<p>Great job, TJ. I hope you will be here in the future able to share your hard earned insights on what worked and didn’t work for your family. Best of luck!</p>
<p>Check with CSU Northridge and make SURE he can take the classes elsewhere. Follow up with an email to the person in charge (not just the person you/your son speaks with): I understand that Class XXX and Class YYY can be taken at ABC College, transfer to CSUN by date XYZ to graduate in December 2012. Print out the email and any response and keep them (just in case of computer failure).</p>
<p>Best of luck in getting this quickly resolved!</p>
<p>Just throwing out an idea that maybe, just perhaps, some of the excess credits might be able to be used to meet the missing requirements if he were to so petition. Or are there maybe unapplied AP credits leftover from high school that might fill in the blanks? Perhaps even some CLEP tests? I think he should meet with an academic advisor at Northridge. Part of that discussion would include taking the two final courses at a different college and transferring the credits and determining that’s a viable possibility.</p>
<p>I’m just throwing out some ideas that might not have been considered.</p>
<p>Yes, our S was able to get his U to waive some of the courses he didn’t really want to take because he entered the U with 60 AP credits (he was so happy to have Chem waived). I’d also definitely suggest that it be explored & clarified as to what advantage his unapplied credits could have toward helping with his degree requirements as well as getting this in writing. Getting in writing whether he can take any remaining requirements from other campuses is also crucial.</p>
<p>He has already asked about using other credits and they said no. He did take some AP classes such as Statistics that aren’t counting towards his major. </p>
<p>Also, it says no more than 70 units from community college and he has 71.
We will make sure we veryfiy everything from here on out!</p>
<p>I just want to pipe up a minute to say good job Tacoma on following through and on working with your DS to find a resolution. It sounds like you have cleared the air and are on a course to figuring this out. Strong Work!!</p>
<p>I also want to say good job to Tacoma. Speaking from experience, I have a wonderful, caring, creative spouse who finds it enormously challenging to deal with the kind of details you have described. DH has a high IQ, so the issue isn’t intelligence. He also went through his college program and earned too many credits in courses that did not count toward graduation. His response to the frustration was to turn his attention to other things and ignore the original problem. </p>
<p>Eventually, he learned to ask for help and I learned to be patient and not freak out when things I thought were simple to understand weren’t for him.<br>
I hope you can help your son to understand that he needs to ask for help from you or others he can trust, and proof that what he is being told is true. I hope he understands that difficulty in working through graduation requirements is a signal that he will need to work on dealing with organization, instruction and detail. But I also hope that he realizes his other qualities, like the willingness to take hard courses or to care full time for his grandfather, also define him.</p>
<p>Really glad it is just the two classes. You might want to see if extension classes are acceptable – UCLA has a huge Extension program. Or, on-line classes. </p>
<p>D attends a large public university, and on her “master” login screen is some note that shows up in red if she’s not on track for graduation based on the number of semesters she’s been in school. If you’re not “on-track” you have to go meet with an advisor before you’re allowed to register for the subsequent semester’s classes. I think all universities should do this. (Though in your son’s defense, given California’s budget problems, I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that there wasn’t availability of some of the courses he needed when he needed them.)</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
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<p>Great idea! The advising in son’s and daughter’s schools were not good. Daughter was told that a course she was going to take would satisfy her science requirement and later found out that it didn’t so she had to take another science course (I think that it’s good that she took the extra science course but that’s another matter).</p>
<p>I was a helicopter parent on advising. I created a matrix of requirements going out eight semesters and a list of courses and how they would meet requirements. When a semester was over, I’d update the page to indicate the courses completed and would remove the requirement name or course. I’d also color code for what was completed, what was in progress and what was future. This was on a webpage so that he always had access to it and could show his adviser when getting approval for courses.</p>
<p>While I admire the color coding and organizational skills that many of you parents show, I think your kids resumes need a footnote which indicate that they graduated with the help of an executive coach.</p>
