<p>“A lot of College Confidential posters have a contemptuous attitude toward community colleges, but they might want to investigate what is actually happening at their local community colleges. I have a degree from an Ivy, so most people would say I’m naturally bright. I have taken a couple of handfuls of academic classes at my local community college, in areas that I’m generally good at, math and languages. I found that I had to put in at least two hours of homework at home for every hour in class.”</p>
<p>Did you need to do so to get an A or pass, or did you put in a lot more than was necessary? </p>
<p>I’ve taken a couple of classes at the local community college here and that wasn’t my experience. Even the supposedly hard classes/teachers weren’t very hard. I just did an estimate about how much time I spent outside of class per credit hour on average and I came up with ~11, which is about 44 minutes out of class per hour of class. Given, I did just estimate, but I think that’s pretty close. Obviously some classes require more, others less, but 2 hours would have been more than any of them. Even at my University I’ve only had 2 classes where I spend that much time, and for one of those a great deal of that time was wasted.</p>
<p>Everyone and every class is different though I guess…</p>
<p>I’ve heard “two hours of studying per week per credit you’re taking” kicked around a lot, but I’ve only had to study that much in one class (a math class–I am not great a math and it had been years since I’d taken math in high school.) One quarter I took 25 credits (each with a lab, so I was actually at school almost 40 hours a week–not a schedule I recommend incidentally) . . . If I’d had two hours of studying/homework per hour of class I would’ve gone insane.</p>
<p>OP: If you’re going to go the route of making an explicit agreement about expectations – minimum study times, etc – IMO you should also put an upper limit on game time. If I asked my D to commit to doing a favorite activity “only after schoolwork is done,” she’d find the loopholes so fast my head would spin. Telling your S that he can only game for, say, an hour a day not only removes the incentive to rush through homework, but also begins to break the habit.</p>
<p>I’m sorry to be blunt, but your son is an ADULT now. He needs to learn to grow up. In college, you are expected to be auto-didactic and self-sufficient. You can give him suggestions and advice, but you need to stop hand-holding him because you will not be able to live his life for him in the “real-world”. You can want it all for him, but he needs to want it for himself! Sure, he may very well be bright and talented, but if he does not put that natural ability to practice, it means nothing. As Thomas Edison said, “Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration.”</p>
<p>Hate to be harsh but until he puts as much importance, time and effort into his academics as he does his gaming he will always fall to the siren call of video gaming.</p>
<p>*His advisor at university told him to go ahead into calculus because his major was computer science. He completely bombed that and spring semester he dropped back to precal, but the bombed that. *</p>
<p>That sounds like someone who didn’t do their homework. Pre-cal should have been pretty much of a review of his high school class - unless his high school class was inadequate.</p>
<p>You mentioned that he is changing his major. What is his new major?</p>
<p>Just an aside…have you considered having your son checked for depression or ADD?</p>
<p>I think the OP understands what’s going on. Thousands of kids leave high school with the foundation needed for college with regard to classwork, but simply don’t have the fundamental drive to understand the difference between high school and college. Allowing the son to live and at home a couple more years, try the local college and step back and see if he really has the drive and desire to gain a college degree is a reasonable step if the OP is willing to support it financially. Chillit is correct in that regard…parents can’t “do it” for their kids. The statistics tossed around are that about half the kids that start college will finish within 4-6 years. Some stop and come back and finish later and others enter the workforce. Clearly the rule of thumb regarding how much work needs to be done outside the classroom is something to discuss with kids and something that kids have to be willing to acknolwedge and accept and execute if they are going to complete a college degree but again the impetus is with the kids, not the parents. If the OPs son deep inside wants to move forward he’ll be able to articulate those reasons in a believable way to the appeals board. If not, “scripting” him through the appeal is not really helping him. Being a “good kid” has little bearing on the situation. Plenty of “good, smart, kids” choose different paths than advanced education and there is nothing wrong with that. While parent expectations do play into the kids personna it is the kid’s “own” expectations that drive the outcome. Kids can tell themselves “I can do this” but if they dont’ tell themselves “I will do this” it’s not going to happen.</p>
