Drop-outs, flunk-outs, burn-outs: What to do when things don't go according to plan?

Parents Forum
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<p>I am all grown up with children of my own. When I was in college, I dropped out after 1 1/2 years. At the risk of sounding smug, I am very intelligent and was known as a “smart kid”. I was just young (started college at 17) and confused. I didn’t know what I wanted to “be.” My older sister had progressed straight-line through 4 years + graduate school. Inside, I felt a little bit like a failure. I “dropped out” and got a full-time job. I worked for 6 years, being promoted as fast, and to the limit I could, with no degree. This opened my eyes, and I was able to learn about the working world and what I was interested in as an adult. I took advantage of “tuition reimbursement” to take 2 classes a semester. Eventually I quit and finished my degree at 26. My parents were concerned & confused, but supported my decisions 100%. Again at the risk of sounding smug - I am fulfilled/successful, happy, love my career, and earn a wonderful living. </p>

<p>Life is really a winding path. Don’t be afraid of twists or turns or bumps or even bruises. As long as your child is not migrating toward trouble - Let them develop on their own, while you infuse as much guidance, wisdom, love and advice into the process as you can.</p>

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<p>D is currently on hiatus from school. Her current plan is to work for a while and start taking classes at a community college in January. There are a few expenses that we still pay, but for the most part she is on her own, though living primarily with her BF’s family. I wish they wouldn’t do that, but have no say in the matter. Time will tell whether she goes back to school and we start providing more financial support, or she chooses to go out on her own without our financial support.</p>

<p>I will say that since this experience started, several successful adults that I know have admitted that they took time off before completing their degree.</p>

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<p>Northstarmom-That’s reallly something about your son. It’s so hard to watch kids struggle like that. I wonder if it’s worse when you only have one (like us)-no diversification :slight_smile: There’s definitely a tricky line to walk between encouraging and supporting and creating unbelievable pressure. We’re trying to walk it as best we can.</p>

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<p>One of my good friends was an all-star in high school. 4.0 GPA, 1600 SAT, took over 10 AP classes, and got fantastic scholarships to the schools people here on CC like to name. Upon arriving in college they quickly fell into a slump, became an alcoholic, and wound up in rehab a number of times. They were kicked out of the school, and even failed to finish some community college courses they enrolled in. Eventually they moved in with their mom and worked doing minimum wage labor. They hated every moment of it, so after a few months of working, they went back to community college. Had some fantastic teachers, got remotivated to learn, eventually transferred into the state flagship, and graduated with over a 3.5 GPA (not including their initial school). Now they’re working as an engineer and making about three times a year what they had been two years ago.</p>

<p>Come to think of it, another one of my friends had a similar story except in India. He dropped out of school due to alcoholism, and, a few years later, returned. Now he’s one of my classmates here at Caltech as a grad student.</p>

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<p>DH dropped out of college after a year and spent a year at home hanging out on the couch, before moving to a new city and sharing a decrepit room in a derelict house with a friend. I met him soon after, when he was working at a grocery store as a produce washer, and taking classes at the local community college. We moved in with housemates, got married, had baby, lived the frugal life in shared housing… DH graduated with undergraduate degree when baby was about a year old. We both ended up in grad school (DS was born during that time) and things worked out just fine. I know that, at the time, DH’s parents worried that he was wasting his life and would spend the rest of it mooching at home. Luckily, they were wrong! :slight_smile: (It must have been the good influence of a strong young lady that made all the difference… ;)</p>

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<p>I’ve told this story before but it bears retelling. My neighbors left the whole SAT/ACT/ college application process up to their son his senior year. He did nothing. They told us they thought he’d enroll in the local CC. As the summer wore on, he got up enough nerve to tell them that what he really wanted to do was to cut hair. His good ol’ boy dad about had a cow, but the kid enrolled in a local cosmetology school and loved it. It’s funny to see the family together because the parents are about as Texas as Texas can be (boots, pick up truck) and the son wears skinny jeans and has trendy highly highlighted hair…but they were accepting of his plans to do something other than a four year college.</p>

