<p>It seems like your son is trying too hard. I know that sounds bad, but students can’t take college too seriously. They’ll burnout. Hard.</p>
<p>This will sound counterintuitive, but try suggesting that he sets a limit on the amount of time he spends on non-graded work, sticks to it, and spends some time relieving stress when he’s not doing academics.</p>
<p>Just talked with him tonight. He finally got some sleep last night and sounded much better. His program will require a lot of work, but not necessarily more work than other programs. My youngest daughter was an engineering student and I well remember her phone calls:) He probably is trying too hard, doesn’t like to not succeed and hasn’t figured out that college is not like high school. Wasn’t a great time manager in high school. He could get by without studying too much, so he told me that he didn’t do any work at all over the weekend and then ended up cramming and staying up for three nights straight trying to get caught up. I think he just got his first lesson that he may have to do things a little different and not procrastinate:) Thanks for all the advice and here’s to hoping all of our kiddos have a great year!</p>
<p>it’s funny how college teaches all kinds of lessons, isn’t it? laserp, your kid just taught himself a great lesson…and he is going to do just fine!</p>
<p>Thanks for the encouragement! Hope your right:)</p>
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<p>While there’s something to be said for learning how to study/perform assigned readings more efficiently*, trying to skip some readings…especially in a slapdash noncritical manner isn’t a good idea. </p>
<p>That is…unless you don’t care about doing poorly/failing a midterm or failing to comprehend a critical theoretical point from the readings in a research paper needed to complete the critical analysis/discussion which results in a crappy/failing research paper grade. </p>
<p>Saw plenty of undergrad classmates who crashed and burned by trying to take such slapdash shortcuts even after I advised them against continuing those actions as an academic tutor. </p>
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<li>Must be evaluated and modulated according to needs of course, professor, and particular reading.</li>
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<p>I agree with you. There just needs to be some moderation. I think if you force yourself to do a task for too long, 1) you begin to hate it, and 2) your time become’s less efficiently spent as your mental acuity dulls through fatigue.</p>
<p>I’ve known some people to cram through the night before a test, only to fail because they’re too tired to concentrate. It would be better to focus on being in the correct mental state of mind to succed than to go over all the material and not be able to use it.</p>
<p>Also, pay attention to the people who are the best in their field. I believe they really have to love what they do to succeed as well as they do. People do themselves a disservice by not allowing learning to be fun and low stress.</p>
<p>So yes, important handouts are a must. If you know something’s going to be on a test, you’d be foolish to not go over it. Reading thousands of pages a week? I don’t think you could meaningfully process and remember all that information.</p>
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<p>Not necessarily. If one paces their readings correctly so they give themselves a short break once every 1-2 hours and take notes* on key points and/or using whatever trigger words work to trigger their memories, 1000 pages of reading/week is quite doable…especially if it is for all courses in a given semester/quarter. </p>
<p>Key is to arrange it so it gets done at a steady reasonable pace so the student won’t end up waiting to the last minute and then end up cramming…which doesn’t work for most students no matter how some may protest to the contrary. </p>
<p>Moreover, if one has picked up some background knowledge from earlier schooling or outside reading like myself and many undergrad classmates, that can facilitate the speeding up/skimming of some parts of the readings. </p>
<p>Somewhere along the line, eat regular meals as much as possible and get some exercise. </p>
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<li>On top of doing our homework assignments and essays, some of my English/history/government HS teachers also mandated that we make notes on our daily readings and ask us to turn them in for evaluations every few weeks. While they were tough, their red markups did help us learn how to take concise notes on our reading assignments…a critical skill for college and beyond. This really facilitated my ability to deal with the heavy reading loads…especially one semester I had when just two 3 credit courses out of my 16 credit load had a combined average reading load of 1350 pages reading/week.</li>
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<p>Just wait a bit, they will learn not to read…</p>
<p>My 30th college reunion will be in June, so it was a long time ago, but my last two years of college my grades went up and my costs went down due to a change in my studying habits.</p>
<p>My school had a policy to keep all required books/reading for classes on reserve at the library. Of course, this meant you couldn’t check it out of the library (had to read it there), and also meant that if someone else borrowed it first, you had to wait.</p>
<p>I stopped purchasing most of my textbooks and instead read them on reserve in the library. When I did get my chance at the material, I had no guarantee I would get to read it again (like to cram before a test). So I made it a point to read it once, well, and get everything I needed out of it.</p>
<p>Before that, I had a tendency to skim over my readings and figured I’d review it again more thoroughly before the test.</p>
<p>I was a liberal arts major and had a TON of reading for my classes. But this approach was way more efficient for me, plus I saved a lot of money on the purchase of textbooks.</p>
<p>"saved a lot of money on the purchase of textbooks. "
-They buy and sell back mostly on-line anymore. So, no library. They need to keep some books anyway to prep for Grad. School Entrance exams or as references for higher level classes.</p>
<p>A friend’s son just switched out of an English class because there were 800 pages of reading most weeks. Combine that with a history class and you easily have 1K pages a week.</p>
<p>Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using CC</p>
<p>^Yes, D. complained about reading in English class, and on top reading boring novels that she had no interest whatsoever and she learned nothing in this class, but it was an easy A. She had to take one semester becasue she had 4 on AP exam, not 5. Oh, well, got to do what got to do and sometime you got to waste your time to earn the credit, not much they can do about it. Thank goodness, did not have to take any History in college, took care of it in HS, that definitely would be another waste of time /GPA killer.
