Second Semester Anxiety

N_s_Mom
Sun, 06 Mar 2016 09:05:16 +0000

My D sounds a lot like yours. She finally opted out of the double major (it became a minor). She decided that instead of doing a semester abroad with the school (which required cramming classes into the other semesters), she took a semester off and set up her own ‘study abroad option’ with a language school, an airbnb apt. rental and other local infrastructure that cost half of what a semester abroad would have. It was so successful that she did it again later when she wanted to do research abroad. It meant taking 5 years to graduate instead of 4 (but we only needed to pay tuition for 4 years since her overseas stuff was self- and grant-funded) so she wasn’t as pressured. We also encouraged her to take a least one ‘life skills’ class a semester - a fun class like Indian cooking, swimming, yoga, tennis, conditioning, drawing, ceramics, sign language: She ended up running a marathon, learning to draw and to meditate and making some new friends in the process (once she got over the guilt of using an academic ‘slot’ on something ‘non-intellectual.’) And yes, she had a very productive and helpful relationship with a psychologist who helped her disassociate ‘good enough’ from ‘mediocre’ in her self-evaluation among other things.

At this point, she’s got it figured out: balance, coping with uncertainty, decision-making without compete info, living with the B when there are bigger goals at stake, knowing when to ask for help, knowing when to follow her gut, finding constructive ways to manage stress. These are the kinds of life lessons that you can’t teach but that over-achieving (and other) kids often need to learn on their way to adulthood.