<p>“NW, I think you guys are really similar. He didn’t have the best advisor when he was there and he just threw up his hands. He says he feels shell shocked and not happy about returning to the place of battle for fear of dying again.”</p>
<p>This is such over-the-top metaphor that this is why I question the possibility of something he hasn’t told you about that goes far beyond “struggle in class.” </p>
<p>OP- I say this with respect and admiration for how you guys have handled a challenging situation- dial back the language. Maybe it’s just in your internet communications, but you have a very dramatic/black and white way of describing things. Redemption? Really? Failure Demons? Really?</p>
<p>He didn’t kill anyone. He took a leave of absence. I think his parents need to be the people to frame this in the most neutral/least emotional way possible and then he can take his cues from you.</p>
<p>I realize that due to your current living situation, his going back to college represents more of a family choice/discussion than it would be if you were living in Florida (where he’d have many more quick and easy options available that wouldn’t disrupt the entire family). But- it’s not his doing that you’re in Mexico, correct? And it wasn’t to take care of him that you left your job as an accountant-- and are not currently working for pay, correct? And it wasn’t his decision to rent out the house in Florida-- or not to sell the house in Florida, correct?</p>
<p>So in addition to taking the leave from Pomona, he’s now got the weight of all these other family decisions and issues bearing down on him. There’s a kid in my neighborhood who has what seems like a similar story to your son’s. The kid takes the bus to the local community college a few times a week, takes two classes where he is apparently doing well, and is coaching a youth sports team for fun/cash and working a minimum wage job on the weekends while he “figures things out”. But when he decides to go back to his college he won’t have the responsibility of worrying if his parents can afford an apartment near him, doesn’t have to worry about taxes being higher in one part of the country than the other; and frankly, isn’t feeling like a failure even though his transcript shows a bunch of F’s in his last semester. He’s feeling like a kid who wasn’t ready to be at a four year residential college and maybe he will be that kid by next year.</p>
<p>So dial back the dramatic language. Your son is not a failure, and his “demons” do not need to be confronted either now or down the road, if those demons were in fact getting to college and discovering that it’s really hard and you’re going to get some C’s along the way. That’s not a demon- that’s life.</p>
<p>There is no therapist at the moment. Therapy begins again this weekend with therapist #4. I’m sorry you don’t like my over the top metaphors. They’re not really the point though. He is the one that wants to move forward. He wasn’t even sure that going back was even an option until yesterday. Sure, he needs to let that sink in. Yes, I have opinions about this as does his dad. We’re both in agreement. We’ve shared our opinion. Why does he need to define himself and the rest of his life over something that happened 3 years ago? I was afraid there was some kind of sexual trauma. There wasn’t. Another over the top metaphor for his depression over having disappointed nearly everyone who believed in him. He’s genetically loaded for depression. This is not something we’re not used to dealing with in my family. My brother went onto get an MD, PhD with it. After dropping out of high school, I went back to college with literally a 9th grade education. My father graduated law school while only showing up for exams. We do the best we can. Long family tradition. </p>
<p>I’m not sure what you’re referring to by a “struggle in class.”. If you’re implication is that we’re lower class, you’d be very far off base. Income challenged? Certainly. But class challenged? Absolutely not. </p>
<p>Blossom said it in post #76 – college is hard for even the most brilliant students. I hope that your son can come to accept that he is not disappointing either the people at Pomona or the people at QuestBridge by sometimes struggling to get just an average grade . That is the reality of attending a good college. Being a student at a good college comes with a certain amount of stress for everyone.</p>
<p>If you are looking for a place for your son to ease back into college, an alternative to a community college might be an on-line program through a university like Penn State, U of Florida, Arizona State. For a starting point, US News ranks several:
<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/bachelors/rankings”>http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/bachelors/rankings</a></p>
