D24’s college has a ‘student success center,’ where you can go for tutoring, study skills help, and general organization help & training. The services are all free, but student has to be proactive enough to actually go there and ask for help. This will require him/her getting over the fear of looking stupid.
Not every college does it the same way, but most will have some sort of office on campus where you can get this sort of “how to get your act together and get organized” kind of help.
As a parent, you could tell/suggest your kid what to do, but just know that they will likely ignore a lot of your suggestions.
If you do tell/suggest your kid on how to get organized, consider switching gears from “Do it this exact way: X, Y, Z…” to a tone of “I’m not sure if you’ve thought about this, but here’s some organizational tips that other people have found to work really well for them in college: X, Y, Z. Let me know if you have any questions or want help in getting started.”
Prior to high school graduation, start to take a step back and give your kid the reins some more. If they’re not doing their own laundry yet, have them start doing it themselves. When the mandatory physical exam before starting college is required, have your kid be the one to call the doctor’s office to make the appointment. Have them create their own calendar reminder with an alarm/alert on their phone for it. If they have a part time job, have them practice putting their own calendar reminders on their phone for their work shifts. Have them do the same for other things like club meetings, school events, etc.
If necessary, be really blunt with them and tell them that in college, nobody’s going to hold your hand. Your professors are going to get paid regardless of whether or not you turn in the assignment or actually show up to take the exam. So YOU have to do it. Your professor isn’t going to ask you how things are going, isn’t going to ask you if you’re ok because he/she didn’t see you attend class for the past 2 weeks. So you have to take the bull by the horns, take action yourself.
Recommend to your kid that he/she go visit the tutoring center/study skills center on campus the first week of class. Just so they can: (a) know where it is; (b) find out how things operate there; and (c) find out BEFORE YOU NEED THEIR HELP what kind of help is available and how to get it, how to sign up for it, etc.
Once your kid is in college, parents shouldn’t ever call or email his/her professors.
I have no idea how my kids figured it out, I am clueless, but they did. I figured they were actually there, and could ask questions. I still have no idea how the five of them learned to tie their shoes, all I know is that I did not participate (oldest is a lefty, I felt ill equipped). A big part of my parenting philosophy is one of benign neglect. Even my adhd son with executive function issues managed (although we did work in those in high school, I think some schools might have coaches in the academic success department).
My quick answer to the title question - they ask the upper class students.
As a high school teacher, I encourage my students to take part in activities where they work with students in mixed grades. This way they make friends with kids a year or two older, learn from them, grow their own wisdom, then pass to the kids a year or two younger. When the seniors graduate and move on (to college, military, workforce, etc.), they keep in touch with their younger friends and share with them their experiences.
This is me. I’m often amazed how much parents know about their kids’ homework, schedules and stuff, especially in college. Starting in second grade (first grade was a beast at their school), homework and making sure everything was completed on time was on them. I was irritated when the elementary schools would make me sign off on things.
By high school I wouldn’t have even thought about it anymore. And definitely not in college. Somehow they got it done.
My mantra when they were in elementary school was “I look at your work because I’m interested in what you are doing. It’s up to you to get it done. Im not checking that.”
Some schools have orientations or first year seminars that may cover some of this. Varies by school. Some schools also have residential communities you can join that have a bit more extra student support/study skills instruction.
But this is one of the reasons that students can flounder freshman year in college.
Sounds like you have a few years until college. Now is a good time to make sure they know how to shop, do dishes, laundry and figure out a time management system that works for them. (Did I do this perfectly? NOPE! Am I trying - yep --will he make mistakes at college? Probably a ton)
I don’t think the OP or anyone is asking about how to manage their young adults schedules or homework. They’re asking how kids manage to switch from high school routines to college ones. I’ve never managed my kids’ lives but my daughter still found it difficult. Maybe a little more grace for the bumps some kids have?
When my kids were younger, most people were amazed at their independence and often asked how we fostered it. DH and I talked often about how we needed to come up with a better answer than benign neglect.
