Anyone cares to share some anecdotes about high ability but slacker kids and their college success (or lack of it)?
I am not sure what to expect next year. Socially, very mature and well adjusted, I do not worry about that. He was also able to hold an internship for four years and did very well in it. But homework, returning work on time, in general school work it has been a torture. He has 2150 in his Sat (minor prep in math) and above 3 (some 5) in his APs. Average gpa B. Might have some issues with AD but he is been very uncooperative in looking in to it.
Strength: speed reader/critical thinking
Weakness: math/showing detailed work.
He is going to study business (his choice, not considering anything else). Got in the business school of our flagship.
Some of his teachers are telling me they worry about him keeping up with the work in college. Some teacher are telling me kids like him do better in college than high school.
Arg.
Time will tell. Kids mature a lot in college. You may want to offer an incentive (or disincentive) for maintaining a certain GPA. If you are doing loans, make sure they’re in his name so he has some skin in the game. He may find that working toward something specific (a degree of his own choosing, vs a legal/social requirement to be in school) is a powerful motivator.
Make an appointment with his doctor and ask the doctor to discuss ADHD symptoms with your son. I’m assuming your son is 18 (or soon to be). If your son has ADHD, medications can be helpful but most importantly your son can better understand his strengths and weaknesses. There are organizational techniques that can help, and colleges sometimes provide support from what I have heard.
All in all, your son sounds terrific. I have a 13 year old who sounds a lot like this. Charming, lots of friends, very smart…but he just can’t seem to turn his work in!
The first is about an older brother.He was a slacker in high school; clearly smart, but not motivated except when it came to his hobbies, and made mostly Bs and Cs. A family friend got him into a small private college. Dad told him it’s either that or you go to work full time or into the military. The college turned out to be a perfect fit. He bloomed, made Dean’s List every semester, and went on to earn a Master’s degree.
The second is about DS1. Charming, affable, very bright and totally unconcerned (for years) about completing anything that didn’t interest him or doing more than minimal work. He got off to a rocky start after college, then had an epiphany about the real world when he saw how the crash effected so many of his friends and coworkers (and us.) He realized he’d been extremely lucky and had just been coasting along taking everything for granted. The change in his attitude and behavior in his mid-20s was astounding. He’s still just as charming and affable, but works very hard and is doing well in his career. I hear him say things about personal responsibility, managing finances, etc. that sound just like my dad and it’s hard to hold back happy tears.
I know others who matured dramatically in the five years after college. Someone here shared a study a while back that showed our brains aren’t fully developed until at least our mid-20s and sometimes until 30. Perhaps that why I’ve known so many guys who seemed like Peter Pan until they were in their late 20s.
If your son isn’t cooperative about the help you’ve arranged, then it may be time to back off. He will hear about the various options for assistance at college and might be more inclined to listen to advice when he has asked for it. You also haven’t mentioned any serious problems that require intervention, so “tincture of time” could be the best antidote.
My ex. His IQ is off the charts. He coasted through high school without ever really applying himself in class, but was one of two kids who literally set up, programmed and ran the school’s first computer lab. Internships weren’t a thing in HS back then, but he also put in plenty of time with his music, performing locally and even being part of the band on a record that got some play.
He chose a state college over MIT because of access to skiing, and had an average GPA there, majoring in computer science. After we married I once came across a notebook with a few pages of class notes and asked which class it was from. He said, “All of them.” In all of college, he’d only taken about 15 pages of notes-TOTAL. Despite all of this, he got several job offers before graduation and has gone on to work for some of the biggest software companies out there. He was diagnosed in his late 40’s with ADD and Asperger’s, as was his older brother (that’s why he looked into testing).
It’s too bad your son won’t pursue meds, but maybe at some point he’ll figure it out. My ex succeeded even with the bad grades and lack of knowledge about his issues, but I can only imagine where he’d have ended up if he’d known sooner! Good luck.
My kid was always an unmotivated student. His grades were good because he is highly gifted but he never put time or energy into anything academic. He is currently a junior/senior in college now and it seems that his motivation has finally started to kick in. He is trying to decide a direction to take for grad school and is actually taking initiative to make things happen. (He was diagnosed with Aspergers at six but no ADD or ADHD.)
So, my story, sometimes it just takes kids a few extra years and they all develop at their own pace. He’s still not a “go-getter” but at least he’s focusing and working toward a goal.
We had several discussions this break about the fact that his dad and I were not going to finance his grad school and talked about possibilities for getting jobs and financing his own education and he actually seemed interested. I think the kid is finally growing up. OTOH, he came home to London with no socks, no medication (he needs 3 daily), shoes full of holes and all of his dirty clothes for the semester in two suitcases. Sigh - one step forward, two steps back.