<p>In addition, there has been a lot of mention in this thread about 24 year-olds being independent of parent’s residency. That is not necessarily the case anymore. Some states raised the age from 24 to 25 and for tuition purposes, they require 2 years of financial independence from parents as well as a minimum one year-round residency, job income, paid taxes etc. In some states, if a person is getting a undergraduate degree as an out-of-state student, graduating at age 24 will not allow in-state residency for graduate programs. The student would still be classified as out-of-state for tuition purposes.</p>
<p>Blossom, I’ve never considered him a failure. He’s got a job as a professor teaching English at a Mexican university. Some of the kids he graduated high school with have no jobs at all. I’d be perfectly happy if we remained here and he continued teaching. We have a good life here and will return as soon as we see he’s smooth sailing. Some of the language is coming from him. This is what he feels. Could he use some reframing? Absolutely. </p>
<p>As for the decisions I’ve made, he’s come along for the ride. He’s perfectly welcome to live in the US with his grandmother or sister. For the last 3 years, he’s decided he wants to be in Mexico. Now, he’s considering going back to complete a degree in the US. He may then decide to return here and take up at his old position here after having closed the chapter at Pomona. He may decide to do something entirely different. All good. All options on the table. </p>
<p><<<
If Pomona is on the table I repeat: find out what they require of students coming back from a leave.</p>
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<br>
<p>This is extremely important. Often a requirement is that the student take NO CLASSES anywhere else during the leave.</p>
<p>We have friends and their son took a depression break from MIT. They made the mistake of letting him take a class at a local school during the break “to see how he would do.” Once MIT learned about that, he wasn’t allowed to return.</p>
<p>A few suggestions.</p>
<p>Have him request an official transcript (or even 2+) from Pomona and sent to y’all. Open it and see what it says…it is what other schools will see when or if he wants to re-apply as a transfer student. And yes here in the US unis and colleges use a National Clearinghouse to check for attendance at other schools. Will also show up on his FAFSA financial aid transcript, attached to the last page when he fills out the FAFSA again.</p>
<p>Next, call and then confirm in writing with Pomona that he will be allowed to matriculate. If it is a yes, do everything within your power to have his last semesters of F’s somehow changed to Incomplete’s or W’s due to medical withdrawl. If they grant the Incompletes maybe he could do this while still living at home with you either in CA or Mexico. Recouping time, work he already did, and money since tuition “probably” would not be necessary to finish up the Incompletes.</p>
<p>Third is the scholie money direct from Questbridge or is it actually from Pomona’s financial aid office? And whatever the outcome can you get it in writing that they will cover the remaining semesters? Is he eligible for the remaining financial aid if his academic progress (last semester of F’s) is still on his transcript. Hence the Incompletes or classes at the CC. Above poster was correct some schools don’t want concurrent attendance or subsequent attendance before returning matriculation. So check with Pomona and get the answer in writing, AGAIN.</p>
<p>With all this done you will then know if Pomona is a viable option. After all that it will then be up to your son if he wishes to return. Cross that bridge when you get to it.</p>
<p>You will also know what the REAL transfer GPA is. And then other viable options could be researched. And yes he can take “baby steps” but I don’t call them baby steps…calculated risk-averse with a great percentage of a positive outcome STEPs…</p>
<p>One of the great things about Pomona is the consortium, have him really find out exactly how many courses he can take at other campuses. If his issue is really just shame about his perceived “academic failure” at some point I would leave it alone. Have him work with the therapist. Sometimes they just need time. Greatest gift we can give our children.</p>
<p>Once you find out what you need, comeback here and we all will be able to provide you another list of suggestions for possible transfers. There are 1000’s of undergrad schools, it was our kiddos “fit” best is where they will thrive and love learning. What was it about Pomona that he attended in the first place? What was his second choice school? And why?</p>
<p>Just so you know my 5 kiddos were all eligible for Questbridge and were considering it for the college match. But at the time we thought it was too constrictive and went other routes. So I know first hand how hard it is to send a low-income URM kiddo to an ivy, Princeton. Not his first choice initially, he was admitted EA to MIT, Cal Tech, West Point, Penn and others. But p’ton, after his visit, made it so he felt the most comfortable and the least affected by being low-income. Not only ever request he made was met, but they were able to foresee problems before he would. You don’t know what you don’t know. </p>
<p>Money was issued in advance for new clothes (winter), money for travel to school and money to buy books and dorm stuff. And no loans. None.</p>