We never noticed when the youngest learned to read. He showed off his new skill by reading a sign as we were walking into a restaurant and told my husband “They have Blue Moon here”. Parenting milestone unlocked. Now we could send the kid to fetch the proper beer without having to tell him what color the label was.
I will say that I had NO calendar skills until my 30s as part of an LD that I share with my son. I was a great student, but struggled with knowing where to be, when to be there and what needed to be turned in. I survived, but never knew the level of anxiety I lived with because of it until those skills kicked in (and I’m not sure if they really ever did or that cell phones now have handy little calendars and alarms. My family never trusts me to verbally relay dates or times.). While I think all of these skills need to be the students’ responsibility, some students will just need more guidance, or even explicit teaching, to remediate poor executive functioning skills. For some kids they don’t kick in until their early 20s, for others, they won’t kick in at all if not explicitly taught.
Plus, for those students who multitask in high school, college is more of the same.
Because I had athletes, and kids with part-time jobs, intense schoolwork, they developed their own systems in high school.
Each of them had a paper calendar but they also had the electronic calendars in their phones and computers.
Plus they learn a lot from their dorm and roommates. I know with our middle child, she needed a little help to remember to pay rent, but the gods were watching over her, since she had a really strictly “calendared” roommate who would say “rent is due” and had Post-it notes all over the room, mirrors, with “rent is due on blank”. Since the number of roommates were 6, in a house, they all made sure they submitted their rent and cable bills on time. She kept them really well organized, (A posted Laundry calendar and a kitchen calendar!) but they all managed their independent schedules.
I would say most schools have some sort of first year seminar at this point that is really built to explain and support the transition from high school to college. Look for maybe a 1 credit class like “CollegeName Success” or something once schedules start getting built.
At my school, it’s a required first semester class, and I used to teach it (and loved teaching it, just as staff my other duties precluded me from continuing the last few years.) Things we talked about ranged from time management and how to plan for more downtime than you saw in high school (and how it’s not really ALL downtime), how to address faculty or make an appointment with them, a scavenger hunt of campus to find all of the resources one might need as a college student - health center, registrar, fitness center, etc. Our school also builds in a bystander intervention program into the course, too, which was always dreaded and then students loved the group that put it on and found it really valuable. Guest speakers would come from all over campus, the health and counseling center, the library on how to research, club leaders or student life on all the options for students to find their people.
I always had an anon question box, and would answer the questions each week - “what do I do if I have to go to the bathroom, do I raise my hand?” No, you’d just discreetly leave and come back, but try to go between classes. “My roommate really smells and I don’t know what to do about it” "- Meet with your RA and see if they can help. … etc.
If your kid’s school doesn’t seem to have a course like this, they are the exception to the rule.
Side note, we always had our “first class” immediately after drop off, designed specifically to get parents to GO HOME ALREADY. I would arrive on campus on move-in day to meet my class at about the time parents were leaving, and I always got a kick out of how it was just a parade of parents in SUVs with bloodshot eyes driving off grounds. I am fully prepared to be that same parent in August.
One of my favorite sayings is, “Prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child.” We tried hard to do that, but I’m still surprised at what my daughter does not know.
Love that! Having taught first years for so many years, it definitely influenced my parenting and my advice through the college search and transition, too.
I recently saw a headline about how this year’s incoming class is the least prepared for college. And I can see how Covid contributed to that. These kids started high school learning online, things were a mess, they didn’t have sports or afterschool activities to navigate, most of their downtime was staring at a screen after staring at a screen all day. Schools have worked hard on getting them up and running, but at lot of that was focused on SEL and not much on EF and study skills.
I don’t think your son is going to be alone in this aspect and I expect schools will respond with increased support.
Yeah --there are plenty of kids out there who need more support. There is nothing wrong with that. I’d like to see colleges providing more resources because not everyone can afford to hire (or has access to) executive function coaches.
I remember my own experience -and a little help would have been appreciated. I made a ton of mistakes that maybe I could have avoided if someone had cared or provided a little backing.