<p>But then for some folks, things just don’t click. Or maybe they don’t have any ambition. A friend of mine in HS was a couple of steps up from me in wealth and sophistication. She had seen Broadway shows. She subscribed to the New Yorker. She went to a large out of state school (hardly anyone went out of state), majored in Industrial Psychology (I’d even never heard of that) and her dad bought a condo at the school for her to live in (once again, impressive to me.) She didn’t finish school and moved back home. All these years later (she’s 50) she’s still single, still living at home. My mom sees her all the time working as a grocery store cashier. No idea what happened there. The person who always made me feel like a bumpkin has spent her life as a small town grocery store cashier. Maybe she doesn’t need the money and is content. Who knows.</p>

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<p>As the statistics show, and the many posters here anecdotally confirm, it’s not an unusual path. All new college students hit bumps in the road, but not all are ready to deal with them. I was one of those academic superstars who got derailed by immaturity, alcohol, and the like, and I ended up dropping out and joining the military (Bluto’s 7 years down the tube had nothing on me). Four loooong years later, I was readmitted to the same school and (surprise) did much better (though I completed a degree I’d come to realize wasn’t a perfect fit).</p>

<p>We hope our kids are ready for college, but if they aren’t, there are other less linear paths to the same or similar places. Once you get past the initial disappointment, the wakeup call forces you to take action and, in the process, grow up. That’s not a bad thing regardless of the path taken.</p>

<p>missypie, I’m in a similar boat as you, sending a rising college freshman with Asperger’s off to school in less than a month:eek:. The roadblocks are a little different and the prognosis more uncertain, but it sounds like you have a great attitude about accepting the way things are. I hope both of us are able to give the support our sons need and help them make the most of their abilities, same as any parent. Best of luck to you!</p>

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<p>It’s a tough call to make, and it differs from child to child, family to family, situation to situation. My son was put on academic probation one term with a ridiculously low gpa. Most schools would have kicked him out. Clearly he did not bother to do any school work that term. Most advice we read and got said to cut to the support. We did not. We had a talk, and basically gave it one more semester. He pulled things together and has now graduated on a 4 year schedule. It was the least disruptive route after what had happened. Clearly, we were risking throwing away another semester’s worth of money, but I felt it was worth a try, and it worked. Many times, it does not.</p>

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<p>S2 had a terrible first semester…less than 1.0, was put on probation. He had lost two good friends in a car wreck just a month before college started. With that in mind, we decided to give him a second chance, holding our breath the whole time. </p>

<p>He recovered and did much better in Spring, got off probation. He stayed for summer sch. this summer. First session…got a B. Second session exam tomorrow…fingers crossed.</p>

<p>We hope he’s on the right track now.
If he goes off track again, it will be up to him which way to go.</p>

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<p>A quick note re the students with Asperger’s - a dean at DS’s college told us about AHEADD, an organization at several locations specifically designed to work with college students with autism and other developmental difficulties. It is fairly expensive, but may provide the support some students need.</p>

<p>And not to get too Ann Landers or Dear Abby-ish, but counseling could be a help for some of the students to help them understand why they are sabotaging themselves. DS has been high stress all along, then junior year had a great semester followed by a terrible one. Over the summer he’s been seeing a counselor who administered a personality test. We’ve all learned a lot about why he was having some of the problems. It’s not a solution, but it was very eye-opening to recognize that some of his difficulties are just “hard-wired” into his personality. We used to think if he could just understand why he had issues, he could overcome them. Now we understand it’s a matter of behavior modification, and something he will have to deal with indefinitely.</p>

<p>So we had thought of DS taking a year off, but the problems are internal, not external, and will have to be dealt with whatever he does. He is determined to manage the year successfully; we will be monitoring closely. He had a full time internship this summer and had been taking an online course in his major field (in a subject not offered by his college). It will be scary heading into senior year knowing that any more crash and burn would be majorly problematic. Hopefully continuing counseling, (meds), and support will help him stay on his target path.</p>

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<p>Missypie & knowitsome, here’s a third mom sending off a rising freshman with Asperger’s. It’s scary. As my son will be far away, we’re trying to arrange extra local support for him: coaching, maybe therapy. I hope he’ll succeed, but know he’ll certainly encounter roadblocks and there’s a pretty big chance he won’t make it.</p>