I believe that correct combo of classes is a key to balanced schedule. And, in my D’s case, it was taking care of her hard classes in HS, get them out of the way.</p>
<p>FWIW, I double majored (in the day), in government and American Studies (history plus english courses). Most classes had a book a week - so figure 4-5 classes with 200+ pages each. In truth, I never should have majored in these subjects - too much reading. I never could do it all, no matter how hard I tried. My work was good to very good, but not excellent. In my grad work, JD/MBA, the workload was much less in terms of total reading, and I had excellent results. I think the advice given above to take one easier class a semester is good. Also, 4 classes rather than 5 if the credits are enough is also good advice.</p>
<p>Back in my old HS, one of the english teachers told us we would never be able to do all the reading, and we should divide it up. I never did in college, but in MBA and JD programs, I relied on my study groups. However, we did not only learn part of the work, expecting someone’s outline to teach us the rest. We did what we could on everything, and worked as a group to get everyone on board. Even though I ended up doing extremely well, no one ever would have said I tried to teach them incorrectly so I would look better. I worked with the same people as often as we had classes together. People always used to thank me for explaining things and helping them. Even though I have met people in life who I felt would scratch each others eyes out to get an advantage, I was fortunate in that I never worked in a study group like that. </p>
<p>Of course according to some principles laid out above, I must be the cut throat since not only did I go to Cornell, but I went to law school. Such prejudices…</p>
<p>As to pre meds causing more anguish for others - what’s up with that? Everyone must look at their own work load and decide how much work is needed. Organic chem is harder than lets say intro accounting. How can you compare?</p>
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<p>Hey, those were not prejudices, but experiences from dozens of people I know/knew who are Cornell alums…including one who’s there now. </p>
<p>As for law school, the competitiveness aspect came from accounts of every law grad I knew except those who attended the top-14 law schools…especially before 2008. The competitiveness is systemic as everyone is graded on a class-wide curve and prestige/ranking of law school and where you ranked on the curve determined whether you landed those jobs…or got any law job after 2008 or not. </p>
<p>Pre-meds tend to be very competitive and obsessive about grades partly out of necessity as one needs at least a 3.6 GPA and no grade below -A in core pre-med courses like orgo to even have a chance of admission to an AMA accredited med school in the US. </p>
<p>Heard that criteria from a friend’s pre-med advisor at NYU and had that confirmed by dozens of pre-med/med school grads from the '90s to the present. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, this pressure tends to cause many pre-meds to dispute every grade below -A at schools with many pre-med students whether it’s Tufts* or Cornell* and openly complain/whinge about their “low grades” to the annoyance of everyone else. </p>
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<li>Heard it from many alums and in the case of Cornell, some friends who TAed courses there and had to deal with pre-meds disputing their grades because “med school”.</li>
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<p>"Pre-meds tend to be very competitive and obsessive about grades partly out of necessity as one needs at least a 3.6 GPA and no grade below "
-Yes, 3.6 is absolute min. Yes, my D’s department in UG had 3.96 cut off for Summa because of excessive number of pre-meds in this department, which made most parents go absolutely crazy. Imagine, no Summa because your GPA is 3.95, which is much higher than Summa cut off in other departments at the same UG (just state public). I am very proud that my own D. made it with her 3.98. However, there is no reason to be obsessive at all. It all about balanced schedule and very balanced life in general. Many had un-related minors or even majors that kept them away from science classes. D. had Music Minor, her friend had Art and another one was triple major, all graduated in 4 years. However, as far as my D’s comments go, she almost never read her textbooks, she did not have to. So her English class that required her to read some (outside of her interest) novels was very time consuming, but very easy A as writing requirements in this class for non-English majors was not as high as D’s HS English Lit. reguirement. Well, it is NOT the same for pre-meds in Med. School. They have to read a lot and material is very complicated as D. commented it is simply not in the same league as material in UG, cannot be compared at all. Again, I do not know what is going on with pre-meds at Ivys and even why pre-meds go to Ivys is not clear to me as Med. School do not care which UG they came from. AT D’s school, if they had obssessive pre-meds, D. clearly stayed away from them. She always tried to have balance in her life and I believe that this is the key to success.</p>
