Wow - lots of good thoughts. I should of clarified to say that his school charges a set price for 12-18 hours and he never thought about needing to drop a class and neither did we. He was a hardworking, disciplined 4.0 high school student who had also handled sports and activities. First semester he had taken 15 hours and he did well, but his load was heavy so second semester he took the 12 hours. With concurrent credits and planning to take some summer courses he knew that path would be ok. That was fine until he ran into the situation where it just wasn’t going to work no matter how hard he tried (and believe me he tried and we encouraged him to use all his resources). The class he added was an online class that was self paced, project based and he had to email in his projects (videos of him, etc). All projects were due at the final for all students in the class and they were given one of a few time slots/locations to choose from for the final to avoid conflicting with other finals. Coming in late put him at the disadvantage, not anyone else, but he was able to spend Spring break getting caught up and finished with an A. It wasn’t an easy class, but was one he could manage. He’s taking a class over the summer and is enrolled in 15 hours next semester. He has no intention of dropping - but now we know - that sometimes that situation might just come up and having that extra hour there to allow for it is a good idea for him. Certainly worth thinking about and knowing what the options are.