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<p>For those of you with Aspie kids, there’s a great DVD called “Asperger Syndrome: Transition to College and Work.” <a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Asperger-Syndrome-Transition-College-Work/dp/B000QBW8ZS[/url]”>www.amazon.com/Asperger-Syndrome-Transition-College-Work/dp/B000QBW8ZS</a> </p>

<p>It’s part of a whole series by Coulter Video (<a href=“http://www.coultervideo.com%5B/url%5D)–very”>www.coultervideo.com)–very</a> entertaining and informative. My S really enjoyed the one about manners and social skills.</p>

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<p>We were holding our breath, particularly with D because she hit many roadblocks in HS & then again in CC. She’s gotten stronger from each of them and is back on track at the U she wants to attend. She is taking summer school at flagship U so she will get more of her requirements out of the way. We have always helped her explore the options available to her and she has made choices. </p>

<p>CC was really not what she or we had intended or envisioned but it really was a very good step along her path. There are a lot of wonderful teachers and programs there and it’s not given nearly enough credit for all it offers to our community. </p>

<p>There are a great many paths and lots of our kids won’t go down the predicted paths, which is why Us prefer to give 6 year matriculation rates and even those are far from 100% at most schools. I agree that supporting our kids and helping them explore options that are available helps allows them to make choices that will work for them. Some of the most determined kids have taken breaks during their formal education and come back more motivated than ever with a better idea of what they’re really interested in and what a degree can and can’t do.</p>

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<p>A twist on the overall theme here: my friend’s son will be graduating this fall (hopefully) from a middle-of-the road private school with a liberal arts degree and a 2.3 GPA. This kid made his way through school partying while playing a varsity sport. My friend figures she paid out around $125,000 for his education, in addition to a partial scholarship (which he lost part way through). </p>

<p>She was terrified that if she didn’t allow him to continue – despite his unimpressive record – that he would drop out, never get back on track, and never get the degree. Looking back now, she realizes that that was a disservice to both of them. She is out the money, and he has no job prospects or even, really, a decent education. Getting a master’s in teaching, which is a career path he considered at one point, is probably not achievable since he won’t get into a program with that GPA.</p>

<p>If she had a “do-over,” she would have pulled him out after freshman year and had him go to the local community college or 4-year school as a commuter (maybe part-time school and part-time job) until he showed some indication that he was taking academics seriously.</p>

<p>The lesson is that there are worse things than having a kid leave college when he isn’t really ready to be there.</p>

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<p>There are worse things than having a kid leave college, but it is also a good thing when they at least have that degree so when they are done doing those worse things they can pick up from there. </p>

<p>I know a number of people, myself included who were able to go back to school, take certain courses and excell, thereby neutralizing a lackluster or downright bad college transcript. In my case, I got into some great law schools with a terrible gpa from UG but with straight A’s in some relevant courses while working.</p>

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<p>cptofthehouse -</p>

<p>was this a recent experience for you? I mean, taking the additional courses and then going (I presume) to law school?</p>

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<p>delamer,</p>

<p>That’s a great cautionary tale. But how do you know when you’re throwing good money after bad and when you’re doing your best to keep the person on track.</p>

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<p>I’m yet just a young grad student, no wife or children etc., but I’ll try to give my contributions here. Advance knowledge of whether one is just going through hard times and needs help to recover or one’s really going to drop out would be valuable knowledge, if it were possible to get.</p>

<p>I believe that best opportunities for parents to give help in the process happen BEFORE or IMEDIATELLY AFTER sending their ‘offspring’ to college. By sophomore year, some kids are college-bound, show willingness to attend, and are taking necessary steps on their own to achieve such goal. I’m afraid minority of HS students check these 3 boxes. Here are some suggestions:</p>

