<p>My freshman son is on his way back to school after Thanksgiving break. It was his first time home in 3 months since we live 400 miles away from his school. He is very discouraged about his teachers and is seriously considering changing majors already. He is studying engineering. He has been fortunate all through high school to be the kid that got all A's and didn't really study. Well this has changed and I don't think he knows where to turn. His teachers are very hard to understand. We have suggested many ideas like study groups, or tutors and he just says that he does not like what he is doing at all. I just don't know if it is too early to bail out of his engineering curriculum. He talked to an advisor who seems to be leading him into some business classes. His dad and I think he is a bright kid and could do anything he sets his mind to, but his work ethic just is not there. It seems like he wants to take the easy way out and just get by.</p>
<p>Almost....I would give it some time. This is one of those things that you can't help him with or do for him. I have several adult friends who are engineers. They all have stories about how they were A students in HS, went to college thinking that it would be the same. To a fault, almost all of them failed a class freshman year. They had no idea there were other people smarter than they were who actually had to apply themselves to learn something.
It seems he has an advisor who may be giving him good advice about looking toward another major if he is not enjoying his classes. As you said, he is a bright kid. He will figure it out.</p>
<p>Dear Almost,</p>
<p>This is not uncommon, as I'm sure you know. The engin program at our S's school has something like a 45% attrition rate. The work IS hard and there is a ton of it. Pretty much be definition, all of S's classmates were in the top few percentage points of their HS classes. Now they are grouped together and they are graded on curves. They can't all be A students, so many were in for shocks. </p>
<p>S has learned how to study. He has also learned that, at this point, he cannot do everything as well or as completely as he would like to. Hard lessons, both.</p>
<p>As observed above, this is something your son will have to work out. You can encourage him to hang in there for the rest of the year if you think that is wise. Please forgive me if I am overstepping here, but I also encourage you to let him know explicitly that your love is not contingent on his GPA. I learned from our S that fear of disappointing parents was the one and only reason some of his Eng classmates continued with a curriculum they truly did not like.</p>
<p>Probably most students change majors in college. More than likely, your S picked engineering because he was good in math and science and thought he'd enjoy the major and would get preparation for a career that would be lucrative.</p>
<p>If he's not enjoying the major, there's no reason for him to stick with it. There are many fields in which he probably could be happy and financially successful. My advice to you would be to encourage him to talk to his advisor and to other students -- in engineering and other majors, while also using the campus career center and/or counseling center to find out what careers may best suit him. There probably are some free or low cost assessment tools that he can take to find out what kind of careers would make him happy.</p>
<p>Younger S is extremely talented in math and science, but after taking a selective summer program in engineering realized that he did not want to major in that because he wanted the option of being able to have a more expansive curriculum than engineering allows. Afterward, when he took a career assessment tool (the Strong inventory) of the kind that I mentioned, he learned that his personality is very different than that of most people who go into engineering. While he can definitely do the academic work, he wouldn't enjoy the field or the people in it as much as he'd enjoy other kinds of work. For him, a liberal arts major is a good fit.</p>
<p>So many kids go into engineering these days, and I wonder how many really know what it is all about....its like the "glamourous" title these days, the new Doctor or Lawyer degree, so many probably go into it unaware of what it truely means</p>
<p>As well, seems there is so much specalization so early- two science classes, math, etc, without some of the humanities classes that can create a balance, and indeed success....</p>
<p>I would not at all be surprised if this wasn't really prevalent in the coming crop of kids, specalization early and finding they don't like it, and then having to catch up on other classes because the freshman year was weighted towards enigneering classes</p>
<p>food for though</p>
<p>It was smart of your son to start out as an engineering major.</p>
<p>Engineering programs are highly structured and sequential. If he had started out with something else and wanted to transfer to engineering later, he probably would not have been able to do it without spending an extra semester or two in college.</p>
<p>But just because he started in engineering doesn't mean he has to stay there. Most kids who start in engineering don't really know what engineering is like -- there really isn't any good introduction to the field in high school. He may want to explore other majors now, and he will probably find that it's not very difficult to transfer from engineering to something else, especially if that something else is in the liberal arts. </p>
<p>This is not failure. This is research. </p>
<p>If your son likes math (as many kids who try engineering do), he might want to investigate the possibility of an economics major. My daughter, who likes math but dislikes science, is very happy so far with economics.</p>
<p>
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His teachers are very hard to understand.
