Nope, not weird. It makes me ridiculously happy to hear my kids are doing things with friends, even when some of those things go late on “school nights”. 
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no, not weird! I totally get that!
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May all of our C25s have a fun (and safe) time figuring out how to balance work and fun over the next four years.
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Just got back from Fall Family Weekend. D25 was very excited to show us all of her classrooms and even where she sits in each class! LOL. I take that as a good sign. No big friend group yet, but seems happy and likes her classes and professors. Kraziness in the Kennel lived up to its name and she loved being a part of it. We have family in the area, so we are debating if she will come home at Thanksgiving. If she doesn’t we won’t see her again until December! 
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Late breaking decision this morning to bring S25 home for fall break. He told me they had Friday off and I found a cheap flight, but then after telling him we could do it - and feeling like he really wanted (and maybe needed?) to come home, it turned out that a bunch of things happened so instead of flying home Friday morning and back Tuesday evening he’ll get home late Friday night, fly back Monday afternoon, and it’s costing us an extra $125. For the little amount of time he’s getting home I wouldn’t have said it was worth the cost, but by that point it was clear that he really wanted this, so I went ahead and bit the bullet and bought the ticket. I think the fact that most (maybe all?) of his friends are relatively local and have cars and they go home occasionally for things and they are all heading home for the short fall break. I also think he’s been there long enough now (move in was 8/15) that the fun and excitement and newness has settled down and now he’s getting to the hard things and the rote and the parts of class that are more challenging. When we’ve talked recently he just seemed not quite himself. I’m hoping he’s just missing home a bit and not feeling overwhelmed (he’s that kid that historically had let things go, said it was fine, said things were good, until all of a sudden he realized it wasn’t good and he was overloaded and vaguely panicked). Regardless, it will be good to see my boy, but I’m a little nervous about the vibes I’m getting. Hopefully it’s just me seeing issues where there aren’t any. Whatever, I’m glad to be getting him home this weekend.
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I’m glad you’ll get a chance to see your son and hope the break gives him a chance to rest and recharge.
Neither of my boys’ schools have fall break. Well, that’s not exactly true. S23 is at UGA. They give them the Friday before the UGA-FLA game off. This year that’s October 31st. Anyone who’s not going to Jacksonville (Neutral site. Massive party.) for the game will be staying in Athens for Halloween.
I haven’t seen them since mid August, but we’ll all be in Athens for the UGA - Ole Miss game in two weeks, and I’ve told both of them that I don’t expect to monopolize all their time, but I do expect to spend a little time together as a family. Come to the tailgate. We’ll have free food and drink. All for the low, low price of giving your mom a hug!
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Really proud of my daughter for speaking up, reaching out, and communicating about what things could be better and where she needs help. She is one who typically thinks she shouldn’t ask for help, so this is in IMO a major step forward in maturity. Instead of her hiding away and pretending that everything is “fine”, we’ve been able to talk about where she wants me to step in and where she wants to keep trying to handle things herself.
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D went to tell her advisor that she wants to switch out of Engineering and he seemed very disappointed in her, which led to a crisis, lots of crying, self-doubt, etc. She is already a perfectionist who places a lot of her self worth on her academic ability and now she feels like a walking cliche because she is considering SCM (you know the joke about the business school being full of ex engineering majors)…
It’s only early October of her freshman year and she feels like a complete failure for not wanting to pursue engineering. If it were just a matter of the coursework being challenging, I would encourage her to keep going…but the thing is, she loathes her Intro to Engineering class. She pushes through Calculus and Chem and her other courses, is actually doing well in her Greek lit class…but cannot stand the Engineering class…she doesn’t care about trusses or forces or particle droplet sizes…
I asked her, “do you want to be an engineer?” and she said “no”…which means it makes sense to switch out of engineering. But she has convinced herself that this means she is lazy and dumb (because she would switch to an “easier” major). It doesn’t matter how much I tell her that we’re not disappointed in her, she is somehow disappointed in herself even though she was never 100% sure about engineering in the first place.
I am exhausted and worried; she is exhausted and unhappy —and this just sucks.
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And the roommate situation is getting worse.
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lol… I remember when my S23 called me his freshman year on a Wednesday night saying “Hey dad I’m at a bar!!!” Made my week. Lol
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Haaa!