<p>Miami, you are justifiably proud of your D and she is surely an outstanding student in every way. I’m sure you don’t realize it-- but sometimes your comments about the difficulties that other people’s kids are having come off as very insensitive. I think it’s great your D graduated summa without having to read her textbooks. That’s not terribly helpful advice for parents who post here that their kids are having a rough adjustment to the more intensive pace of college academics. I know you read about kids who are having transitional issues and thinking, “boy their kids must be dopes because my D graduated with high honors and even managed a music minor without reading textbooks” but please, keep that to yourselves. It’s hard enough to support your kid who is having trouble in the deep end of the pool.</p>
<p>If I told you about my nephew (who did graduate from an Ivy league school) who is in med school and is actually finding it much easier than undergrad, you wouldn’t find that helpful, would you? He majored in history-- is used to reading thousands of pages a week-- says that med school is virtually all memorization with no need to assimilate or analyze the content (until 4th year when those skills come back into play.) He thinks med school is not in the same league as undergrad AT ALL since it is so much easier- lots of rote, busywork, nailing the material, but no need to be creative in your analysis, seek to push the envelope as he was forced to do as a history major.</p>
<p>Now that’s not helpful for you, is it? He would probably encourage your D to work less, find more balance in her life, not to obsess about her grades (since your residency is going to rely on many things, not just one thing- just as med school admissions is about many things, not just GPA despite what you believe). I’m sure you’d resent that advice as being patronizing and unhelpful, as well you should.</p>
<p>So chill. Yes, balance is important. A freshman who is having trouble figuring out how to do college level work doesn’t need to hear that if only they added a music minor and became less obsessive about their work (i.e. not read the textbooks) they’d be well on the path to success.</p>
<p>Again, I’m sure you don’t intend for your posts to be so snarky… but I must call you on it here.</p>
<p>" med school is virtually all memorization "- This is absolutely correct, and that is exactly waht makes it much harder as conceptual material doe not need much memorization. Memorization is hard, humans are not computers. Sorry, if I offended everybody again, but how we are expecting everybody to sing in unison here if every single one of us is having different experiences. I am very happy that my D. is challenged and I am still proud that she was told that she is done greatly so far and she should continue doing what she has been doing. They do not recieve grades at her Med. School, so nobody knows how they are actually doing until they are told. I am also glad that Med. School is very easy for some. At D’s Med. School vast majority came from Ivys and very elite UGs. There is Phd from Harvard, lawyers and Masters in Science in her class and not a single one thinks that it is easy. D. actually complains of people being way too intense and she is trying to stick to her own crowd of a bit more balanced students.<br>
I still say that balance is a key and I am very sorry that this very true statement has offendedeverybody, but again I can state my experience as well as others can state theirs.</p>
<p>laserp - The reading load you described in your initial post sounded very familiar as our son is a sophomore at Georgetown in the College. He had a similar reading load last year and he had to re-learn time management very quickly. This year he has a reading load that might be a bit heavier as he is taking a lit course as well as a political theory course and logic (Aristotle, et. al.), amongst others. The biggest issue for these kids is for them to learn to manage their study time and to read and study smart, including study groups. DS was fortunate to have some great dorm hallmates last year and they developed an excellent study network for some of their common freshman classes. From what DS tells us, the SFS kids have a fairly brutal schedule the first year or two but then again, there is no easy ride at this type of school.</p>
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<p>I think Ray Bradbury is rolling over in his grave.</p>
<p>I think the assumption here is that not everyone can absorb this much information. I know I can’t, but I had a few friends in college that were able to read probably over 1200 pages (English Lit, Classics) a week and recall the contents in unnerving detail, and crank out 200 page term papers, quite maddeningly well-written, in a weekend – what would have taken me a month. So I think it depends on what kind of reading/writing CPU the particular class of terminator has installed in it.</p>