My parents have always given me a hard time with school but this yesr they decided to up their game. I am a third year computer science student and I failed two classes last semester(first time). It doesn’t put me behind schedual but my parents threatened to not let me go back and kick me out of the house. Normally I would simply aply for a student loan and finish. The problem is I don’t qualify for one because my family is too rich to qualify for some and they won’t co sign for any of the others. They blame it on video games but I blame it on the fact that student leadership took up ALL my time(not even work the 5k it saved me). I spent a total of 87 hours on video games the entire semester. (Including breaks). They told me that I was incompitant and under developed. Also they told me that I was killing the relationship(yep that’s right, me). Every time I tried to convince them of the true problem, they got more angry and said that video game are destroying peoples lives and that I was addicted, even though no one else saw it. I had to give games up to prevent delaying my college education by years. My parents haven’t fought me since I gave them up, but it really angers me that I had to entirly give up on something that I enjoy, because my parents don’t know me. As far as I am concerned they have never even tried to get to know me. I thought college was going to be the end of their over protective nonsense but I guess I have to wait another year.
If you have parents like this, I would advise you to convince them to let you take a loan at the begining so you don’t have to deal with them critiquing your every action and take years of emotional damage.
P.S I know I am lucky to have my parents supporting me in college. If I wanted someone to tell me I am ungrateful I would get my parents to. Also I wrote this on my phone so have mercy on my gramer.
You failed 2 classes, They are paying. If you aren’t addicted, prove it by giving them up until you graduate. When you are earning your own way, then do as you like. And cut back in the student leadership (quit if you have to). Any kid who fails classes is likely to get big time grief from their parents. Yours sound pretty normal to me.
87 hours in an entire semester including break is basically nothing, that’s like under 5 hours a week. As long as this is true (I guess @CSIsTheWay is using Steam), you’re obviously not addicted to video games.
People who’ve never played video games sometimes like to just put the blame on something - anything - and right now the big hype is video games.
Try not to take what your parents say to heart. Everyone wants a well-rounded genius child, but nobody can live up to that standard. Put your classes as top priority and make sure you at least pass all of them (ofc aim for those A’s, but try to pass all of them). Make use of your university’s resources, like any study groups and tutors, and if you can, talk to your professors and ask them questions.
It’s okay to vent! I’m sure your university will have staff who help students with similar situations to yours. You can always get help from somebody - staff, friends, classmates, even the professors and teaching assistants. Next semester will be better
5 hours more a week could have probably resulted in passing at least one class. I mean, I like video games myself. But adults often have to skip things that are fun to get their work done. I rarely play for that reason.
@intparent How much time do we really spend working/studying, though? If we take a normal, average American student, we could split their daily time like this:
8 hours sleeping
10 mins showering/drying
10 mins getting prepared in the morning
30 mins in transit (assuming they’re in a dorm and walking everywhere)
3 hours in classes (I’m taking this from the average at my uni)
3 * 15 = 45 mins eating (assuming 3 meals a day and no snacks)
5 mins brushing teeth (2*2 plus extra b/c you have to rinse etc.)
10 mins toilet
2 hours 40 minutes studying (taken from this article http://college.usatoday.com/2014/08/18/how-much-do-you-study-apparently-17-hours-a-week-is-the-norm/)
That leaves 8 hours 30 minutes left for other things. Since that schedule above might be minimal for some or most people, we could say that people spend 2 hours socialising, 1 hour relaxing, an extra hour sleeping, an extra 30 minutes in commute (maybe you live in a dorm far away or your classes are all far apart), and an extra hour studying. Note how I’m being quite liberal with the time spent socialising and relaxing here, and I doubt many college students sleep for 9 hours a day. That brings us to three hours to spare.
5 hours of games per week = 43 minutes per day on average.
So now it’s 2 hours 17 minutes per day left over. If we spend this remaining time studying, we will be studying an average of 5 hours and 57 minutes of studying per day. So if we don’t play video games at all, that’s 5 hours and 14 minutes on average per day of studying - still a heck of a lot of studying.
Obviously video games aren’t the time sink here, and in fact more time studying does not necessarily equal better grades. So I would say that the problem is one of the following:
He doesn’t have enough time to study. Since video games aren’t the time sink, something else is. It could be transportation. It could be socialisation. It could be the leadership things he does, or maybe when he’s studying, he’s actually spending a lot of time doing other things, e.g. daydreaming, social media, doodling, etc.
The classes are just too difficult for him. This doesn’t mean he’s unintelligent, often people are very good in one subject but not so good in another. He might just have to talk to his professors or college advisor about it (but he did say that those failed classes doesn’t put him behind schedule) or study smarter instead of longer.
Not YOUR decision to devote too much of your time to student government??
You’re a Junior in college-- time to start taking responsibility for your actions.
And “your family” makes too much money for a loan… so this is their fault? How much are you making at your part time job?
