<p>I would not like you to be my parent with that attitude</p>
<p>tptshorty-I’ve got an even better story. D has a friend from high school who is from an African country where women are treated like chattel. She was living here with relatives from the time she was young, but even though she was admitted to our local and well-regarded U, her family would not let her go because in their view women do not need an education. She was forced back home.</p>
<p>She tried to make it to the US Embassy twice but was caught by her family, which held her passport. She was forced to marry but she outsmarted them, by convincing her rather modern H that she was too Western and he should let her return to the US. He did. </p>
<p>She ended up pregnant but has enrolled in the U and although it’s going to take a little longer to graduate, you can bet she’s not worried about prestige, EC’s, or “college life”. Her entire focus is on her education. </p>
<p>D went to a public high school with a very large immigrant student body. The stories about how their families got here would make your hair curl. These people endured burning deserts, getting shot at, tortured, near-drowning and almost to a one, losing everything thing they had to get here. Not one of these kids took a thing for granted. It’s all about perspective.</p>
<p>Wht tpshorty and sseamom said is what some kids need to hear. </p>
<p>To the op, my daughter as a junior went abroad. Helped get thru the year. As a senior she was ready to graduate in October. </p>
<p>There is no perfect school, no perfect dorm, no perfect class or major, just what you make of it with this amazing opportunity.</p>
<p>What’s the parental attitude that you don’t like, flyaround? That I think these kids like “prestige bug”, “sharp decline”, and “hates life”, don’t know how lucky they are? Millions of young people around the world can’t even imagine the luxury of going to a prestigious university which includes a clean, safe dorm room with maid service, three gourmet meals a day, brand new textbooks, iPhones and iPads and iMacs, climbing walls and swimming pools, frats and sororities? </p>
<p>I don’t discount the true feelings of depression in anyone, no matter how little or how much privilege they have. But some of this is due to an attitude of entitlement that comes from having everything handed to you on a plate.</p>
<p>tptshorty-You got it.</p>
<p>I agree that there is no “perfect” life, however if you are in a situation that is making you unhappy I think it makes sense to try and identify what is making you unhappy and try to figure out how to change it. This student looked into transferring hoping, that would help, but apparently both schools have the same problem. My sense is, as others have noted, that there is something else going on here that the student is not talking about. I think it would be helpful for the OP to sit down with her son and try and figure out specifically what the problem is.</p>
<p>What the OP’s son is experiencing is similar to what some extremely mature students I knew experienced as early as beginning of sophomore year. </p>
<p>They felt they’re surrounded by extremely immature classmates in an environment which caters mostly to their needs and feeling surrounded by a childish bubble they felt they’ve already outgrown by the end of freshman/sophomore year. </p>
<p>If the school is Tulane, I can especially understand that as everyone I knew who went there said the campus culture tended towards rowdy partying/drinking which can get old quick for the mature student who felt that’s “so high school/freshman year”. </p>
<p>I’d also like to chime in that the mantra “There will be drinking involved at every university/college” is not always true and IMHO…is a bit dismissive towards students who don’t care for rowdy drinking/party campus cultures or who outgrew them quickly. </p>
<p>My private LAC didn’t have a heavy drinking/partying culture when I was there. </p>
<p>Granted, we did have a heavy marijuana/psychedelic usage culture…but unlike many alcohol imbibing students I’ve observed at various mainstream campuses and in the Boston area, the marijuana/psychedelic users at least minded their own business and didn’t try to provoke fights or vandalize neighborhoods.</p>
<p>If it’s the same problem in both places, it’s the student. And he needs to figure outbhow to just work with it. So he is a bit unhappy with the social atmosphere. Does that mean he can’t get his work done? No seems he can. So, why not just go, well, I’m happy most of it, I can get thru the rest. </p>
<p>I hate coming home and wathing my husband staring at baseball games. Drive me nuts. But it’s not the worst thing in the world. The rest of our loves are pretty great.</p>
<p>So the ops son needs to really figure out hisnpriorities.</p>
<p>Why wouldn’t the OP’s son just say “I don’t like the drinking culture!” ??</p>
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<p>Because that may not be the/the only underlying cause for his unhappiness. However, such mature students IME tend to not enjoy being around campuses with heavy party/drinking cultures.</p>
