And for those leaving home for maybe the first time, how to use health insurance, how to get a prescription filled, the difference between an ER visit and an Urgent care visit (oh my daughter learned this the hard way - $18000 - yes thousand - for an ER visit (luckily insurance paid once they were notified, but not before it went to collections because my daughter just ignored the bill) when an urgent care visit may have been $100.
Other little life lessons to pick up in high school? How to use a bank account/credit card, how to get through an airport and find your gate, how much sleep one really needs, tax and tip at a restaurant.
Both my kids had a short orientation the first week. Mostly it was for fun things but there was an explanation of ‘office hours’, how to use the library, the health center, the writing help center, tutoring center, the admin offices for financial aid and registering/dropping a class. Basically to ask if you need help. One even had a 1 credit class first semester which was all about doing different things on campus, like going to office hours with one prof, attending a sporting event, joining a club, volunteering for something. It did help them realize the things like the writing center were there to help, not for stupid kids. I think they also learned not to wait as appointments were hard to come by at the last minute.
I agree with several suggestions on this thread and share many of the same views as the other college professors. Each semester I have at least one course filled with first-year students, and the transition can be VERY rough for some.
One thing I would like to stress: emphasize the importance of reaching out for help when needed. It’s great to expect your student to “figure it out” like many others, but it takes some kids a while to do that. And frankly, college courses move very quickly and don’t allow a lot of time for students to catch up if they’re struggling. Every campus has some sort of academic support center that will help with time management skills, scheduling, tutoring, study skills, etc. The level of support varies, but we all expect students to reach out when they need help. We don’t keep tabs on everyone, so we have no way of knowing if they’re drowning until mid-semester grades or retention alerts start coming in. (Many universities have a performance or grade “alert” system when students are performing poorly in their classes.) But, they shouldn’t wait until they’re in a deep hole. It can be difficult, and sometimes impossible, to recover in a course if they wait too late.
So, while it’s great that some students went to high schools that taught them the time management skills they need to be successful in college (and by the way, it’s not just private schools that do this, despite what many on CC seem to think), not everyone had the same foundation. The best thing you can do for your incoming first year is to assure them that many students struggle with the transition from high school to college. Give them some tools to prepare, but they should never feel as if everyone else has it all figured out and something is wrong with them if they don’t. But if they are struggling, they need to seek help before they’re in a deep hole and the damage is done.
And to echo that, USE THE TUTORING CENTER! It’s not a sign of weakness or being ‘stupid’ - Your math tutor may turn right around use the writing tutor for their own needs, we all have our strengths.
Harlan Cohen is great on this college stuff, I send his TikTok’s to my daughter all the time (and help seed that algo, too!) and we have both of his Naked Roommate books, one for the student and one for the parents. Great stuff.
For parents, “How to Raise an Adult” is great, by Julie Lythcott Haims.
While I am all for pushing fledglings out of the nest and trusting they can/will fly, I also think it is important to look at each child through as impartial a lens as possible and to meet them where they are, which may not be where you wish they were.
If you know your student may need added help to succeed in the college transition, I recommend helping scaffold those first contacts with the tutoring center, center for success or career center (whatever your student’s school calls their help departments).
Often times students are made aware of these resources the summer before they go off to school. Parents, if necessary, can help their child practice contacting the necessary departments even before the school year starts. It is a lot easier setting up those support systems before they are needed, rather than trying to get an appointment when a student is already in the weeds.
Some schools offer set weekly tutoring for departments or even specific classes.
Some schools offer organizational/note taking/success coaching.
If you think your child might need accommodations, contacting the Office of Disability Accommodation as early as possible is crucial.
These are all steps some students may hesitate to take. Helping them make those first contacts can be the difference between success and perceived failure.
We don’t pay for water … but our kids know that wells are expensive, since we had to forego a vacation one year when ours ran dry!
I had a really, really hard time freshman year of college. I struggled to figure out how to study, how to balance my time, how to take care of myself (I was afraid to make telephone calls to set up appointments for the doctor, for example). And I didn’t have parents who coddled me. We had five kids, both parents worked, and we were pretty much on our own to figure things out. So while I think it’s good to do what we can to prepare our kids, ultimately some things are just sink or swim. We can be there to extend a lifeline if they are sinking, but we should be careful to make it about learning to fish rather than fishing for them.
