Last chance words of wisdom for your kid on the day you drop them off at college...

[RAE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mdlerth About half of every college freshman class washes out and does not return. This has been replicated yearly since I went to college back in the Jurassic era. The complexity of the coursework increases compared to high school, but that's not the biggest difficulty. What trips up most of the ones who don't make it is they don't know how to handle the independence.

Yep, exactly. Despite our best efforts to talk to my stepdaughter about this (on many occasions before she departed for college), it didn't stick. And this is not a kid who was a troublemaker during high school........she was basically an average student who did her homework, had some decent friends, etc.. But when she got to college, forget it..........skipped classes, too much partying, you know the rest. I won't tell you the whole sad story, but she did not last too long there, suffice it to say. I am not saying that your son/daughter's experience is going to be like ours, but that it happens. I am not sure that we could have done anything differently to prepare her for college.....she is just someone that has to make her own mistakes (sometimes over and over) before she learns from them.

[HappyMinimalist]

This has been my daily mantra and will probably be my parting words of wisdom when DD goes off to college in 3 years..

Look both ways before you cross!

[travelover]

I'd tell a son,"that's a downspout, not a compass".

[rayinpenn]

It will start today with a merciless 9AM class - I know what he's thinking "who in gods name schedules music at 9AM?" I think around 1 or so I'll text him: So what was being awake at 9AM like?

It is out of my hands - that doesn't mean I can't poke him a bit.

[someguy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rayinpenn It will start today with a merciless 9AM class - I know what he's thinking "who in gods name schedules music at 9AM?" I think around 1 or so I'll text him: So what was being awake at 9AM like? It is out of my hands - that doesn't mean I can't poke him a bit.

9AM?! Ha! Try 7am for 3-hour chem labs! (both ways uphill and in the snow, of course)

[ivinsfan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rayinpenn It will start today with a merciless 9AM class - I know what he's thinking "who in gods name schedules music at 9AM?" I think around 1 or so I'll text him: So what was being awake at 9AM like? It is out of my hands - that doesn't mean I can't poke him a bit.

Well hopefully he was awake before 9, one can hope I know more a few kids that scheduled all their classes around when started and not class content..and off the top of my hear these kids had a higher then usual drop out rate.

One of my daughters best buds from high school a dude, flunked out of the U of Minn because his roommate was a genius. Said roommate never had to study or even go to class most of the time and still got A's...buddy from HS joined in but he wasn't a genius and ended up flunking out....

[CaliKid]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rayinpenn 5. Just graduating isn't enough you need good grades to land a job.

Yes, good grades are nice but in my opinion they are not as important as internships and being socially adept. In a few years I will encourage my child to get out of their shell as much as possible, be social, do public speaking, join Toastmasters, join a Greek letter organization, etc.... Plus, I will encourage internships starting in high school.

[ER Eddie]

I liked Gumby's advice. Or, as Polonius (?) said to Hamlet, "To thine own self be true." Of course, Hamlet spent the rest of the play indecisively obsessing about what his self wanted to do. So, like all advice, it's much simpler in the saying than the doing.

I would probably not offer unsolicited advice, just support them and express confidence in their abilities. How I've acted toward them will be what they really learn from, not any particular advice about what they should do/be.

Plus, I know I was pretty rebellious as a teenager, so any advice I give would probably be guarantee that my kid would go in the other direction.