This is where I force the facts and not their interpretation. I would ask who do you look up to that you are for certain has it “all together” at this stage? I would ask her what the redeeming qualities of her friends are (and it wont likely be their gpa). My S23 is on his third major now I think.
I was one of those who switched my major in college as well. I was going to do genetics as I was fascinated by the science and treatment of genetic disorders. I then had someone ask me “have you met yourself?”, as in, I am such a social outgoing person that how could I ever survive in a lab? Truth is, I would have been miserable. So nursing it was!
One thing I’d question is “easier for who?” – I mean, engineering is a whole lot of math, but if you had asked me to do a major in something like my S22 is doing where they’re producing 10 page papers as a weekly assignment and longer ones for end of term, I’d have just curled up and died (or, um, never finished college, I guess, not actually perished). While my S22 would be miserable in a math-based major like engineering or physics.
The ability to write well and convey meaning to other people is hard. Just as math is hard. Different people choose different hard to learn to excel at.
I know you/she know this, but that’s so common. That was me my freshman year of college. I slayed in HS. I was a total academic rock star. Then when I got to college and realized that it was really hard and I wasn’t as successful and I had to work and I was a front row seat holder on the struggle bus it was just so hard. Not because I was struggling academically, but because I had always defined myself as “the smart one”, the one for whom school was easy and I just didn’t know who I was if I wasn’t the rock star student. It was a huge crisis for me to figure out who I was and what was special about me if it wasn’t my brain. It took me a while to work through all of that, and there was a lot of soul searching (and major switching - from Biology to Public Policy, from Med School to Law School). So tell her she’s not alone, that more people than she knows - current students, past students, future students, are all in the same place.
Shame on that advisor for making her feel crappy instead of just talking through her interests and trying to find what other major would be a better fit. Isn’t that what we pay advisors to do – advise?
I hope your daughter comes to understand that there are brilliant kids in every major, including business and humanities and social science fields. I have that overachiever kid who excelled at everything in high school. But that doesn’t mean she enjoys everything – she loves languages, but if she had to take an engineering or chemistry class, she would be miserable. And same with a business class – absolutely no interest.
That doesn’t make her less smart, regardless of the reputations of the various majors.
My son’s speech therapist went to my alma mater (Florida), and she was pre-med until she got to organic chemistry. Pretty common, lol! So she went looking for another path and found speech-language pathology, and she’s been successful and fulfilled in that field. (My daughter is now applying for SLP grad programs after majoring in something tangential, so that story comes to mind.)
Hope your kiddo finds the right thing – and gives herself permission to be happy doing whatever that is!
As someone who’s been a faculty advisor to students, I can imagine this happening, though I don’t know of it ever actually occurring.
I do know from experience, though, that some students take faculty being neutral and doing their jobs in a professional manner as disappointment. I don’t know if that’s the case here, but if your daughter was already experiencing some self-doubt about this, it could totally track.
I’ve got both my boys home! S22 has a week long fall break. He got home late Saturday night and so far in the 18 hours he’s been here he has eaten more food than I eat in two days, has purchased two new pairs of shoes, and has realized that he left his meds at school (not great, but not a disaster.). He has a Teams meeting tonight with his senior project team, but other than that his plans for the week are to apply to lots and lots of post grad jobs.
S25 got home Friday afternoon. He was able to change his flight at the airport (for a kid who had never flown alone before, I was super impressed that he advocated for himself for the better flight) so he was able to take a flight that not only departed earlier but also was direct (instead of a two hour layover) so he got in almost five hours earlier than expected. I had friends over Friday afternoon and evening, so I mostly left him on his own, but he got some homework done and had some good downtime. Saturday my friends were still here until early afternoon, but S25 took himself to get a haircut. I think it looks kind of silly, but he’s happy. Today S25 asked me to help him with some stuff - he needed to go through the documents sent to him by his summer job people and figure out what to sign and do. Then he wanted to go over possible classes for the Spring and make a few potential schedules for registration.
Mostly the boys have been minecrafting together and watching football and things are good in the Octoberkate house. I was worried for S25, but I think he was mostly just a little homesick and a little missing his brother.
D25 just told us that she is starting to date a boy she met.
I’m both pleased for her (she has never dated anyone) and terrified. She still sounds like my kid, though. Her comment was both positive things about him and that “it’s inconvenient. I didn’t want to date anyone my first quarter!”
DS25 is home for fall break and it is so wonderful. We formerly had an oversupply of hand fruit and milk; both are now solved he loves his classes and has stories all about people whose names are new to me. He has really joined in with the Hillel (Jewish) community and has led some services, but also has friends from his major, dorm, etc. “Any interesting girls?” “Maybe one; we’ll see.”
Love hearing all of the fall break updates! We got back yesterday afternoon from our weekend trip to visit S25, since they only got two days off for fall break. We had such a wonderful time seeing him. We spent Friday night in Terre Haute hanging out on campus a bit, dinner out, and then he stayed with us in our hotel. We stayed up talking and laughing as a family. It filled my heart with so much joy! Saturday we drove over to Champaign, IL to watch Illinois play (and lose to) Ohio State. My husband is an alum of Illinois so we caught up with a lot of old friends and enjoyed a beautiful day. That night we headed back to Terre Haute for dinner and one more night and morning with S25. It was such a treat seeing him, and I can’t wait until we’re reunited again for Thanksgiving.