<p>I’ve hired kids like yours. There is perpetual complaining on CC that employers demand a college degree for jobs that don’t really require one. That’s true. The nasty secret is that we assume (erroneously) that even if a kid doesn’t need to have read Proust or Kant or Hegel to be a customer service manager or an entry level media relations specialist… that somehow, by having the organizational skills required to graduate from college, your kid is going to be able to handle a job in the real world.</p>
<p>And that’s not so any more. Increasingly so. I’ve had new hires on my team who have clearly had mom or dad or another coach doing the stupid stuff that life requires- making appointments, canceling appointments, checking websites for requirements, making lists and spreadsheets to stay on task, meeting with deans when there’s a problem, etc. So they start their big new grown up job and guess what? I’m managing a large department. I’m not mom or dad, and I don’t call them at 6 am to wake them before a big meeting, and I don’t make sure they’ve had breakfast so they don’t show up carrying a big latte when everyone else has already woken up, and I don’t hand them a collated list of important things they need to accomplish before lunch.</p>
<p>I had a recent heart to heart with a young employee who didn’t understand why we don’t circulate a memo after a meeting with everyone’s “To Do’s” highlighted. I said, “That’s why we take notes”. He explained that he didn’t like taking notes. So I suggested that he either learn to like it or risk showing up at every meeting without having done what he had committed to doing at the last meeting. But nobody was going to nag him (since that seems to be what had got him through college).</p>
<p>I am sensitive to the fact that some kids are late bloomers. But really-- if your kid can’t figure out how to graduate from college (which is different from not telling mom and dad that they’re NOT on track to graduate from college) what favors are you doing them in the real world? And if your kid is so shy that he or she can’t make an appointment with an academic adviser or dean to review their schedule before senior year- how are they going to navigate a boss and that person’s boss?</p>
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<p>Son has no problems doing that. In fact he’s going to be managing a group of people after a few months on the job. Kids will figure it out - some kids need more help than others. That so many people that go to college don’t wind up with a degree indicates that most could use some help.</p>
<p>I understand that some people think that early independence is nirvana but not all kids work that way.</p>
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<p>Strange question. Our son had to make his own advising appointments every semester. He just happened to go to a school that is under a huge amount of financial pressure and advisers are spread pretty thin. There are a number of students that don’t graduate on time because they didn’t file the paperwork or didn’t take a particular class that they needed. I assume that pricey LACs make sure that this doesn’t happen but that isn’t the way at state schools that have had severe funding cuts.</p>
<p>I worked in a corporate office a few decades ago and there were a number of managers in my section of the building. Every manager had at least one executive assistant. Do you think that these managers couldn’t remember the times of their meetings? In the old days, executives would call in a secretary to take meeting notes. Do you think that they couldn’t handle note taking?</p>
<p>BC, every year our admins end up supporting more managers than the previous year. We long for the good old days when we had an EA making appointments, scheduling travel, filling out expense reports. Now everything is on a dashboard and everyone does the admin themselves. When a corporation can buy software for a few thousand dollars and reduce the ratio of admin support from 1:4 to 1: 14 (that is not a typo) they do it.</p>
<p>You are hallucinating if you think a corporation is going to pay for someone to take notes for a bunch of 22 year old entry level employees. The last Admin who took dictation retired five years ago. We have many disabled employees and even they use technology enabled software to handle voice recognition tasks.</p>
<p>Yes, my problem employee thinks I should hire him an administrative assistant to keep him on task. I think he needs to learn that if he needs an executive coach to get through the work week, he should consider a line of work that requires fewer moving parts.</p>
<p>I am not criticizing the way you helped your kid. But I am noting that kids who got a lot of admin support from mom and dad in college may face a rude awakening in a corporate office where everything nowadays- benefits, healthcare, scheduling vacation, travel, paying your corporate credit card, calendering- is a self-administered pop-up on your computer. We no longer have someone from HR who sits down with new employees to walk them through the benefits book. It’s online- you sign up for what you need within the first 30 days of employment, or it’s too bad until the next enrollment period rolls around. A kid who has trouble figuring out if he has enough credits to graduate by the time he’s a senior is going to need some help making sure he’s signed up for health insurance, let alone is enrolled in a company’s retirement plan.</p>
<p>Just saying…</p>