<p>Who will be paying for your son’s community college courses? Because younger S – a bright guy – almost managed not to graduate from high school senior year due to senioritis, H and I told him we wouldn’t help pay for college until he had one year of acceptable college grades on his own dime.</p>
<p>He took a gap year with Americorps, living at home and paying rent, and then went to college with merit aid (high SAT kid, and impressive community service ECs), his savings, and loans H and I cosigned for. He is now a rising junior, and has been on Dean’s List throughout. He truly appreciates college, and participates in a variety of productive ECs as well as his academics and working part time.</p>
<p>Sometimes they just need to grow up and also to have some skin in the game. This seems particularly true of boys. I even know male college professors who flunked out of college initially.</p>
<p>You have some good advice here but I’d do one more thing - I’d ‘help’ him by requiring that there are NO video gaming systems in the house. It’s your house and your right to do this. Since it seems that his inability to avoid the distraction of the video gaming (along with his own immaturity) has had such a huge impact on his life and your pocketbook, get rid of that distraction - just as you’d make sure there was no alcohol in the house if he was an alcoholic. You have every right to do this and I’d say even a duty to do this. If he doesn’t like it and doesn’t want to go along with it then he can come up with his own plan and income to move out on his own so he can keep playing games until he grows up and can lead a balanced life.</p>
<p>You can also use the system my in-laws had to enforce on a kid who didn’t like to finish his college programs. They had him save a significant percentage of the tuition and use it for the semester’s payment. If he completed the semester with acceptable grades, they would “pay him back,” so that he had enough money to enroll for the next semester. Worked like a charm.</p>
<p>^^ He’s really not in school now and if he goes to a CC he can use a family computer at home - one that doesn’t have any games on it and is monitored. If they feel he simply must have a computer they can get him a low end netbook that (I assume) won’t run the higher end games that he probably likes very well yet it’d be sufficient for internet access and word processing.</p>
<p>But then what happens when he transfers away for the remaining two years of college? If he can’t/won’t resist games when they’re around, he’s going to be in for a world of hurt . . .</p>
<p>Yes, but living without them for a bit might help him get over them and grow out of it. If I knew my kid wasted my money and his time and future potential by being derailed by the games (along with the underlying isues) I’d certainly not enable that kid any further by supporting his gaming habit which is what’s happening when the kid’s living at home rent free spending most of his time in his room playing the silly games instead of pursuing something reasonable and leading a balanced life. Do you think it should be left status quo - just let him keep his games and sit in his room playing them to his own detriment while being financially supported and enabled to do so by the parents - all because ‘someday’ he’ll have to learn to control his habits? I think a boost at this point by the parents in getting rid of the games would be helpful.</p>
<p>Note - I don’t know enough about the OP’s situation to know if all the above even applies in their situation but it seems to be something that happens and that we hear about on CC every year.</p>
<p>A few years ago my S started an engineering program. At a parent event, I had the opportunity to sit with the dean of the school of engineering. He had the experience with his own son in college, that the boy got too involved with video-games and was getting a few D’s – in engineering courses. His advice, especially to the parents of boys, was to force the kid to remove all the games from the computer. Watch him remove all of it from the operating system, and have him give you the install disks. No game systems, period. They really do get addicted.</p>
<p>Many games can be bought and installed directly from the game companies’ websites; you don’t need disks to install them. </p>
<p>I never suggested kids should be allowed to vegetate playing games all day; I merely question whether locking away the video games gets to the root of the problem. Ultimately, I don’t think much can be done for true video game addicts unless they themselves realize and accept that they have a problem.</p>
<p>I would think that if he can live without video games for the 2 years that he’s at a community college, and he learns some study habits, then he could do well when he goes away again. At that point, he’ll have seen the benefits of trying hard at college.</p>