<p>As a caveat, Penn, Colby and Amherst, USNA and West Point made the same offer. So some schools are just more sensitive to very low income students. And it sounds like from the other Pomona poster, they are making efforts to do so as well.</p>
<p>Good luck and I hope this helps.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>Thanks mom2. Whatever he does it will only be with Pomona’s blessing - assuming his intention is to return there after this current round of therapy. </p>
<p>Thanks, Kat. The scholarship is from Pomona. QB handled the match. He chose Pomona for fit. It was his dream school. He has no second thoughts that this was a wrong choice. He feels he would have disintegrated wherever he was. I have no reason to believe this isn’t true, although in hindsight, I do believe his chances night have been better were we closer. Pomona is very sensitive to its low income students. I like your reframing of baby steps! Thanks again for the helpful post. </p>
<p>“I’m not sure what you’re referring to by a “struggle in class.”. If you’re implication is that we’re lower class, you’d be very far off base. Income challenged? Certainly. But class challenged? Absolutely not.”</p>
<p>I simply meant, well, struggling in class – as in academically. I wasn’t even remotely thinking about socioeconomics.</p>
<p>I think you have to make a decision as to whether he’s able to go to school by himself or not. If yes, then he goes, lives in the dorms, follows the rules, gets himself to class. If not (and it is fine if the decision is he needs more support than the typical college student), then pick a school (Pomona or other school) and set it up for him to succeed. Living at home with a human alarm clock, someone to make his meals, someone to check up on him. </p>
<p>I think the way you are thinking, that he’ll live at school but have you available 24/6 to save him isn’t going to help him at all. He’ll never take responsibility because he won’t have to. My brother is 53 and lives at home. Why? because it is easy for him. My mother makes his dinner, buys him soap and shampoo and groceries, vacuums his room, drives him to work. He has it all.</p>
<p>The CIA suggestion is silly (as Pizzagirl says). Workers have to get to work on time (and that may be at 8 am), they can’t go back to their mother’s house every night. </p>
<p>I’m not suggesting you just send him out into the world without support, but you have to decide what support he needs and provide that. It’s going to be hard for him, and he has to agree to do the work. From what you have described, I think he’d be better off living with you, not in a dorm, not with his sister or grandmother. At 24, dorm life is not going to provide much of a peer life. My daughter just started college at 17, and she complains about some of her teammates. I explained that they are 23 and 24 (a senior and a grad student) so they don’t have a lot in common, except lacrosse, with a 17 year old. Oh. Even those in a ‘transfer’ dorm may only be 19 or 20, and it may not be the entire dorm, just a floor or wing depending on how many transfers they have.</p>
<p>Pomona may be the best for him, but it may not be. I’m a very cheap person, and even I would just take Pomona because it is free. It has to be the right situation. Since it is a traditional college, most of its student are traditional - 18 to 22, live in dorms or nearby, full time. At a cc or public university, more non-traditional students.</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl being a man is not some impenetrable shield against sexual assault or harassment. </p>
<p>Okay. His struggle in class as he describes it was this - he’d have classes where he’d be assigned to read something (usually a book) and write a page analyzing his thoughts about it to be ready to discuss in class. Easy enough. He’d do this until he slept through the class, then he’d be one page and book behind. Then he’d sleep through another class. Now, he’d be two books and two pages behind. Meanwhile the ten page paper would be due in 3 weeks which he knew he should be working on rather than trying to makeup the zeroes on the one page analyses. The stress would build, he’d fall apart and things would spiral down from there. </p>
<p>^^^^ and that’s why I think if he lived at home it would help immensely as he would never miss a class. </p>
<p>Actually his friends in Mexico (mostly Americans) have ranged in age from 19 to 22, even his girlfriends. I’m not sure he’d feel completely out of place with the transfer students - just doesn’t want to be with “wide eyed prospies.” </p>
<p>Really? Never miss a class? If he wanted to go to class, he would have purchased an alarm clock. I think you need to stop with the excuses. It was his depression keeping him from class. Is he ready to go now?</p>
<p>I’m not saying I never missed a class, but it isn’t because I wanted to go but just couldn’t wake up and get there. Once is a mistake, but a semester of missing classes and there is something else going on -depression, anxiety, apathy. These aren’t usually fixed with time, but need medical intervention or therapy.</p>
