I think we all have a responsibility to engage and make CC the kind of community we want it to be. Often there are posts that don’t violate TOS, but they are unkind (IMO). If you see a discussion that you think is headed downhill fast, why not redirect some of the discussion?
“Reasonable” ones do (and they are probably not going to be making vile posts anyway). Others most certainly are not going to obey commands from other posters. Those types seem only to pipe down after they get put in “prison” or temporarily banned.
There are a couple of posters on CC who have been jailed and banned for certain amounts of time. I’ve noticed very little change in their posting behavior, no matter how much other posters call them out. The only difference I’ve seen is that they seem to stay JUST enough within TOS to stay out of trouble. I find that some of those who I feel are consistently out of line but that the mods deem are staying within TOS are best just put on ignore. Others I haven’t put on ignore officially, but I find myself skipping their posts whenever I come across them.
These grownups are not acting like anyone has feelings (or like grownups for that matter). And if their feelings are genuinely hurt, then maybe they will realize how they hurt others, and change their behavior.
No, the bulk of them are not gone. Only the super-nasty ones are gone, where people responded to posters rejection laments with links to home-maker guides on amazon, and things of that nature. The others remain.
My goodness, we actually had a poster ask if the enjoyment he felt when kids are upset at rejections to top colleges made him a bad person! That astounded me in so many ways…
I think that is a good tactic. Engaging in similarly vicious dialogue doesn’t help change the direction to a more civil tone. IMO.
I have been on this board way too long. I have watched certain posters play a very long game and very slowly, year by year, change the overall tone of the parent threads, and really seem to positively impact how individual posters respond to recurring topics.
SouthernHope: I am still so angry I could spit at the university that waitlisted my son. He loved his college and is going to his 10 year reunion this spring. He went on for a PhD and loves his job. I doubt he really ever thinks about that waitlist. I am not sure I will ever completely recover. It’s rough.
In full disclosure: For those of you who know me well you know that as a person my husband’s father was not a good person. Our little family does not live in the glow of his celebrity. My comments are the cold facts about his musical success.
So…having said that…an interview that he gave FIL said that all music has it’s base in the classics…reworked. Why do I say that perhaps you have erred in saying that he wouldn’t be successful, or as successful today? You hear his music everyday. Like Jazz? television…oldies…semi religious songs? Holiday music? He did it all. You cannot teach what he did. (There might have been others in the family who went to school and didn’t do so well.) did I mention that FiL died 15 years ago?
Classic instruments? Obviously one must be trained to break through. One cannot be a robot and play the notes correctly. There is a soul that one cannot be taught.
BUT to brag and bring down others by saying…give it up…you are a failure because you didn’t get into…fill in blanks. Not okay…ever.
@consolation:
“@musicprnt, unless you know who @bevhills’ late FIL was–and I certainly don’t–it is very presumptuous to tell her that he would not have succeeded today.”
This was from their post:
“Music school and who gets in and why: My husband’s father was in the music business. He was VERY successful, as a musician/composer/arranger. Everyone here “knows” his music. Did he go to college? Nope. Did he finish high school…maybe not”. What this translates to is “getting into music school isn’t needed for success, look at my FIL”.
This is very presumptuous, they are talking about one example (their FIL) and using that as an example to show how music school is not necessary, and I pointed out that first of all, that might work in something like composing and arranging (film music I would assume), and secondly a single person doesn’t prove anything. Put it this way, a self taught musician would not get into a major orchestra and would likely not get into any kind of major gig these days, they would be competing against people who are well trained. Even in his era, a lot of the film composers were conservatory trained/trained musicians, John Williams has a degree in composition from Juilliard, Michael Giacinno has training in film composition, most of the ‘great film composers’ had serious training. And the FIL’s example might work in some areas, you don’t need college training to write pop music or rock music or whatnot (and no, I am not looking down on it), but in those genres often the recording engineers and producers who shape the music do, that’s all.