<p>At my daughters college, the Frst time they registered they met with their advisor. There was a hold on their account till the advisors signed off. As the semesters went by, the advisor was much less hands on. The schools site is very clear on what they need and as they are declaring their majors, the advisors then double check they are on track. Once that is done, it’s more and more up to the student to be sure they are taking the right classes, and if they have any questions they contact advisor. My first daughter double minored so she was really n the ball, and figured which classes were best to take. My younger daughter set her game plan up herself whe. She declared her major and minor, made a list of her options in different columns and verified with advisor she was planning well. The advisor didn’t hound them and as a senior they just sign off on classes. It was my daughters job to double check everything, and then do it again.</p>
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<p>You completely miss my point. Everyone can use help. Everyone can use a coach. Everyone can use advise.</p>
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<p>The kids have the same kind of admin systems to deal with in college.</p>
<p>My company is a huge provider of this kind of software and we’ve been using this stuff since the early 1990s. I worked on these kinds of systems in the early 1980s.</p>
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<p>It is not necessarily whether the kid can figure it out or not. He breezed through computational geometry which is a bit more difficult than navigating HR and college admin systems.</p>
<p>If you’re working 60-80 hours a week, having someone to take care of the life stuff for you can make it manageable. That applies to students as well as parents.</p>
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<p>I’ve read here that LACs are better at keeping their students on track to graduate in four years and maybe that’s a service that they provide for full-far payers.</p>
<p>What I see in graduation rates to compare schools is the five or six year graduation rates. It seems that huge numbers of students have problems graduating in four or fewer years.</p>
<p>BC- I disagree with nothing you’ve stated. However, there is nobody in my company whose job is it to provide lifestyle support for new employees who cannot manage to get to work on time without a wake up call (my young team member) or can’t get their work done without someone reminding them of important deadlines. If you want to provide that level of assistance for your kids once they are in the workforce, god bless. But for the other parents on here- try to transition your kids away from relying on you for organizational support if they intend to get a job in corporate America.</p>
<p>BC- not insulting your kids intelligence. But if your kid wants health insurance or ever intends to take a day off, he’ll need to navigate the benefits dashboard and the PTO system all by himself. There is nobody here with the job “taking care of life stuff”.</p>
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<p>A straw man is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.[1] To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.[1][2]</p>
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<p>His place will assign him health benefits if he doesn’t choose. If he needs a day off, he just tells his manager. Where I work, employees, including new hires, have a lot of work flexibility. On average, employees are in two days a week. Some employees are only here for certain times of the year (when the weather is nice).</p>
<p>We hire very smart people to do very hard work. We overlook a lot of people things to get those people as they are scarce.</p>
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<p>At the one I attended (Oberlin), major/minor/distribution requirements were clearly spelled out in the bulletin book and the administration was very accessible. </p>
<p>Add to this the ability to double/triple count courses as major/minor/distribution requirements, ability to design private reading classes if there’s a topic not covered in a given course/more advanced courses, and more…you’d almost have to go out of your way to fail to graduate in 4-5 years because you “missed” a few required classes. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I’ve had many cousins/friends who ended up graduating a year or more late from larger universities ranging from large state systems to private universities like NYU because of excess bureaucracy, inaccessibility of admins, changing requirements, and crappy advising.</p>
<p>The fact that it’s so important to be on top of things in the real world is all the more reason for parents to help their kids transition. I don’t think anyone is advocating a hand-holding approach. I would take it as a warning sign of her fitness to enter adulthood if my child had trouble navigating a college website. That’s not to say I expect to do the administrative work for her (or that I’d expect her to let me!), but I do expect to be on hand to help her as she figures things out. I don’t think helping a kid out now and then will cripple him or her.</p>
<p>In this case, the OP’s son got through most of college (with 3.3 GPA) without any help from parents. If his mom has to a little helicopter parenting / coaching to get him on track from here, I see no problem with it.</p>