My D22 is super reserved, very much a rule follower, didn’t touch a drop of alcohol all of freshman year – but that summer she studied abroad in Rome, where the drinking age is 18.
I, too, got that text – “OMG we just ordered wine with dinner!” Complete with a picture, lol.
When in Rome…
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I’m so sorry she’s having a rough time. I think there’s nothing you can really do but keep telling her you love her and are not disappointed and that you just want her to find the path that feels right for her. Life is too short to spend time doing something that isn’t fun or fulfilling or the path that you want. It’s ok to change your mind to find something that fits better. And its ok if that thing is “easier” - who said that we all have to do the hardest thing all the time just because we’re capable? It’s ok to follow a path that is fulfilling and makes you happy and it might be less complex. There’s nothing wrong with that. Finding joy in life is important, and if pursuing one path is actively sucking the joy out of life with no positive end in sight, then it’s not the right path.
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Hugs to you and D.
Your D does need to understand that it is perfectly fine to decide she doesn’t enjoy engineering. That is what college should be about – exploration and growth. If she continues on with a major she has no interest in she will be setting herself up for not only a miserable college experience but also a career she hates. There is no reason to feel a failure – she just doesn’t enjoy something she thought she might.
In terms of rooming, can she start to explore other options for next semester – possibly with someone in band who has a similar schedule?
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Had I not switched out of engineering, I would never have completely accidentally run into linguistics, which has been my career ever since.
Heck, I would probably have not graduated from college at all. Doing something you hate isn’t going to sustain most anyone for four years.
And also, she may be surprised how many not-easier majors there are out there outside of engineering. Even leaving aside the insanity of things like architecture and pure mathematics, reputationally “easier” majors like philosophy and psychology get very, very intense very, very quickly for students who don’t just take the courses to get their credential but dive into things like mentored research.
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Also, good breaking news from my kid! (And good news is especially welcome, because there’d also been a chronic-illness acute health scare a couple weeks ago.)
C25 had applied to Hofstra as a linguistics major, with the intent of declaring a second major at orientation. But it turns out that because linguistics is a BA-only program and C25 wants to get a BS, not a BA, in mathematics (specifically, pure mathematics—as C25 says, why would you try to apply math to anything when you could just, well, not?), that pairing isn’t a double major but rather a dual degree, and it requires extra paperwork and the university verifying that you can actually complete it in four years, since by its nature it takes more than the usual 124 credits Hofstra requires for a bachelors degree.
This morning (well, afternoon for C25, I guess), though, the approval came through—my kid is officially a dual degree student! (Plus a minor in German—already on the degree program—and maybe also a disability studies minors, if that somehow can get fit in as well.) This is a particularly timely approval, because advising in advance of signing up for spring courses starts this week, and this means that C25 can get advising not just from the honors and humanities advisors, but also the math advisor, and sequencing correctly is crucial in a math program.
Also, kind of amusing—C23 and C25 both went in to their university programs with enough transfer credits from their dual-enrollment high school that they entered as technical sophomores and were/will be juniors by number of credits upon completing their first semesters at UNT/Hofstra. C23 has parlayed that into graduating early—would be graduating this December, except that there were course sequencing issues that pushed it back to May 2026. C25, on the other hand, has never had any desire to take less than four years to graduate from college, and is using it to pack as much extra academics into four years as possible. Both approaches are cool, I just think that the temperaments that lead to that difference are intriguing.
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It sounds like your daughter is interested in computation-based majors but just not the ‘conventional’ engineering paths such as civil and mechanical as introduced to her so far. Has she considered operations research, which uses advanced math to model, analyze and optimize problems in the real and business world. Operations research is definitely not an ‘easier’ major, and in some colleges it is grouped in the engineering school.
Your D is doing exactly what one should do in freshman year, to test out and explore which path to take.
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Thanks everyone. We’ve told her all of this—that if she stays in engineering then she would be miserable for 4 years and then in a career she would most likely not enjoy, that it’s not quitting but redirection, reminded her that she was never sure about engineering, about finding her purpose and best use of her talents, blah blah blah.
IMO a lot of it is a classic case of an overachiever in HS suddenly being challenged in college, and how that shakes her confidence and sense of self-worth. She’s also mistakenly looking around her and gets the false impression that everyone else has it together and knows what they want to do when of course that most likely isn’t the case at all.
We are trying to change her living situation for next semester.
Thanks for the support.
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