<p>Such repeated competitions destroy the joy of playing. Either competitions held every few months, or no one allowed to challenge for several months. Either way, the director is made to feel like a therapist to this unstable girl. How sad she feels such pressure at such a young age.
Momsdream, I think your aunt left your child such a beautiful gift. I began violin with my uncle's smallest violin, and cherish it still.</p>
<p>It is very interesting to me in reflecting about my own children's natural talents how they all stack up in the so far "real" world. Just a thought...the one who is most brilliant, the Harvard grad, the HS valedictorian, the National Merit Finalist, etc. cannot seem to achieve a happy balance in life between working, having friends and fun, and just managing his every day affairs! Unable to wing anything!!!!!Was always involved in some unusual hobby, but never practical. The second one..who was always doing for others, not as bright, the PENN grad, who had two pages of EC's on his college application that when he went for the college interview was asked...how did you do all these extracurriculars and graduate HS? His response..."I was only 10th in the class!" (He had the second highest SAT's scores so he felt he was a failure) he is still volunteering and deriving only the sheer enjoyment of doing so, unable to wing it.. making just enough money to live on and has not left the job he had as a freshman at PENN because he is afraid to venture into the "real" world. And then there is the daughter....borderline high SAT's...at CMU and able to talk her way out of a brown paper bag! Getting extremely good grades...found a professor who is willing to take her on as a lab assistant as a freshman...and can wing it in a blizzard and a hurricane! Her motto on life? "Get over it!" She oft' times used it with me every time I suspect she might have received a bad grade in HS. Much better adjusted than either one of my boys and I suspect will be much more successful....There is something to say about emotional/social IQ....the ability to assess a situation and know how much one needs to do to be successful without beating oneself to death! There comes the talent that one needs to have to survive in the real world and not in the artificial world of the academicia!</p>
<p>I will more than likely bring this up to the orchestra director, but don't really expect anything to change--she's been doing it this way for years and years. So, it will just be a sort of chat about the situation, I imagine, most likely along the lines of asking for her insight in helping the kids deal with situations like this. There was another challenge scheduled for this a.m., so I'll find out how it went when D comes home. . .</p>
<p>Sgiovinc1, your second to last line brings this thread full circle back to my original post. I have been reading and re-reading this wonderful arrangement of views and opinions and tangents and asides and have been bowled over by things I hadn't thought of , and may never have tackled. A few times , but not nearly as often, I have been amazed that I appeared to be a little ahead of the curve. I really am enjoying this internet example of "cooperative learning".</p>
<p>What you were using as an example of emotional/social IQ , I was calling "triage" which is as I define it an essential part of "winging" it. Knowing how little or much needs to be done to live to fight another day. BTW, I have assumed everyone understood and used the phrase "winging it". It is clear that not everyone knows of this colloquialism. I've thought about it's origins and have come up with "on nothing but a wing and a prayer". That'll have to do, because that's all I've got. LOL..</p>
<p>Really, my purpose in posting was to say "I think I've been looking at the college search wrong and may have unintentionally installed in my D's brain too much of a desire for the highly ranked schools because of their rankings". We had long since discarded "prestige" as a factor, but academic rank between two schools that "fit" otherwise? We'd use the academic "rankings" as a tie-breaker.</p>
<p>Phrased another way, I had come to the conclusion that if the finances were relatively close D should attend the most highly ranked school that passed her various fitness and feel tests. I was ever so slow to realize that "the legendary workload" and the "academic intensity" of a school were as (or maybe more ) important than all other fit and feel criteria. It's just not something I knew or even thought of as a possibility. </p>
<p>I had, I guess, just blindly felt that if D could get in she could flourish at the school as she has always flourished with her incredible work ethic, excellent study skills, and exceptional IQ that combined would have allowed her acceptance in the first place.</p>
<p>I know I should trust the process but..... When the realization hit me that "wow, 20 page papers due in 3 classes the same day" or " why was your answer right?" sub-parts on all questions on a first semester college calculus exam, gee. LOL.To say the least, if most classes at the school were similar that might not leave a lot of time to relax, volunteer, have a work/study job, do research , date, act, play music or intramurals, much less intercollegiate ball or keep a 3.6 so you can go to med school (if after four years that is still her love). D won't pull any school's off the list -at least I don't think so. But she will be aware of workload issues</p>
<p>Everyone's postings have been very helpful and continue to mold my positions on a lot of important considerations I literally wasn't even aware we had.Thanks to all of you for your contributions, and I will continue to try and keep up, or at least not fall that far behind.</p>
<p>Curmudgeon:</p>
<p>I make a difference between winging it and living to fight another day. You go in and make a presentation, based on little preparation and somehow manage to b.s. your way through the presentation: that's winging it. You get clobbered because people see though the b.s, but you shrug and move on, that's living to fight another day. I once talked to an acquaintance who had taught at two colleges (which are better kept nameless). She said that the difference between the two was that the students at college A were very conscientious about doing the readings, but in class discussions, were afraid to move far from the materials, to challenge the author's perspective as well as one another's perspective. The students at college B had often not done the readings by the time these were scheduled for discussion, but were great at b.s. ing their way through the discussion. I'm not sure she told me which group she preferred!
Regardless of how well or ill-prepared they are, some students are more resilient than others when dealing with so-so grades. Some people handle rebuff and rejection better than others.
