading), get 100s of pages behind in the reading and feel like it’ll be okay because there are 4 weeks to catch up before the midterm and there are only 12-15 hours a week in which he is in class, so there’s plenty of time. Of course, friends and sports and all kinds of things are there to take up the time too, so that 4 weeks doesn’t get used as planned and maybe a few hundred more pages get added to the backlog. It takes self discipline to stay with the program and tune out the siren song of fun! It takes better study habits to know if you are mastering material without frequent chapter tests.
Choosing the beach over a final paper is an exceptionally poor choice, but the general underperformance isn’t shocking. College feels like it offers a lot of free time, but it’s not really free - it’s unstructured.
I love that the OP is trying to find some supports for her kid now so that he doesn’t go off the rails. A B- average is not a disaster. Losing a merit scholarship could be a disaster for many families but for his, it is not. All of us want our kids to excel in every realm while being happy, but that’s not reality. This kid is not prioritizing academics which is not that unusual (except on CC.) But he does need to do them better than he is. Glad he has a caring parent!
The LACs my daughters attend are a bit smaller and less selective than U of Richmond. However, I’m guessing the most important bit of advice that was communicated to us and our kids by teachers, faculty and other students alike was simple to state and easy to follow… go to class!
I was on board with letting OP’s S figure it out and offering appropriate support until he skipped the paper for the beach. That’s pretty willful in my book.
Lol, go to class and sit up front.
@CountingDown , I too would be nuts had my kid made this choice. But we don’t know if the prof agreed to the late paper and if so, if it happened before he left for the beach.
Personally, I never took an incomplete (although I handed in some substandard work because of procrastination), but I had friends (at a very selective school) who did this with some regularity. It’s bad practice for most things in life. Agreed!
What reasons did he give for skipping class, not turning in homework, and for going to the beach without turning in his final paper?
Losing the merit money would mean this family, with two other kids still in the pipeline for college, would have to take out loans. So yes, being full pay would be a big deal.
This kid needs a 3.0 - he’s known it since the beginning. He keeps making bad choices. There is no way his parents should feel any guilt for not letting him stay at this school if he doesn’t get it together,
@havenoidea , any word on what his cumulative GPA is after Spring semester?
I don’t think the student’s reasons for blowing off the paper and going to the beach are relevant. The external consequences are the same no matter what.
Sometimes a person who is in the midst of a stressful or demanding project just needs to take a break of some sort to clear their head. Maybe this student knew that the prof would be willing to grade a paper turned in late, and really felt that he could do a better job if he was not working under the pressure of the deadline; or maybe he realized he wasn’t going to meet the deadline in any case, so factored in his intent to request an extension. Maybe he didn’t think at all about the consequences and didn’t have a reason that could be articulated. No matter what – there is an assignment that is turned in late, a professor who is still willing to grade it and may or may not reduce the grade because of the missed deadline, and a grade in that course that is yet to come that may or may not impact the student’s GPA in a way that causes him to lose the scholarship.
The parents really shouldn’t put themselves in the position of being the arbiter of the student’s reasons. That just creates a whole other realm of opportunity for conflict with the parents. This is the student’s life, the student’s education, and the student’s responsibility. The more the parents inject themselves, the more mixed the message — the student might think that if he can convince his parents that he is trying really hard, they’ll replace the lost scholarship if it comes to that.
@calmom I don’t understand your logic at all. What matters most is the thought process of this developing mind, not simply the end result. And to suggest that his parents should play anything less than a significant role is just not realistic. Maybe that works for some people, but not many. 18 year olds aren’t done learning from their parents, nor should they be IMHO.
@calmom I second not getting your logic. If someone else is financing your education, you have a responsibility to that person. Yes, his education, responsibilities, life etc, but he isn’t respecting the very people who are making this experience possible.
Some of your description reminds me so much of my son, though he just finished high school so we don’t know yet how he will do with college. He wasn’t all that outgoing or popular in the junior high years but in the last couple of years of high school he slimmed back up, became much more social and seemed to fit in. It looks like he is never going to be a big guy and I’m glad he came out of his shell, but for the last year it seems that all he can think about is hanging out with friends or doing something fun. He still had good grades, other than his B in annual staff because he wouldn’t get up and go to class, but he has managed to charm the teachers and get by with being late and turning things in late. He finished with I think a 95 average for high school, but rarely put in a lot of effort.
We are a $0 EFC family and he knows that if he loses his scholarships that there is no one to bail him out, but like OP’s son often thinks it will be fine or that he put things off and still get by. I really hope that he settles down and learns to prioritize when he starts college in the fall, otherwise he will be looking for someway to support himself.
It’s funny to me so many posters without any medical training want to diagnose the OP’s son based on a forum post, and this is after the OP son’s already had a full neuropsych evaluation. If the OP’s son had ADD/ADHD or the more nebulous executive function disorders, what would that change? Should the son go on prescription meds? A label without a solution isn’t very useful.
Agreed. I don’t think ADHD meds help anyone choose the course paper rather than the beach.
I was amused that my top 1% of his high school class, Deans list freshman year, actually did learn to sluff off stuff he didn’t want to do. I found in his papers a history essay that had this comment, “This would have been an A paper if you had turned it in on time.” He got a B-. He’s been working at Google since he graduated, so obviously, it didn’t hurt him too much to prioritize what was important to him at the time. I also vividly remember my SIL making a gorgeous taffetta dress one weekend when she should have been writing a paper. She’d never written an essay in high school and she was really floundering in the class. So she just went into denial mode. She ended up taking some time off taking classes at the U. of Florida and went back to Harvard after a couple of years off and did fine.
I can’t tell if the OP’s son is just immature, subject to panic attacks or has ADHD. I think a second opinion is warrented, but I also think, I’d let him have another semester, but make it clear what the expectations are.
I suspect the difference, @mathmom, was that your Google son was prioritizing computer science or a similar skill over his history paper, not a beach trip or frat party. I have yet to find an employer who appreciates the prioritization of parties over work, but if you find one, pass along the name-I am sure there is much interest!
Can’t argue there roycroftmom. I never saw his grades, though he did communicate them verbally. But it was interesting to see that a kid who got A’s in his sleep in high school did not continue on that path in college.