<p>1) Give kids a clear option of taking a gap year after HS without losing parental financial support to attend college if they later decide to do so. By gap year I don’t necessarily mean one 30K program to travel around the World and attend 2 language schools, learn to surf, dive and climb etc. If you can afford, let kid live alone, in other city if she/he wants to, and support partially his/her expenses so kid can explore interesting activities to get a grip of life and how college can help him/her. I’ve met way too many peers who were in college because their choices were “go college or move out and get a job”. A more flexible approach could benefit parents and students WHILE saving a lot of money if it prevents a later “derailment” on college career, with no degree and a lot of debt.
2) If kid is, or seems to be, prone to party, parents may be SURE that there is high probability kid is choosing college focusing on its party scene above everything else. Excessive partying can kill anyone’s college career, but what I most saw was freshmen losing their way on first 3/4 weeks, then suffering for having lost the pace, and not getting up to schedule again. It’s usually not a linear problem (one partying hard throughout the semester), but indeed freshman kid going to a frat party whose sponsors promoted it as “too cool to be missed”, then drinking and missing next morning class, then lagging behind on assignments, then feeling lost in classes and going to more parties than originally intended to ‘cool off’. Talk seriously with party-prone kids about it. Call them each other day on first weeks. I’ve known more than one classmate who is probably angry at her parents because they backed off after dropping her for the sake of being not helicopter-ish. Do everything reasonable, according to kid’s background and profile, to help them survive first weeks, even if it means each other day morning calls as an indirect deterrence of excessive partying. If one is not responsible on HS, being dropped off for college and forgot will not improve immediately the situation, it will make it worse.</p>

<p>3) Tackle senioritis seriously. “Academic-wise”, college will be very demanding and everything a freshman doesn’t need is a year of slack-acceptance from parents before enrolling. The senioritis underlaying’s mentality of “it’s okay to be mediocre” might hit back hard when freshman can no longer be a slacker academically. If one learns how not to behave in senior HS year regarding acamedic responsibilities, inertia will catch on later. Parents are very influential on teenagers: if a HS senior learns that “it’s ok to slack and play during HS senior year because I’m a senior just once and you’ll have all my life to sweat and work later”, it’s reasonable to expect that such a kid could think “it’s ok not to take so seriously freshman year, I’m fresham in college just once…”.</p>

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<p>I don’t think it’s that rare that students end up dropping out, flunking out or burning out. Let’s add the kids who don’t like their schools and come back home instead of immediately transferring.</p>

<p>In each of my kids’ high school classes, there have been some kids who end up coming home. Only their family knows the reason (financial, academic, etc.), but they show up working at local stores or running into people in the grocery store, or the kids keep track of each other on Facebook. Sometimes they end up enrolled in classes in CC or other local colleges, sometimes they enroll in the military and sometimes they just get jobs “while they figure out what to do.” Two have gone to work for family businesses. My kids have stayed in touch with some of them. It’s too early to know what they’re going to turn out doing for life, or if they will ever get that college degree or not. As some have already posted, though, the lack of a college degree does not mean a lack of success in life. This is sometimes harder for parents (particularly CC parents) to understand and accept than it is for the student to figure out.</p>

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<p>(cont…)</p>

<p>4) IMO, there is an extremely tricky situation when it comes to choice of major and professional career considerations and counseling: college counseling and academic advising (except, probably, for SLAC) are way more focused on what you will study than in what you do you want to do for a living. For the sake of (internal) politic correctness, academic counseling often does not focus on practical and professional long-term implications of major(s) choice. If a student is entering college without a somewhat clear career goal (which is natural), there’s a risk that once enrolled he/she will choose majors much more based in what he/she wants to study instead of what he/she wants to work in, because by that time student will have far more data and evidence to make informed decisions based on study-like aspects of major than on career-like ones. If you have good communication with your children, you can really help them at this point.</p>

<p>5) Play, to an extent, the “devil’s advocate” regarding criteria your kids is using to identify and select college matches. College recruitment officers are specialists in increasing their appeal to prospective students, sometimes exaggerating certain features and characteristics to increase the class size. HS students probably never made complex, non zero-sum decisions like which college they should attend. Help them organizing their thoughts and honestly question them, especially when a kid falls in love with a given college: the most intangible the factors that attracted freshman there, the greater risk that freshman can be disappointed by inflated, misguided or misleading expectations he/she build up before choosing that specific institution.</p>