As far as loans you can get without your parent’s help: I believe it’s limited to ballpark $5500 a year. So, with a part time job, you could afford community college, but that won’t get you past your Associate’s Degree.
At the end of the day, your education is YOUR responsibility. You failed two classes-- funny, you barely mentioned them. What did you do to prevent the failures? Were you in study groups? Did you go to office hours for extra help? I can absolutely see failing a class if the material is simply too hard. But failing two classes the same semester seems to indicate a problem-- and it’s not with your parents. Should you consider changing majors-- are you simply in over your head academically?
Bottom line: this is your education. Stop blaming your parents and start to figure out how you’re going to get a college degree.
@SpicyRamen, my youngest went to a very hard college in a tough major. She studied like crazy to avoid failing classes – and managed to graduate without ever dropping or failing a class. For her it was a matter of priorities. She did drop almost all ECs for her first couple of years. It wasn’t what she planned originally, but she did what she had to. The OP has to decide – is he up to doing the work in his major or not? Is getting his degree and good enough grades to be self supporting afterwards his priority, or not?
87 hours on videogames during a semester?? That’s more than two solid workweeks, which is what people out of school in white collar jobs typically get for vacation in a year. That is indeed a problem, and the proof is in your grades. You need to dedicate that time to studying and getting your grades up. If you’re not addicted, as a previous poster said, give it up, cold turkey. If you are addicted, give it up, cold turkey. And once you get your grades up, do yourself a favor and don’t go back to playing videogames–read a book or engage in some social interaction.
If OP is substituting video games for things like television, then you guys are panicking over nothing. How many hours a week did the leadership position take?
87 hours in a semester is nothing, especially since it includes breaks. He could have easily put 50 of those hours in over winter break we have no idea. People are acting like this is a huge deal, add up the time you spend on here, browsing the internet, or watching tv each week.
It doesn’t really matter what playing video games substitutes for. The OP has flunked two classes and the parents are understandably upset and asking the OP to make some changes. Video games are low hanging fruit.
As I understand it the problem is that @CSIsTheWay wants to get a $5,000 loan instead of doing a job (student leadership) that pays $5,000, but the parents are resistant. I can understand why giving up the job might make sense but from the OP it sounds like CSIsTheWay wants to give up the job instead of giving up video games.
If the student leadership job is interfering with the OP’s ability to pass classes, perhaps the parents would be more comfortable with a compromise-give up both video games and the job.
@intparent I wasn’t saying that people shouldn’t sort their priorities, I was saying that video gaming isn’t his biggest problem. It’s 5 hours a week on average, which is on average 43 minutes per day.
The 5 hours per week (or less, since he would probably be playing more video games during the break than during the semester) hardly makes a change. He would definitely have to target something else. Maybe he has depression or anxiety and should seek help, maybe the classes are just too hard, maybe he’s spending too much time doing leadership activities, or maybe he needs to learn how to study better. Whatever it is, there are a lot of things to look at before looking at video games.
“I need to lose weight but I don’t seem to be able to. I only eat one brownie a day, so that’s not it. I know I need to exercise more but that won’t be enough. Perhaps I have a thyroid condition. Maybe I’m just genetically predisposed toward weight gain, but no matter what I’m not giving up my brownies!”
@Sue22 a brownie is roughly 460 calories for a regular-sized piece, which is 23% of an average person’s diet per day (2000 calorie average).
43 minutes of video gaming per day is about 3% of the day’s time, so for your metaphor it’s more like blaming weight gain on eating a food that are 60 calories (which is 3% of an average 2000 calorie diet). Here’s a list of foods that are 60 calories:
1 cup of grapes
almost one Werther’s Original caramel candies
1 Tablespoon of Nerds
4 shrimps
1 cup of sliced apple
3 Hershey’s Kisses
So if we rephrase part of your last comment with an accurate representation, it would be something like this:
“I need to lose weight but I don’t seem to be able to. I only eat one cup of grapes a day, so that’s not it.”
Note: The time equivalent of one brownie per day in this case would be playing video games for 5 and a half hours per day.
@intparent If too much time spent on ECs is the problem, then yes, he should drop or diminish the amount of time spent on ECs. But we don’t have enough information here to know what the problem is exactly. Most likely the problem will be a combination of many things, such as (but not necessarily) ECs, stress, concentration, and study skills.
But video gaming isn’t the biggest problem here.
Thousands of people are discriminated against because they play video games, myself included. It’s the first thing that a lot of people pick on. When writing was invented, people acted in a similar way. New things are scary, but not necessarily bad.
Should people of colour should not protest too much, too? What about people who are discriminated against because of their different sexual orientations, their gender, their clothing choice? Video gaming isn’t as important as those issues, but it’s still something that a lot of people hide because they are discriminated against.
It’s okay to admit defeat or to admit that you’ve changed your mind on something, but it’s not okay to tell people to not speak out. That’s one great thing you learn in university.
