Does he know how to sift through information to determine the key points from insignificant details? If he is not used to having to discern information independently (used to being provided study guides highlighting all necessary information or classrooms moving at a slow speed where he just mastered everything, etc) he might be in information overload and paralyzed by his inability to to find what is key.
If he is open to suggestions, one that might help is outlining his textbook chpts. Outlining forces discerning key points and ultimately provides a great study tool.
@curiousmother yes it is a slippery slope to helicopter parenting. Worst case scenario…the student feels failure and won’t react in a positive way to ask for help. The grades slip, the understanding of concepts collapses, and the student stops going to classes. Afraid to admit failure, student doesn’t tell parents and the semester ends with all D’s and F’s and student goes on probation. Depending on the student/parent relationship, the student might even come back for spring semester and repeat.
If I am paying for tuition while my child is paralyzed at school, I would want to step in and get him help. Why put the child through months of agony if there is a mental issue that needs to be addressed?
We have no clue what is really going on from one snippet of one conversation posted the the OP. A phone call to persuade student to go to the tutoring center on campus may be all the parent needs to do to get child reengaged in the learning process.
But if the child has anxiety issues and is paralyzed with fear, it could easily turn into sitting in his dorm room alone for the semester and letting the world pass him by. Parent needs to access his mental condition and they are more in tune to his need for intervention.
I was going to suggest the pomodoro method. I had the same problem that others have had, not being challenged until very late in life, and not having any study skills. I still don’t have good work habit, and procrastination is a problem for me. The pomodoro method is my best tool. I set the timer on my phone for 30 minutes, I start working, and often by the time the alarm goes off, I’m immersed in what I’m doing and don’t want to stop.
My oldest had a particularly insightful baseball coach who worked with him on goal setting, a model I used for our two younger kids and has proved invaluable for organizing the complexity of a heavy academic load.
Does your son have a perfectionist streak about him? That personality type often gets “stuck” until last minute effort is required. They also tend to have multiple mental task lists floating around in their heads. That is where a good technique like Pomodoro or Getting Things Done helps.
A goal needs to be realistic, measurable, verifiable, have a deadline, and, most importantly, must be written down. These would include daily, weekly, monthly, and, for academics, semester-long goals. A typical to-do list ends up being a mishmash of indefinitely planned, unrealistic and unverifiable things like “call Mom”, “get straight As”, “make some new friends”,and “do all my homework”. These would be replaced by goals that meet the criteria: on the daily list would be “read Physics chapters by 2 pm” and “call Mom between 7 and 8 pm”. The weekly might say “invite somebody new to our Saturday event by Wednesday”. The semester goal might be changed to “no final grades lower than a B”.
Organization takes a smart kid and turns him into a superstar. In my business setting (defense and aerospace manufacturing) the employees who can handle multiple projects and stay on schedule are valued and promoted rapidly, while the ones who “lose” emails and miss deadlines do not last.
Like @BeeDAre, when I was in college, I found it much easier to study in a noisy crowded area. I could not stand the library! The silence drove me to distraction.
So while all my friends were in the library, I was in the cafeteria. If it was too quiet there, I would put on some headphones and play music.
My friend’s nephew was having a heck of a time in the library studying and I told her to suggest moving somewhere else. He found it did help.
Might not be the solution for OP’s son, but might be worth trying. I worry about my son as well. He waits until the last minute, easy to do in HS, not so much in college. I am waiting to see what his grades end up this semester
Ditch the laptop - it is too easy to get distracted. Take one book, notepaper, etc., and focus on it.
As someone else said, start small. Study for 15 quality minutes, and then reward yourself with 10 mins of surfing (on the phone, if the laptop is at home). Then repeat.
Make sure you are not exhausted when you come to study. Do it at a time of day when you are fresh.
"Everything is “so boring.” - Based on this, my conclusion is that your S. signed up for the wrong classes. The academic level at college is so much higher than in HS, kids around my D. who did not realize that they need to step up, got derailed in the very first semester of the freshman year, they had to switch to other majors. I am talking about HS valedictorians here at Honors college. D. was shocked by the gap in academic level between HS and her state public college. There was no time to be bored, she had to go over material in her head while walking from class to class, the time was stretched to the limits, she had to drop participation in the club sport, something that she was engaged since she was 5 y o There was simply not enough time.
D. had to work very very hard at her private HS that happened to be #2 among privates in our state. But she had to work much harder at college.
I’ve read the comments you got here, and there are some really good solutions. However, battling motivation issues with students, in my experience, requires a more personal approach with each student. I have seen my students go through this same experience time and again, and it could be due to any number of things. Let me ask some things first:
Does your son have any friends who take the same classes as he?
Is it truly because he’s not motivated that he doesn’t study, or is it because he can’t focus because there are other things on his mind, such as a girlfriend he left behind?
Is he in classes that have no bearing towards his major?
Is he an introvert or an extrovert?
I’m asking these things so that I can give you a more tailored answer. The reality is that midsemester blues could play a part, but also maybe a realization that he is not one of the “better” students anymore, particularly if he was a really good student in HS. Or it could be because he’s just more content doing things with his friends now that he has this new-found freedom, and his mind drifts towards the more “fun” side of college.
Please do not get me wrong, all these are not accusatory. Lack of motivation could come from a number of factors, all working “against” your son’s will to study, so one needs to consider all of the factors involved.
The tutoring center can/should be able to help with teaching correct study habits, but if he is not motivated to study because he is overwhelmed, the tutoring center may make him feel that he does not have time to catch up, because he did not do all the “correct” things that he will learn. Something like this could even exacerbate the problem.
What I usually do with my students is first get them to create a weekly plan for all of their activities, then explain to them exactly how they should approach the concept of studying, and then teaching them study habits. And I have found that getting students motivated is really a one-to-one process between professor and student, where the professor tries to figure out what “buttons” motivate each student.
You’re getting some good advice about goal setting, some organization- and getting campus support. It’s really right to try these things. I hope OP responds with some info about the major, how important these first courses really are to the major, etc. And if he is actually submitting assignments or completely adrift.
I think you have to learn whether he’s truly Bored with a capital B and should aim for different courses next semester, closer to his interests. Or whether what bores him is needing to learn certain details and present them in specific ways, so he can get good grades, that game, conforming to those expectations. (Or yes, other adjustments some mentioned.)
Some kids do better when they learn to look for what is interesting in the material, rather than setting grade expectations.
This is how depression looked in my son. He would sit over an open textbook for hours and get nothing done. It wasn’t that he had no idea how to do it, he just stopped caring.