happycollegemom

i'm back and again having trouble

happycollegemom

i was using an ANALOGY about being pregnant and knowing about all that, and NOT knowing what to do after the baby comes...as in knowing how to get into colleges, and then what....

ebeeeee

happycollegemom,
I think I follow. If you like, try PM'ing me and maybe I can cut/paste and post....I am not having trouble posting..I'm using firefox, maybe it's your browser..

happycollegemom

ok...working...i'd said many kids are not prepared emotinally/socially for college. high schools focus on GPAs, SATs, ECs, etc, and less on the right fit, which takes into consideration the kid's own SELF knowledge.

happycollegemom

( i said many schools have guidance counselors who don't do what they're supposed to do) i see kids who don't ebven know to take APs, rather than easy As in regulars.

happycollegemom

ok, this seems to be working, so i'll keep trying to recreate my MUCH better previous letter! i'd said that i have 2 in college(new empty-nester) and one in a "public ivy". we'd visited some ivies and she was very turned off by their sense of superiority. she chose to not apply to them.

jym626

I think the CC technophobes must be watching the Oscars or something tonight. Yes, CC has been acting persnickety tonight, so no, I don't think you wrote anything that was unacceptable. We have all had the same experience of losing a post that we thought was worth of an Oscar for best original screenplay. After you finish curisng at the computer for losing your work. So please, do your best to recreate it, but cut and paste a copy into a word document first in case it goes *poof* again.

happycollegemom

i'd also said, it seems to be common knowledge that some of the ivies, do in fact what deb's son was talking about, i think...guarantee an "old boy's" job network, etc. they aren't at all the better schools, just full of theire own importance.

happycollegemom

one in particular(one of the "best") is known to never give grades below a B, even for inferior work, because once you're in, you're one of them!

happycollegemom

i don't remember what else i said, exactly, but i guess it's important to emphasize how kids are not being guided in ways other than stats, prestige and academics. as we know, there's so much more to a good fit in college for our kids. hope this was worth the wait!

happycollegemom

i am grateful to hear from all of you! the kids on CC can be pretty brutal! nice to chat with parents!

momof2inca

sjmom, I've done a lot of wondering about this, as well. Some thoughts:

1. Smaller family sizes produce higher achieving kids because parents have more resources to give: time, energy, money, opportunities. Every year, the bar gets higher for these kids and parents. But...

2. The achievements are possible in part because mom and dad run interference for S and D, helping to maintain a structure at home that can't be matched when they leave for college. We are the personal secretaries, drivers, calendar-keepers, disclipine-makers, reminders, tippy-boat righters, etc.. for our kids, especially our boys, whose abilities to multi-task are often much weaker than our girls, and whose prefrontal cortexes (which help with planning and predicting consequences) are more slow to develop. Well-meaning parents help to simplify life so that the kids can maintain precarious balancing acts that defy what we could have accomplished as kids (from larger families). College coaches might adopt some of these roles or provide some structure for new college students, but most non-athlete kids are left to their own devices. S has said repeatedly in the past couple of weeks is "If there is one thing I've learned since leaving for college is that everything is a lot more complicated than it seems."

3. Technology. Especially video and computer games (which boys play more than girls). It allows them to become careless because the mistakes are virtual. They can always hit restart when they screw up too badly. And there are "short cuts" and "cheat sheets" when they don't feel like going the long way around. This perhaps diminishes their experiences with perseverence, though I know that "winning" a computer game requires some kind of staying power, just not sure it the same kind as college does. Technology also encourages risk-taking because the consequences of failure are so minimal. Even something as staightforward as a research paper. I had to type mine on a typewriter; mistakes had to be painstakingly erased with whiteout or weird erasable ribbon; whole pages had to be retyped sometimes. It certainly made me plan ahead and be very careful. Technology and multi-media also have increased the capacity for input but decreased the time for reflection, which would seem necessary to actually learn from mistakes. Why mull over a failure, why dwell on the reason for a nagging melancholy when there are all those Facebook pages to check in with and Youtube videos to watch?

Just some observations. YMMV. And I'm not sure what I would do differently to prepare S for college.

MomofWildChild

Appreciate yout thoughts, Happy. However, my son's prep school counselor spent lots of time focusing on the right fit- as did my husband and me. Our son was quite clear about what he wanted- and the school he chose seemed to fit the bill academically, socially and athletically. The reality of it just didn't meet expectations, due to some changes in him, an athletic injury that won't resolve, and the extreme alcohol-focus of his dorm and social network. He is an older freshman and has been away from home at school for a number of years. He is very disciplined and independent- and social. I did NOT expect to have these issues with him. I spend a lot of time discussing one side of this kid, but the other side is that he now sees St. John's as his academic dream school. It doesn't meet some of his other needs, but he would love nothing better than to read great books, study classics and debate with fellow students and faculty. How we got from wanting the most intense pre-professional business school in the country to bailing for the Utah wilderness is somewhat confusing. I can handle helping my son figure out what he needs from his college experience. I just didn't expect to be doing it.

sjmom2329

I think you make some really good points, momof2inca. It just seems that I'm reading more and more of kids running into a road block emotionally when they get to the goal they've been trying to reach for so long. I think we were just lucky with S1 -- he's happy and seems to be doing well, although I had to deal with my own excessively-high expectations about grades. I'm learning to just say supportive things, instead of suggesting that more study time might be helpful!

I'm just comparing the way things were when we were in college to the pressures kids have today. My immigrant parents didn't have a clue about the American educational system, which gave us kids a lot of freedom. We could make our own mistakes without them looking over our shoulders. My husband's parents were also non-judgemental. We could goof up and recover without an audience. I don't think kids today have the same sense of freedom -- they're supposed to know where they want to go to school, what they want to major in and what kind of career they want when they are 17 or 18! I'm 47 and I'm still figuring that out.

mominva

Thanks, all, for sharing.