<p>Again, if he had depression while at Pomona, it should have been a medical withdrawal with the grades wiped clean. I Meet with Pomona about this. Try and get those F’s off the record. It was a legal right three years ago that was not pursued. If you need legal advice, get it. Read up on the Americans with Disabilities Act: depression is covered.</p>
<p>Once his record is taken care of, one way or the other, he can move forward.</p>
<p>I will say from my own experience and that of my kids, that a return to Pomona may be fraught with pain and difficulty. Your son is now in the majority of college students who are termed “non-traditional.”</p>
<p>Google Union Institute, any online program (BU, state U’s, Penn State there are many…and there is a forum on CC too).</p>
<p>Harvard Extension has online classes.</p>
<p>Charter Oak in CT grants degrees for classes taken at many schools.</p>
<p>Adult ed, continuing ed, extension, online, low-residency, community college. Many Ivies have adult education programs (Brown has one too).</p>
<p>The point is, there are many many paths avaible. My bet is that your son will be relieved not to return to the Pomona campus three years later. </p>
<p>He needs to move on to a new life and that does not necessarily require returning to the old one. But clean up the old one first.</p>
<p>And he could stay in Mexico and teach while doing online classes, too…</p>
<p>I remember taking an elderly family member with dementia to a doctor’s appointment and written across the top of every page of the medical chart was “Patient is an unreliable historian”.</p>
<p>OP- I think this is where you are with your son. He sounds fantastic, by the way, and YOU sound fantastic, by the way, so this isn’t a knock on anyone. But now that you’ve revealed some more detail, I’m going to hazard a guess that your son is an unreliable historian.</p>
<p>Time has passed. He took a leave and didn’t want to talk about why. He never checked his email (not even to see if his roommate wanted to pay him back the $10 he owed for pizza night?), never checked in with either the administration or Questrbridge to see what money was available to him if he wanted to return, he won’t discuss what happened with his family except he seems traumatized every time you’ve brought it up, and three therapists and SSRI’s haven’t been able to help him with a solution to his anxiety and/or depression. He never filled out a form to see if he could get the W’s (or F’s) changed to something less onerous- maybe F’s with an asterisk (if he takes the class again and passes the F disappears?) He hasn’t seemed curious about what his friends from Freshman year are doing now that they’ve graduated. He hasn’t ever wondered and made a phone call to see if he’d be considered a junior, second semester sophomore, or just a “transfer” were he to decide to switch to another college (forget if you could afford it- just to pick up the phone to see what his transcript says).</p>
<p>And you’re assuming that his description of oversleeping is the reason why he dropped out???</p>
<p>Yes, I believe it is very easy at a rigorous college to fall behind pretty quickly. But at most college’s, the first impulse is to show up at office hours, throw yourself on the mercy of the professor, and get an incomplete. Kick the can down the road so to speak.</p>
<p>I think you guys feel more comfortable with a black and white problem which has a black and white solution. He overslept and spiraled downwards and couldn’t catch up- heck, that describes 90% of college students in America at any given point in time. So the solution is to live at home so you can wake him up.</p>
<p>He lacks direction- solution is to get him excited about the CIA. He’s brilliant, they hire brilliant people. Bravo. Problem/solution.</p>
<p>I applaud the effort to get multiple perspectives on what’s going on and what has gone on. But the idea that a kid turns his back on college because of oversleeping is a bit of an oversimplification. Ask any college Dean what it’s like scheduling an organic chem lab at 9 am (everyone goes on the waiting list for the lab at 3 pm). Ask any head of university food services how many breakfasts they serve- even when all the Freshman are on mandatory 21 meal plans.</p>
<p>Everyone oversleeps and falls behind. This I’m not buying.</p>
<p>" ^^^^ and that’s why I think if he lived at home it would help immensely as he would never miss a class."</p>
<p>Except that doesn’t get to the root of the problem. It doesn’t “solve” anything. The solution to sleeping through class is - let’s figure out why you’re so depressed that you aren’t motivated to wake up in time and you sabotage yourself and your own goals, not have mother / father wake you up.</p>
<p>It’s rather like - if your son had a drinking problem because he passed a certain bar every afternoon, well, yes, you could walk him home a different route so he wouldn’t pass that particular bar, but you haven’t solved the problem of why he was excessively drinking in the first place.</p>