<p>Part of being mature is realizing all is not goIng to be everything you want. Its learning to deal with it. </p>
<p>I understand the not wanting to have to deal with it, but it’s such s minor irrstation when you think about all the other things he could be dealing with.</p>
<p>@Cobrat - True.</p>
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<p>Oh, spare me the pretension that a heavy marijuana/psychedelic usage culture is soooo morally superior and / or preferable to a heavy drinking culture.</p>
<p>@Seahorserock - Actually I think the whole point of the OP’s post is that the son is trying to figure out his priorities and deal with the situation : Better campus atmosphere-less academics or better academics worse campus atmosphere. I just feel if he could identify more clearly what he doesn’t like about the campus atmosphere he could possibly have both :).</p>
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<p>If the issue is rowdy partying drinking classmates on campus…that’s not necessarily a “minor irritation”. Not when such folks have a tendency to provoke fights and engage in wanton vandalism. </p>
<p>Saw plenty of this among Boston area students from nearby BC and BU and on a few occasions…had to call the cops on them when they were harassing/trying to provoke fights with folks out minding their own business. Friends who owned homes/nearby apartment buildings had to deal with vandalism which caused them to incur heavy costs in finances and time in cleaning it all up. HS classmates/friends who attended Tulane mentioned similar witnessing/experiencing similar antics there. </p>
<p>There’s a world of difference between having an occasional social drink and playing beer pong and drinking for the sake of getting drunk/making a jackass of oneself.</p>
<p>I read it differently. I read it as profound disappointment at the lack of the “life of the mind” that we very academic types crave.</p>
<p>But it is always this way. I am on an English faculty, and about 90% of us have PhD’s. Parties revolve around discussions of politics, sex, the food at the party and the behavior of the administration at the school. There is very little discussion of the new book on Shakespeare or Richard Powers new book or our dissertations or our current research.</p>
<p>The “life of the mind” goes on in the classroom, and I am so grateful to have those discussions with my students.</p>
<p>I occasionally have them with my best friends, and I often have them with my own children, but not in the general social atmosphere. Just not the way people are.</p>
<p>And plenty of my colleagues do get stinking drunk.</p>
<p>Cobrat,
How old is the information you are spewing about Tulane? Have you been there recently? Do you know current students? Have you been on campus? There are students who drink on every campus, and there is a party scene on virtually every campus (perhaps not schools like Oral Roberts or Liberty). To single out Tulane as any different is inappropriate, and inaccurate. If you have any questions about the current Tulane students, ask them on the Tulane forum. If you are interested, here is some information on the School of Science and Engineering, and some info about their recent grads. Would hardly call them immature. <a href=“http://tulane.edu/sse/[/url]”>http://tulane.edu/sse/</a> <a href=“http://tulane.edu/sse/news/summer-2012-dean-message.cfm[/url]”>http://tulane.edu/sse/news/summer-2012-dean-message.cfm</a> My s’s roommate is headed to Cal Tech for grad school.</p>
<p>On CC, everyone talks about how important “fit” is. This student either didn’t understand the campus environment well enough, or didn’t understand himself well enough, or didn’t have the right options available, to make a choice that was a good fit. I suspect that for this student, at least 90% of schools are not going to be a good fit. Does this mean there is something wrong with the student? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>One only goes to college once (usually) and the student’s parents are probably paying quite a bit for the experience, so I don’t see any reason why he shouldn’t try to find something better if he can. On the other hand, if finding something better doesn’t work out, then, of course, he should make the best of whatever he ends up doing and appreciate the opportunities he does have rather than wallowing in self-pity. </p>
<p>But, back to the actual question–based on what the OP said, it sounds to me like staying at the original school and moving off campus is a better idea. The only advantage of state school is being closer to home while the disadvantages are significant–weaker academics and the general disruption of transferring (possibly even delaying his graduation if he has bad luck with transfer credits).</p>
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<p>Maybe son’s OP should just move to a school with a big drug culture. lol</p>
<p>Don’t you worry, jym, cobrat will “have a friend” there, and that friend’s perceptions are gospel.</p>