He seems really, really happy at Rose. He loves the small size and has made a lot of friends. Rush is still ongoing, but he has his eyes set on one of the fraternities that continues to reach out and invite him to things. They seem like a good group, and he’s really excited. Academically he seems to be doing well and thinks he has all As and Bs at the moment. The Bs are, of course, due to not turning things in on time and/or not fully following the assignment requirements. But he says he feels like he’s getting a better handle on how to navigate the system. And last-but-not-least, his side of the room was shockingly clean! I could not believe my eyes! He was even working on laundry when we showed up. I guess he’s growing up. It definitely makes me feel better about him being so far away.
We saw D25 a few weeks ago and are heading back in 2 weeks for Homecoming so we didn’t visit her last weekend which was their 3 day weekend.
She did call and say she was officially sick for the first time. She forgot she had medication we just dropped off at the last visit so I had to remind her to take some. I don’t think she got out of bed really for 3 days.
And I have seen a few more photos of her in social media posts from the school or the groups she is in. That is always fun!
New adulting activity unlocked for S25. He takes ADHD meds and, thanks to our insurance, the Rx has to get filled every month, he can never do a 90 day. It also has to get filled in person, you can never do mail in pharmacy. He’s been gone almost exactly two months. We got his meds filled the day before he left for school, then we were able to do the first refill at home and bring it to him for over family weekend, the timing just happened to work perfectly. This time, though, he had to get the refill at school and navigate their process.
My S22 goes to a small school and, while they have a health center, they don’t have a pharmacy. So he’s always trying to track down a CVS in town that has his meds available (not always easy). S25, though, goes to a much larger school and their on campus health center has it’s own pharmacy.
S22 also has to get his Rx sent from a doctor in the state with his school (MA doesn’t allow the reciprocity other states do) and that state requires he see or talk to the prescribing physician every month. So every month, he goes in to the health center to talk to the doctor. It’s kind of a PITA, but I’m glad he’s got someone checking on his physical and mental health so consistently. (Ironically, S22 happened to tell me yesterday that the doctor told him he’s “probably his most stable patient”, so I guess that’s going well.)
S25 doesn’t have to do that, his regular doctor at home can prescribe into SC to the school pharmacy. But yesterday he figured out how to set up an account at the school pharmacy to get text notifications, how to give them his insurance information, how to pick up and pay for his own meds. All good stuff.
We saw S25 two weeks ago when we went to visit for his birthday. He is doing so well, he has a friend group and they seem to do a LOT all the time, which is so wonderful. He has done more socially in 6-8 weeks than he has done in the last 4 years. At home he was the definition of “homebody”. Before college he was dreading having to live in a dorm with a roommate. Now he is talking about having a triple for next year!
He is training and competing over fall break, so we will see him next at Thanksgiving.
My S25 is settling in pretty well, I think. It’s been a bit bumpy with trying to befriend various kids – I think he was expecting an instant group, and that has not happened. But he has met nice kids here and there, and I know he’s not sitting in his dorm room wondering what to do – it seems like he’s always out doing something. And when he feels out of sorts, he goes to the gym for some pickup basketball, which is great.
This weekend he’s doing a film race with a group of about 6 or 8 students – they were given a prompt, and they have one week to produce a 6-minute film. He’s the editor on the film and also the lead cinematographer. He does have a bunch of experience from his AVTF classes in high school with this sort of thing, but he’s learning that he doesn’t know this group very well, and there are some wildly disparate ideas of how to proceed, lol. Last I heard, they were going to drive two hours tomorrow night to shoot from 10pm to 4am, so they won’t get back until 6am Sunday.
S25 is one of the drivers, and I am not loving this plan. But I haven’t said anything – only to be careful. It is hard for me to back off and let him adult, but I really have no choice, lol.
We’ve seen him twice – he came home for Labor Day (when I was actually out of town so only saw him a couple hours on Monday) and also for fall break, and he’ll be home next at Thanksgiving. If this film race goes well, DH and I might drive out for the “premiere” of the 13 different films in a couple weeks.
Since my oldest went 13 hours away for school, I am loving that he’s only 2 hours away!
I found out today that my daughters cousin who was also a class of 2025 kid already dropped out of her public instate college (a little over an hour from home). I guess she was homesick and didn’t like that her roommate kept having guys over in their room.
Meanwhile my daughter continues to tell me how much she loves her classes and her professors. Loves her Christian group. And she is teaching a pop up class for her dance club this weekend in contemporary. My 3.3 gpa test optional girl is thriving so far!
I’m a little jealous of everyone who has seen their kid over fall break or an earlier parents weekend– D25’s parents weekend is not until Halloween! Her school had fall break but we (based on D25’s preference) decided not to go then.
Overall she’s doing well. She has struggled a bit with time management, which has always been her Achilles’ heel. We had a heart-to-heart call 2 weeks ago, about 3 weeks in to the semester, when she was feeling very swamped and behind. By the time we talked with her, though, she had already been in to see the professor whose class she was behind in– turns out this professor makes everyone sign up for office hours. D25 also made appointments with student support services & counseling– both things we had wanted her to do, but she had held off at first. Although it hurt to hear that she was struggling, it was comforting to hear that she had the support from the prof & other services– it feels like this school is a good fit for her.
Socially, she seems really happy- sounds like she is often doing things with friends from her house. She shared a bunch of photos from fall break activities on social media that looked like a lot of fun. Again, it just seems like such a good fit for our introverted kid who had a hard time making friends in HS. Can’t wait to see her in a few weeks!
he loves his classes and has stories all about people whose names are new to me. He has really joined in with the Hillel (Jewish) community and has led some services, but also has friends from his major, dorm, etc. “Any interesting girls?” “Maybe one; we’ll see.”
But I haven’t said anything – only to be careful. It is hard for me to back off and let him adult, but I really have no choice, lol.