The point is that the level of training in music these days is much, much higher than it was in the FIL’s day, and across the board across all genres it is a lot more competitive then it was back then, it is a lot tougher world, and it would have been a lot more difficult for someone without the training, a self taught person like her FIL, to succeed now then it was then. I continue to hear all kinds of stories proving that kids into music “don’t need to go to music school”, "don’t need to get serious in it until college’ and give examples of success, when they either are some friend of a friend story, or are from a time a long time ago.
No it’s not OK. There are two seasons on CC that make me sad…right now with the rejections and the rejections disguised as massively huge waitlists and the gloating and about a month from now on the financial aid forums. I agree that one should report a patently offensive post or immediately call out the poster. Parents should know better. Chastising each other, whether parent to kid, kid to kid or Parent to parent is flat out rude.
Are people saying that parents are telling kids that they are failures because they didn’t get into certain schools?
I assumed they were referring to posts where a kid was upset about not getting into any “good schools” and certain parents pointed out that they shouldn’t be so surprised, since the kid didn’t have any safeties or matches. The kid can do nothing about that now, so those posts are rather pointless, and as others have mentioned, not very compassionate while the hurt is so recent.
I have literally nothing to add to this thread.
But apparently, by sticking to the parent cafe and parents forum, I am missing a lot of drama.
Postmodern, you are obviously much more kind and caring than a lot of people, myself included. I have not been terribly sympathetic to some of the kids posting in the last couple of days, though I haven’t been vicious. I have been snarky, admittedly, to one kid in particular. No doubt I will rile plenty of people up, but I am going to present the flip side.
I do not believe all of the kids are posting because they are hurting and want sympathy. They can get sympathy and comfort at home, from parents or friends, not from an anonymous forum. I believe quite a few of them are posting because they want adults here to validate their feelings of being unjustly denied from top 20 colleges. They want people to agree that they have been hard done by. They often post their stats along with the schools they were denied or waitlisted from. Why tell strangers about how sad and upset you are that you only got into Georgetown, or Cornell, then list your stats too? Cruelty is never necessary, but I don’t feel anything is achieved by coddling those types of kids. Plenty of teens read these posts, and there is something to be learned from a dose of reality. Parents who have yet to fully begin the college process also can learn from these posts too. I know I certainly did.
Maybe I am too much of a realist, but I am a proponent of the “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” school of thought. I suspect that for some of the posters, it might be the first time they have been truly denied something they wanted. I am guessing that their parents are probably also shocked and have no idea how their kid didn’t get into Harvard. Truth can sometimes be a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s necessary, esepcially for teens who are nearly adults.
@Lindagaf , thanks for the kind words.
My belief is that there is a great chasm between coddling and cruelty, and it does not take much effort to post in the middle. Some posters seem to take great pleasure in the latter, and I think that makes for a far less effective College Confidential.
Well, that’s distressing! It echoes the recently sentenced public servant in the New Jersey Bridgegate scandal who said, when seeing the havoc her actions were causing, said something to the effect that “Is it bad that I’m smiling?”
Yup. It was. And she’s going jail.
I confess I can’t imagine that parents are posting on the “What are my chances” threads. But given that they apparently are, I think it’s untenable to argue that one doesn’t really believe that the students are properly humble, but need to be taken down a peg.
I really can’t imagine that anyone thinks that’s necessary.
Edited to add: @Postmodern – I humbly request that you don’t disappear from these parts.
“Are people saying that parents are telling kids that they are failures because they didn’t get into certain schools?”
I have seen this too many times in the past from [primarily] asian applicants who applied to top colleges and were rejected.
I no longer look at any chances or acceptance threads now that I have no kids who are in that place , but I see some cruel and thoughtless posts elsewhere.