Some colleges are known to have heavier work loads than others, some majors are tougher than others; for most students, however, a trick is to mix things up and to select classes that have different types of requirements. Students, for example, select classes so that they do not have two final exams on the same day, or several papers all due within a couple of days of one another.</p>
<p>I agree with you, Marite, and we can still act as advisors in that regard no matter where our kids go to college. I like to tell my kids about my first semester at Berkeley when I unwittingly signed up for two heavy-duty reading courses. Loving both classes, I did all the reading, but that not only meant I had time for nothing else but that I read the entire Brothers Karamazov non-stop in two days. What a waste! It's really a good idea, I think, to encourage them to look at the mix of quantitative classes, reading classes, paper-based classes, exam-based classes, lecture classes, seminars, etc. when they tackle their schedules as well as at the mix of social, ec, and academic life. And, I think it's also important to let them know we realize that college is about more than classes and that they should have time to have fun. (Just not too much!) Lots of times, students neglect the pass/fail option as well. They might argue that they end up doing the work anyway, but it does serve its purpose -- to encourage students to try courses they might avoid for fear of penalty to their grade points. Most colleges have some number of classes that a student is allowed to take pass not pass. Even though our kids might be getting advising (some places much more than others), or they might not take our specific advice, the message they hear from these kinds of suggestions is that it is ok to explore, to take a risk, even sometimes to relax. Sometimes they just need the information that graduate school admissions does not work the same way that undergrad admissions does and that it's rare for even the best students to get a straight 4.0 in college. They really don't know this, and are still on the treadmill the whole college admissions process has become for them.</p>
<p>Marite. I agree that winging it and living to fight another day are separate concepts (as is "triage"). You just did a far better job of explaining it. I will paraphrase Vonnegut explaining molecular physics (the cannonballs in Cat's Cradle if I remember correctly) "if you can't explain it to a three (5?7?) year old, you really don't understand it". You obviously understand it well.</p>
<p>Marite---wonderful explanation. </p>
<p>Sac, second semester senior year, I should have known better--I took a Dickens course (approx. 4000) pages of reading, plus a couple other English classes, plus writing my Senior thesis. I remember nothing about that year, but I know I read every page of Dickens. I rmember one day coming out of my dorm after another all-nighter and thinking the world looked tinged with purple--who knew sleep deprivation could do tht?</p>
<p>I think just reading Bleak House could do that to you.:)</p>
<p>I am truly amazed at how many parents on this forum are so bright and articulate in their writing ability. It must be from all that reading you did in college!!! I cannot say I read any of those works....I did read all of Vonnegut's books, however. Anyway...that is why I am only a lowly masters level psychologist...but I must admit in college I learned alot about human nature and life in general....I learned how to drink alcohol and knew how much I could consume without getting drunk! I knew how to hitch rides if I was stranded somewhere. I knew how to jump out of a car if my date turned a little "hairy" on me. I learned how to stretch $5/week because that is all my parents could afford to give me for lunch. I learned how to buy and sell used textbooks so I didn't have to pay full price. I learned how to take hand me downs and make them into something "groovy." I learned even if there were anti-war rallies, you'd better attend class and cross the picket lines of hostile jeering peers because there still were final exams! (I always wonder where all those hippies went who didn't attend classes during the anti-war sit ins?)I learned that you had to stand on LONG LONG registation lines to get your mandated classes and if you didn't get there early enough, you were closed out. I learned you had to walk clear across campus to seek out a professor who might give you an "override" if he liked they way you looked..and that was only if he was in his office during scheduled hours....of course, he didn't KNOW you...you registered with your social security number! Your lecture halls had over 150 students with NO recitation class. What is a recitation class anyway? You learned that you had to sometimes give up a Saturday to take two buses to get to school because otherwise you'd miss the deadline for your term paper..if you handed it in one hour late would result in a full grade deduction!! While everyone else was reading at their universities away from home, I was attending a commuter college where on some days I had to take two city buses in the rain, snow, and sleet just to make it to my 8AM class.
Anyway, I attended the college of "Hard Knocks" so to say..so when my kids can't fight their way out of a brown paper bag or can't wing it...it is not that they can't..they haven't had the opportunity to learn because they never had to! You know what I mean....the professors seek you out if you don't come to class...you can register ON LINE!!!! There are NO closed classes....there is always room for one more! Hey, at these tuition costs there better damn well be!! Mom and dad send you spending money...even though all the food is paid for and you have great variety...mom and day pay for your flight back home for all the holidays....even when you have a roomate who lives near you and has a car and is driving home!...they pay for all your books, brand new of course. Of course your world-renowned professor who wrote it just revised it for the 13th time and the old one is now obsolete! If you get your clothes from the Salvation Army (like my D did!) it's to be fashionably different...not out of necessity! You fall out of your dorm room and into your first class which is in the hall right next door. You submit all of your papers on line and you don't have to look for your professor during office hours 'cause you can email him...and he ACTUALLY answers and knows your name! You have a laptop that you take with you to campus so that you can "surf the net" using the campus wireless system!!! No cost to you of course! You can take the city busses with your student ID...you don't have to look in your wallet for exact change. ......The list goes on and on! So, if some of our kids can't wing it....guess what? Some never really had to!</p>
<p>I think that this post should have been in "When I was your age.....", but I missed it!</p>
<p>I agree. We may have unintentionally caused a resiliency problem in this generation of students by being so proactive as parents.</p>