Parents of the HS Class of 2009 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
11121

<p>NM, congrats. S1 said coming out of that last exam was the best feeling he has ever had.</p>

<p>Peonies, I wouldn’t rule out a health care career if your student really feels drawn in that direction. Our next door neighbor’s daughter was a C level student in high school and has always wanted to be a nurse. After taking and retaking a number of the required courses in college, it became clear she wasn’t able to make the grades needed for the program. But, she refused to give up her dream. She switched to a community college/hospital based BSN program. She continues to work very hard and has had to retake some of those classes a couple of times to pass, but expects to get her license next spring. In the meantime, she works part-time at the hospital and will some day make a fabulous nurse.</p>

11122

<p>To second what CF has stated, working and reworking problems has many benefits. When D’s problem sets in Physics or Multi were returned, she would rework the problems she missed points on to make certain she understood what she missed. </p>

<p>I wish I had suggestions for Pre-Calc. D self-studied with a teacher “supervising” her work. Only reason this worked was because of the fantastic teacher she had for APCalc who did an intensive pre-calc review the first week of class.</p>

11123

<p>And of course, the problem is that when they get a bad grade in math, that means they haven’t learned something that they will most likely need in the next class. I mean, if they get a bad grade on the test on Wuthering Heights because they fell asleep and didn’t finish the book, it will probably not affect them in the future at all.</p>

11124

<p>downtoearth, thank you for sharing a little of your experience as an ICU nurse. The qualities you mentioned - intuition, people skills, caring, focus - are qualities D2 shares (at least at this point in her young life), and are factors behind her interest in working in a health field. One upside of academic stress is that it does test one’s character.</p>

<p>Cardinal Fang, thank you for the advice about tutors. I’m hoping that D1 (good at math) will be able to provide some help through the end of this term - though the logistics of this are complicated. Too late to hire an adult tutor for this year, though maybe over the summer she could work with one to try to fill in gaps.</p>

11125

<p>It was the labs. He handed 4 in late. He had trouble with his lab partner (randomly assigned) who had the data and would not get it to son in a timely fashion (of course who knows how timely S was in asking for it either) - add to that S’s need to have extra time to write and it was a bad situation. He says he understands physics well and I believe it. He got an A in a college level high school class (that his college accepts as an elective transfer credit.) He also got a really high 700s score in the Pysics SATII Subject test. He has a good mind for the subject material, but he cannot write (remember this is his LD for which he has not asked for accommodations) His college will not accept summer school credits in this subject. I asked him if he still has his lab reports, he says yes. I asked him if they will help him pass it next time. He thinks they will. Who knows.
The college requires 2 natural sciences among their general requirements. So his best bet is to retake this class, most likely. Luckily he took Discrete Math as a CS course (the same class is offered as a Math class or a CS class) so he has his requisite 2 CS classes and does not have to retake the Object Oriented Java class. I suspect he will not have trouble with the math classes he chooses in his major, but he still has to complete the humanities portion of the general requirements. This will also be a hurdle. And the final big project? If it’s in Math maybe he won’t have to write too much or too eloquently so long as the math itself is elegant. In other words, I don’t think I can relax until he has graduated.</p>

11126

<p>

</p>

<p>The other day I was actually contemplating the life of this thread. Lots of people have fallen off since HS and after getting their kids off to school in the fall. Others have fallen off throughout this school year. Others will probably drift away as their kids have calm, successful, uneventful college careers. But LOL, I bet the two of us will be on here for years, sweating every semester.</p>

11127

<h1>tm, it seems to me that #theoryson ought to ask for the accommodations in physics. With the experiments, he ought to have the data in his hands as soon as the experiment is over. If he has a writing disability and is unable to write the data down himself, he should be entitled to some kind of scribe who will write the data down for him and hand it to him. Or, if his lab partner has the data, they should walk over to a copy machine the instant the experiment ends.</h1>

<p>Then if he has trouble writing up the reports, he needs to hie himself over to the writing center.</p>

<p>One of the hardest things for my son is self-advocacy. His pitbull of a coach (we love her) is teaching him to ask for what he needs, follow through, plan ahead and have fallback plans already being executed in case the best case scenario falls through. </p>

<p>For example, he needs a tutor for summer. His inclination is to email one possible tutor, hoping she’ll respond, and then forget all about it. Then when the summer comes and he has no tutor, he’ll explain that he emailed someone but never heard back. It’s like he doesn’t realize that the goal is to succeed; instead he does the barest minimum that might possibly work if everything goes perfectly. His coach is making him pursue several possible tutors at once, making sure to follow up for each one.</p>

11128

<p>TM, I forgot about the LD, and agree whole-heartedly it’s a good time for TMSon to consider getting help, especially since he’s performed so well in physics in the past! Good luck on that front.</p>