For instance, last week, one of my old friends on FB posted a really personal attack against another woman because of her decision to relinquish a dog. It got really ugly , really fast. I posted a pretty neutral comment that wasn’t hurtful or insulting , yet the next day, I was messaged in a chain of all the people who commented. My comment was something along the line of hoping the dog found a good home , but many of the other comments were really just terrible and out of line.
I am concerned with the growing lack of civility and compassion on social media.
I sent the woman an apology , even though I didn’t come close to the horrible comments that were so hurtful…unfortunately, she will never see my apology because it ended up with her deleting her account. I confronted the " friend " who started the thread and she had no regret whatsoever…
Musicprnt: Just a few notes: After your dismissive post about who succeeds and why and how. There were so many sure things that didn’t pan out. So…here’s my take. To play in major orchestras I imagine that yes…you “need” a degree. But like a Chorus Line the trick is to be the same. To break out of the Chorus Line you need to be special…you need to be different.
And despite your dismissive tone that for jazz or rock and roll…or whatever…is easily learned and success there doesn’t equal classical music. Hang in there. Life happens. I truly hope that you are not disappointed.
@menloparkmom, I have also read posts written by Asian kids about their parents berating them for failing to get into top schools. But I was actually asking if CC parent posters were telling young CC posters that they were failures for not getting into top schools. I have NEVER seen that happen here. I have, however, read many recent posts where kids lamenting their rejection from Ivies were basically told to toughen up. Those are two very different things.
A couple of comments in response to the post by Lindagaf #50:
I think it is actually quite helpful to the CC community when students post their standardized test scores, GPAs, course loads, and activities, if they have been declined by a college they had hoped to attend. I work at a university. But going into the admissions process from the parent’s perspective, now many years ago, I really had no clue about how it worked. The official pronouncements of various universities do not show how the process actually operates (in my opinion). But if one sticks around CC long enough, one gains some insight into the admissions practices at “top” schools, and into the defenders of these practices as well. (This is not a complaint about affirmative action, which I support.)
I was told long ago by a friend who had worked in the Harvard admissions office as an undergrad that Harvard was not looking for the “smartest” person, they were looking for the applicants who would be the most successful.
Well, success is in the eye of the beholder. But aside from that, despite having this early clue about admissions, I did not really understand how it worked in practice until after QMP’s application year. It would have been really helpful if CC had been as far developed as it now is.
Also, I suspect that the students who are posting their qualifications and have been declined by their top choices are looking for some variety of external validation. That is not totally out of line. Of course one’s parents, relatives, and friends are going to say “Wonderful University X really should have taken you. You are a great student and person.” For many students, that will not carry the weight that a comment can carry if it comes from someone who is not related to them, and is not a friend.
There is obviously no point in my starting out a post with “Poor baby.” That would be coddling. But to tell a student with strong objective qualifications that if I ran college admissions, he/she probably would have been admitted is not coddling, in my view–in a number of cases, it is the simple truth.
With regard to posts such as “I only got into Georgetown,” [or Cornell, or fill in the blank]: It’s awkward on many levels. There will be applicants who are overjoyed to have been admitted to Georgetown. There will be applicants who were objectively qualified to go to Georgetown, were declined, and are upset. Former President Bill Clinton, if he read CC (ha ha) would be thinking, “What do you mean, you only got into Georgetown?” I happen to really like Georgetown, we toured it, and if a student wants to go into foreign service or governmental work, it is a top choice.
But I have been guilty of something like this in the past [with a different school], on behalf of a friend of QMP’s, so I can’t say I don’t understand the feeling. The person in question is extraordinary, as subsequent accomplishments have amply borne out. The person’s admissions outcomes were incomprehensible to me–and still are. Not coddling. Just fact.
I’m not sure what posts the OP is objecting to. If there’s useful advice in a post, kids who are almost adults should be able to read past the tone. If there’s no useful advice, I don’t see the value in posting a response in a thread asking for advice.
"I’m not sure what posts the OP is objecting to.’
Those were apparently so nasty they were cleaned out by the Mods. B-)