They knew how to self-advocate. They knew when to go to a Dean vs. when a professor (or the departmental admin) could solve a problem on the spot. I had spent my years in HS avoiding any grownup interactions (like almost everyone in my large public HS where keeping your head down was a survival strategy) and so it was amazing to see how easy it was to fix things if you knew how to talk to the fixer!
Even dumb things- complain to the RA about a burnt-out light fixture outside the bathroom-- that would take three weeks to get fixed. The BS kids would walk into the housing office in the middle of the day, ask politely to speak to the maintenance person in charge of X dorm, and by the end of the shift, problem solved. Dumber still- a clothes dryer that ate quarters and the clothes would be still be damp two hours later. My roommate and I (another graduate of a big, unruly public HS) wrote a letter, started to get everyone in the dorm to sign it to get the dryer fixed. The BS girls across the hall from us asked “did you call housing?” (we hadn’t). Three days later- brand new dryer on the dolly being wheeled into the communal laundry room.
We were clueless! who knew that the staff (and faculty) actually wanted to be helpful if they only knew there was a problem!!!
I remember your comments regarding advocacy, @blossom, and I referred to them in a discussion of BS scaffolding/hand holding a while back. Though certainly not exclusive to BS, learning to self-advocate for one’s needs is a primary skill instilled at BS that continues to serve our son well.
When traveling with our baseball team over the summer, it was always “Lizardkid (BS kid) will know what to do” when they got into a jam. I’ll have to ask him if the same is true at college.
BUT, let’s not forget, our kids were in a low-risk environment where self advocating was modeled, encouraged and identified as an essential skill that kids should leave high school with and perhaps it was easier for staff to reinforce these skills without parents around. Our kids were able to take risks and build confidence for years before they got to college. Not to mention, most boarding schools understand brain development and executive functioning challenges and set up their programs accordingly. It wasn’t exactly sink or swim which is why I’m not suggesting to the OP to just throw the bird out of the nest (how’s that for some mixed metaphores?).
Very few kids have been to BS. OP is looking for answers for her kid. One of the things we often say in education is “teach the kid in front of you”.
OP is understandably nervous about sending a kid away to school that might still be struggling with some of these things and is unfamiliar with the process and what services are available/how to access them. Let’s be gentle.
We tried to have scaffolding for both kids. In our case, ShawSon is ridiculously smart (my words) or brilliant (the words of his college advisor in a newspaper article) and severely dyslexic. All through HS and the first couple of years in college, we had someone work with him on work planning, among other things. Since he was dyslexic, he didn’t always do a great job of reading emails and his LAC sent everything out via email including assignment changes etc. So, the person we hired had access to his email. All the help was remote when he was in college. He ceased to need it partway through school.
With ShawD, she is very bright and has ADHD. She attended a private HS where there was a study session with someone who helped provide the scaffolding. She did not want to work with the person who helped ShawSon. At her first college, there was a program organized by the Disabilities Services Office where she could meet weekly with an older student who was in the same program and he would tell her what was coming up, what would take time and how to plan her work. She found it very helpful. She transferred and got some help at the next school but found she no longer needed it.
When they were in HS (and before), I taught them how to self-advocate (though this was all relating to disabilities). We would write emails together for whatever purpose (making sure there were accommodations for an exam, for example). Again, I still helped early in college but they took over.
The good news: both kids graduated summa cum laude (or equivalent), finished grad school (Shawson with MS in Computational and Mathematical Engineering and MBA; ShawD with MSN). ShawD still has to deal with ADHD as she became the Medical Director of the clinic where she works at age 29 and has management responsibility. ShawSon is not great at details and prefers to do less reading rather than more, but he is co-founder of a venture-backed Silicon Valley startup and at times has had someone to take care of life details for him. Both of them outgrew the scaffolding but it was critical for ShawSon and very helpful to ShawD.
I agree with @sbinaz’s advice re tutors. With both kids, I also suggested using tutors. I advised each of them to get out in front of it, if there was anything about a course they didn’t understand, see if they could get a tutor. ShawD used tutors in her first couple of years of school. ShawSon did not need a tutor until a course in grad school where he didn’t have two years of prerequisites. In both cases tutors made a difference.
It is not clear if our kids should have advocated for things pertaining to dorms or laundry. In ShawSon’s case; we never heard about it.