<p>========</p>

<p>Hey, Shawb, let me try to dig that info up. Pretty sure it was in some of Barkley’s writings/research, but I’ve also blended that with Adele Diamond and most recently Amnon Gimpel’s writings. Also just read Hallowell/Ratey’s Delivered from Distraction.</p>

<p>Here’s something slightly related that I had bookmarked, but the genetic connection was addressed somewhere else:</p>

<p>An article in the Psychiatric Times says that COS (Childhood onset Schizophrenia) was also typically preceded by characteristics that overlap with features autism spectrum disorders (34%), as well as some other “disorders” in the areas of speech and/or language (60%), attention, and mood.</p>

<p>Not only that, but almost all COS kids (a whopping 99%) had a comorbid (co-existing) diagnosis.
Here are 4 frequent comorbid diagnosis listed:</p>

<pre><code>* Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): 84%,

  • Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD): 43%
  • Depression: 30%
    </code></pre>

<p>=======================</p>

<p>So, the short strokes might be that the functional and structural anomalies in the brains of some people diagnosed with schizophrenia, such as changes in grey matter density in the frontal and temporal lobes, while in different AREAS (eg. striata sp?) there is some overlap with ADHD in so far as an over/under production of either DRD4 or D2 dopaminagenic (sp???) production genes. ADHD also shows up as thinner frontal lobes on a PET scan. Hope I’m not mangling this all to heck. Don’t believe the scientific community is unanimous on this anyway, but when you start scanning all the different articles since Diamond’s 2005 genetic suppositions you begin to see this broad (but still undefined) pathological and partly genetic spectrum of dopamine over/under production and specific location conditions that seem to influence everything from the autism spectrum on one end and psychosis on the other, with anxiety, depression, bipolar and adhd along the way.</p>

<p>But some study actually showed the heritability of adhd that included the other disorder, so I’ll see if I can find that.</p>

<p>Cheers, K</p>

11129

<p>

I’ll be right here with you!</p>

<h1>tm, I’m guessing this impacts his academic standing too? Seems like that letter you received about “good” academic standing was premature? I am so sorry.</h1>

<p>My S needs 4 “natural science” classes for his robotics engineering degree. He has now completed 3 physics classes (one of which he NRed, then passed on re-take). I don’t know what he is going to do for his 4th science. The buzz on the chem courses is that the lab reports are really tough. That is a shame, he has a good background in chem (2 years in HS), but has a major problem with lab reports, due to his writing LD. He hasn’t heard much about bio, but that has never been an area of interest for him.</p>

11130

<h1>tm, I believe you said that your S had a GPA ~3.2 (NRs (“fail”) don’t get computed into the GPA, for you non-WPI folk). Your son is getting A’s and B’s in the courses he is passing.</h1>

<p>My son, on the other hand, has had no NRs since A term (when he had 2), but he has mostly C’s, a small number of B’s, and no A’s (he didn’t even get an A in “Wellness”, it turns out you had to write stuff :mad:, who knew?). Consequently his GPA is ~2.2 :eek:.</p>

<p>I am very concerned about his low GPA. It is going to be very hard to pull up, and (I suspect) A’s are going to be extremely hard to come by! When he starts interviewing for jobs, they are going to take one look at that GPA, and move him to the “no” pile.</p>

<p>I wonder if he might have been better off NRing some of those courses that he got Cs in, and then re-taking them, and (presumably) getting a higher grade. I suppose he could re-take the courses anyway, but that is kind of hard to justify, given that he did pass them.</p>

<p>On the other hand, he did re-take the 2 courses he NRed in A term, and got C’s in them :(. He should have had an A in the CS course the first time, and I was deeply disappointed in the C he got on the re-take. And I thought he had a shot at an A on the re-take of the Physics course, though I would have been happy with a B. But, nope, 2 C’s :mad:.</p>

11131

<p>CF…As well as D2 does academically she really has problems calling and talking with people. She would act just like your S and not follow through if, heaven forbid, she had to “keep bothering” a teacher/tutor/boss. She would figure out a way to be successful but without having to actually meet with them in person. That is a last resort measure for her.</p>

11132

<p>CF and NM, that is my D as well. As I read through the description of the tasks and training the “pitbull coach” provides I recognized a great deal of my own activities in there. I think I need a coach to teach me to let go.</p>

11133

<p>Yeah, I still can’t believe D2 handled her athletic release/transfer/new registration and leaving campus without talking to anyone, all through email. Well…she did have to have a 5 minute talk with an academic advisor by phone for new school registration. Drives me crazy!</p>