Seriously-- if the company’s policy is “get your expenses in by Friday noon to have your check deposited into your account the next Friday”, no, we don’t send a reminder. It is what it is. If Open Enrollment is announced-- and either individual or team meetings are set up to explain changes to the benefits program, WHEN you sign up, you will then get a calendar invite, and a reminder, just like any other meeting you’ve signed up for. There is no concierge to come to your house, explain that the default is the plan you selected last year, so if you can’t be bothered to review YOUR FREE MONEY, you’re getting last year’s plan. Unused airline tickets because you were sick, hotel cancellation policies, how to make sure your company paid travel insurance will cover emergency evacuation from wherever you are going… these are not hard things to look up. You have a dashboard- all the information is two clicks away. But you’ll need to log in-- nobody will REMIND you to log in.
I really feel like I’m 90 years old having to say “Kids today”.
I’m don’t think utilizing a digital workflow system is infantilization. Every job my kids have had has had some kind of information technology for them to navigate. Even hourly jobs they had in high school required them to clock in via a login which sometimes included actionable item messages and tasks like updating a form for HR or signing up for a training. I’m trying really hard to think of somewhere that doesn’t use IT to help work flow or why using such a system is a bad idea.
If anything, familiarity with their university’s systems really prepared them to be self starters in corporate settings since they already had so much experience with big organizational systems. They already understood how to complete onboarding tasks, to check calendars, use shared files, document collaboration, keep others informed, schedule meetings, divide tasks, set timelines, meet deadlines, juggle priorities, etc. enabling them to devote more time to creating solutions.
To be blunt, the college student needs to figure this out themselves.
Mine both figured it out as far as I know–I never heard any concerns. However, mine were on their own since 6th grade: managing middle and high school assignment due dates, planning in their paper “agendas”, then adjusted to changes from paper to Schoology to powerschool. They emailed teachers starting in middle school about any problems or issues, and cc’d a parent only if it was a “big” issue. They met with teachers on their own. There were teacher progress reports along the way in that gave us some insight into the bumps they experienced becoming in total control of their own study habits and plans. Both mentioned off-hand some teachers were better at the online assignment books than others, in HS, and they had to navigate that. Anecdotally some college professors also are not the best at this. It does not phase them–they know how to work around it.
By college, they figure it out. I have no idea how any of it works–I have glanced at the fancy course planning tools each college has, when they showed me for fun, but I have never seen a syllabus, just as I never saw any middle or high school assignments or syllabi or test schedules or anything like that.
My advice is trust your kid and let it go.
If they have learning differences, then absolutely steer them strongly toward the college learning or advising or whatever the options are.
My daughter has used pretty much the same organizational system in college that she used in high school (I’m really not sure what it consists of, but it works for her). She has always been good about advocating for herself: organizing her work, getting assignments in on time, and reaching out to teachers for help, etc., so she had a good foundation. We never intervened on her behalf with any of her HS teachers, and she’s used to taking ownership of her own education.
The online LMS (learning management system) at her college is not the same as the one she used in high school, but the general idea is the same. Her professors use it inconsistently – some make extensive use of the system to organize their courses, and some don’t, but the same was the case in high school, so she’s used to navigating those differences. Admittedly, she has a little bit of a leg up on getting with the program, because – as the daughter of two college professors – she’s spent her whole life hearing her parents vent about students who don’t read the syllabus, so she definitely knows what a syllabus is and how to use it!
As a professor, I would say that my syllabus and LMS (Canvas) pages are pretty well-organized. On the first day of the semester, I walk students through the syllabus and show them how to navigate the Canvas page, where the assignments are, how the readings are organized, etc. I integrate my course with the Canvas calendar so assignments come up a week in advance. But because I know that my students will forget half of what they hear the first day, I review this information later, when the first written assignments are due. And of course they are welcome to ask questions at any time.
But beyond that, I really expect them to be accountable for their own work and deadlines. I expect (especially in this post-Covid age) that they’ve had some experience with an LMS in high school and that they know how to contact me with questions. I’m happy to help, but students need to be responsible for knowing how to figure out what work they need to complete. There’s a little bit of trial by fire, but most get it. My lower-level students get a little overwhelmed sometimes, but my upper level students have got it under control, which suggests to me that they figure it out.