Help after a terrible 1st semester

@dancers22 I feel your pain. You are not alone! We were shocked to learn of our S’s first grades, not bad enough to retake/be on probation, just bad enough to ruin gpa for quite a while and lose his scholarship if not pulled up. It’s very upsetting.

May I suggest that you take a look at a book I found - Cal Newport, How to Become a straight A student in College. I’m sure each kid’s reason for not doing well is different, but this book apparently has detailed plans for every day scheduling of study time and how to study well. I only watched a short video on it, but we are requiring that our son read it and implement a schedule based on it as part of his plan to properly manage college. It might be helpful in your child’s improvement plan.

Just agreeing with the approach of the dorm room being for relaxing and sleeping, not studying. Some kids want some distraction while working, so the main floor of the library, which is often the “talking permitted” floor, may work. Other kids need complete quiet and so move up library levels to the ultra quiet space. My own kid tends to work with friends in empty academic classrooms at night since he says even the library can be too social.

The dorm room – whether first year double or now in a multi-person suite – never worked for study space, just too many distractions beyond his control.

Putting on my former RA hat: The problem with studying in the library and only using the room for sleeping is that if the roommates are partying til 2 am, DC is still not going to get enough sleep. I would push for a single or a quiet roommate who shares common work/sleep schedules. Remove the biggest/easiest obstacle to DC being able to get the other good habits and skills together. Roommates are not going to quit partying because DC got poor grades and needs to change habits.

@countingdown – agree that a room change is preferable as the roommates are not likely to change their actions.

He needs a single room. Get a professional to say that. A plan to study outside the room is not going to solve the problem.