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I'm assuming this means that they are not native English speakers? This was the case when H studied engineering. To top it off, the professors would become angry when students asked them to repeat statements that were unintelligible because of the thick accents & wacky syntax. It can be very frustrating, especially if your son was able to basically listen in high school classes, absorb the material, and not have to spend much time with the books. He will have to change his study habits, which may not match his ideal learning style. But to be an engineer, he will have to spend his entire career self-teaching new material, absorbing R&D information, and functioning in a largely independent way. </p>
<p>I would completely empathize with him, but let him know that in engineering schools, many of his professors will be foreign born. Nothing he can do about it, so he has to deal with it. He could see if reading each chapter ahead of time enables him to grasp what the teacher is trying to convey. I agree with Marian that changing majors is not failure. But it sounds as if he hasn't given the field a fair shot just yet</p>
<p>My nephew finished an engineering undergrad degree, then surprised us all by going on to Law School.</p>
<p>Almost - We have close family friends whose eldest son shifted out of engineering at U Del. Now, admittedly, this kid was partying up a storm and having a grand 'ole time and it caught up with him (!). He says the temptations were great because the kids he was living with didn't have as much work as him. Anyway, now I think he's in Comp Sci or something, but he's happy and seems to be holding his own. I think he re-took a couple of pretty bad classes during the Christmas break terms they have - and that was good because it was only one class at a time and there were few kids on campus to get distracted by.</p>
<p>Anyway, I just offer that because he did manage to turn things around (he is a junior now) after a shaky start. As much as I have reservations about the "tech" schools, like RPI, WPI, RIT or whatever, for being unbalanced, I do think it helps that basically all the kids have a ton of work to do.</p>
<p>Your son may already know this, but RateMyProfessors.com should be his best friend when it comes time to register for classes. Of course that site should be taken with a large grain of salt, but used in conjunction with opinions from upperclassmen that he knows it might help. So far my engineering son has managed to avoid all the hard-to-understand profs at his school, and it looks like he's in the clear through the end of this, his freshman, year. I know he won't avoid it forever, but at least he's off to a sound start. (SO FAR.)</p>
<p>Thank you for all of your responses. I can say that my son is not a partier at all so this does not have any bearing on his situation. He is in an honors'/engineering student dorm at UD although he is not enrolled as an honor student. His feeling is that everyone is so much smarter than he is and he does not measure up. I think living in the honors dorm is beneficial because you have kids that really work and succeed. </p>
<p>He has found the ratemyprofessor sight and has looked at this extensively because he has signed up for a microeconomics class for the winter session.</p>
<p>Our feeling is that he should have tried to help himself more to help him improve his grades. He didn't meet with his professors to let them know he was confused or lost. I do believe he will pass his courses, but he is struggling. I am just not sure that it is the curriculum or the work that he doesn't like, and I don't think he really knows the answer to this either. </p>
<p>He has also had several physical trials since leaving for college and has recently been diagnosed with anemia. I think since august he has been healthy a total of 3 weeks. I don't know what impact these physical issues have played into this situation either.</p>
<p>I think it's probably way too soon for him to decide that it's the curriculum he doesn't like. As freshmen (especially in engineering) it is soooo important that our kids learn to seek help. It is not at all surprising that his first semester he's just figuring that out now. I'd say that's half the battle!!!</p>
<p>Also, it might SEEM like everyone else is super smart, buy my guess is that there are plenty of struggling kids. It's just a surprise for our smart kids when they are suddenly immersed in an environment where everyone is smart! It's intimidating I'm sure.</p>
<p>Keep encouraging him to go to office hours. Once my son figured that out he was so happy to realize the profs then knew him and were actually helpful.</p>
<p>Also encourage him to get into study groups. Not all the kids are sailing through the courses. Help him be the one who organizes a network. Those can help emotionally as well as academically.</p>