<p>Funny story…D2 went running this morning and ran in to the varsity basketball coach of her new university. Coach stopped her and said she had heard she would be on campus next fall. Said the athletic department would love to have her play any sports there. D2 just smiled and said nothing. sigh…</p>

11134

<p>DL
Fortunately S has the required number of credits, due to his music classes. So his academic standing is good, however he does lose more of his scholarship since the courses need to be considered <em>academic</em> or a full 1/3 unit- which voice is not, to make up for the NRs. It is what it is. </p>

<p>Yes he gets pretty good grades in the classes for which he receives credit - and yes that helps his GPA - for now. Sorry Dragon Son is having a difficult time of it too. I know it is difficult material, but your S and mine are plenty smart enough for it. We can only hope their learning abilities will overcome their DISabilities. Hey it can happen as they mature and they learn to cope with their shortcomings on their own.</p>

<p>As far as NRing and retaking. Sometimes it MIGHT be better. But I hear from S that some profs won’t let that happen, especially if you know the material and they sense you are just blowing it off. In some courses, as I hear it, the prof will give a C so it DOES affect your GPA. Of course that is heresay. But that is what the kids are saying.</p>

<p>In #TS’s case, I think the he got NR’s IS better, since he can retake these required classes with hopefully a better score to go into his GPA (chances are just as good he will not get better than a C though. Just how he is with classes he does not feel like putting the work into, and what he needs to learn to change about himself). However if he had not NR’d we would have his full scholarship, so that’s the trade off.</p>

11135

<h1>tm, I’m glad to hear about the “good” academic standing. That is very good news.</h1>

<p>I don’t think that my son’s mediocre grades are due to the material being too hard. I’m pretty sure he is actually learning the material, and his test scores are generally good. He just can’t bring himself to: go to class, go to lab, do homework. In his CS class he pretty much forfeited 10% of his grade by not going to lab and not being there for the in-lecture assignments. He got a B in OOP, which is the best he could get, given that he threw away 10%.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Here’s hoping :D!</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Interesting, I had not heard that.</p>

<p>

Yeah, there is that. S had 2 NRs, so is currently “down” 5%. But he is taking 2 courses this summer (he is there right now), and even if he only passes 1 of them, his merit aid will be back to full value.</p>

11136

<p>Today was ShawD’s last day of finals. The good thing: she went into it thinking that trig was easy. A year ago, it was inconceivable that math would be easy. And she left saying it wasn’t that hard. Thank heavens for Ritalin, extra time, and maturation. </p>

<p>We had 20 HS juniors here tonight for ShawD’s birthday party, which is a couple of weeks early because she’ll be on a service trip on her birthday. Nice kids. ShawMom barbecued chicken breasts for 400 which I sliced up, along with tomatoes, onions, … She made rice and black beans and we put out tortillas, organic salsa, and guacamole. Although the group was 1/3 boys, it is an arty kind of school and these kids ate less than what ShawSon and his 5 friends would have eaten. [Fortunately, ShawSon will be here over the weekend so the barbecued chicken for 340 people will be gone when we return.] A few will be sleeping over.</p>

<p>We’ll be at my college reunion. It is always a fantastic event. It is great to see roommates and friends. Great bands, lots of alcohol, and a touching event in which the classes march starting with the oldest [men often older than 100, sometimes on golf carts or oxygen] on to the graduating class. Time marches backwards before your eyes.</p>

11137

<p>

</p>

<p>And isn’t that what we want for all our kids – that they will pass that exam, course, milestone and have that sense of elation and accomplishment? Congrats to all who have finished the year or their college career; genuine commiseration for those struggling or disappointed; and hope for the good things to come.</p>

11138

<p>Saw the discussions on Physics a few pages back. I am a math person (accountant), but for the life of me I just could never “get” physics. It just never made sense to me.</p>

<p>D got a job. Started today working part time at the desk in a hair salon.</p>

11139

<p>

My alma mater does a similar Parade of Classes at reunions. (I’ll be attending mine next weekend.) It’s a little disconcerting to see that my class is moving up toward the head of the parade line!</p>

11140

<p>Interesting discussions about physics and learning types. Back in the 70s, I had a terrible (and sexist) HS physics teacher, so I never gave it a second thought after that miserable class. I avoided as much college science and math as I could get away with.</p>

<p>But DS finds that Physics is his favorite. It is dumfounding to me, but he once explained that he enjoys knowing the rules that the world follows… he likes the reliabiity that once he knows a formula, it always applies. He seems headed for a physics major with math minor. </p>

<p>ps-- the stovetop is connected and working! the oven is on the back porch and headed to Habitat for Humanity. There is a gaping hole in the kitchen wall. H vows to find a replacement oven that won’t cost an arm and a leg. to be continued…</p>