Well, my slacker kid has been slacking all the way through college. I can’t tell you how many talks we’ve had. He doesn’t have ADD, and he’s got extremely fast processing skills. He is not gifted, but his IQ is in the upper normal numbers. Normal in all other respects, and as he has aged, matured quite a bit. However, he has never pushed himself academically. He decided to major in Business, although we told him to do what he wanted…he loves sports…different fields he could have gotten into where he might have enjoyed it enough to get good grades.
So, he graduates next Drcember…with probably a 2.3. I don’t know how he us going to find a job with that. We purchased a suit for career fairs at school this spring, but I was the one who brought up the fairs and how he needs a suit and to begin preparing. He seems apathetic, and almost a bit depressed.
How is he going to explain that GPA? I’m sure he has some executive dysfunction, he’s been like this since 8th grade. He is on Vyvanse.
OP, I truly think it just depends on the kid, if there are any underlying mental health issues, etc. so many factors. I will tell you that his first semester he had to drop 2 classes as he was failing, and ended up with a C, D, F…1.0 GPA. Since he almost got kicked out, it did get better each semester. His grades are mostly C’, with a nice number of B’s and a few A’s. There are also a couple D’s. He admitted he hates studying and can’t wait to start working. I think the moodiness is he understands now the connection between the two.
My other son is highly motivated.
3 years apart…raised the same. I’m one that believes if parents do no harm, how they turn out is just how they were born.
My friend’s son will graduate in May with a 4.0 in mechanical engineering. He turns 30 in a few days. He graduated top 5% and had a 1470 M+CR SAT score.
He totally screwed up his first attempt at college, skipping classes, never doing homework, playing League of Legends around the clock. He worked for some years as a carpenter before the restart. At 25, an ADD diagnosis and meds made a big difference for him.
I was a so-called “slacker kid” in high school because I was a procrastinator in high school and had not developed proper study skills for certain classes despite being in rigorous classes. So far I have been doing much better in college because you are actually studying what you care about and there is much less busywork. Had similar strengths as your son, could pull out an 800 in critical reading easily but struggled with mathematics because it required sitting down and repeating practice questions. Overall I think kids tend to pull their own weight or change their major because they are now the ones at the steering wheel. The responsibility for their success or failure now is their own, the best you can do is be there to support
My older son didn’t work hard in HS, but graduated with about a 4.3 GPA, and had somewhere around 50 college credits before his freshman year. I can’t say he was lazy - he took 6 AP and 1 GT class senior year, and another math class “for fun” at night. He did very well on tests (800 physics and math SAT2s, 34 overall ACT, with No studying, etc). He also took college classes in the summer. He got a fairly substantial scholarship, which fortunately was not grade dependent. We expected him to do very well in college. He is VERY bright. He could have received a degree in 2.5 - 3 years, or done both undergrad and grad in four years. BUT, he insisted on taking all hard classes when he started college, and not repeating anything from HS. He also became social, and quite literally more well-rounded, and also really started slacking off in college. His grades in college have been pretty disappointing, and if his school had a GPA requirement, he would have lost his scholarship. He has opted not to go for a 1year grad degree at his school. I hope he can get a job. I am happy I didn’t pay for an even more expensive full-pay school, and I do feel like my money was somewhat wasted. However, I “console” myself by saying the college years are about more than academics, and he has learned a lot about life. I suspect he will flounder for a little while, and then figure out what he really wants to do. Then he will put the effort into things, and he will be fine. @conmama he graduates in May, and doesn’t have the suit yet. I have a couple of weeks to worry about it, if he wants to. He hasn’t gone to the career center or signed up for the career fair either. I don’t really know what he’s thinking.
Had a co-worker once who said that in high school, he was a slacker who did just the minimum amount of work to pass (was able to ace tests without much or any studying, which enabled the slacking on things like homework, projects, etc.). He went into the military after high school and got serious about school (community college -> state university) after separating from the military.
@1214mom …it is so worrisome, isn’t it? I am glad I read your post because I didn’t realize you had to sign up for the career fair. That’s the thing…I shouldn’t have to know these things…he should care enough to know that. The career center will help him interview, etc…but I know he won’t take advantage of that, he never takes advantage of any help offered from the university. It annoys me to no end. DH says he needs to hit rock bottom. The thought of him home next year is unsettling, he probably won’t have a job. i did tell him if he doesn’t have one, he will have to move back home, find something at Target, Lowes, etc… while is is trying to find a career job because we are not giving him spending money like he has now.
S1 - 4 years at a state school with very little progress toward his degree. M & D - “That’s it, were done paying for college.” Got a factory job with a very understanding boss/owner (small shop). Transferred to another state school with less than half his credits from 1st state school transferring. Boss at work rode him constantly about finishing school, meaning we didn’t have to. Three years later he graduated with honors. Went back to 1st state school for master’s degree. Now finishing up PhD.
Water finds its own level. When is the bigger question.
I was the gifted slacker kid in high school and college. I liked working in the grocery store more than going to my classes. I had absolutely no plan as to what I was going to do once I graduated. I think I would have been fine just continuing on working there. However my husband had other plans and didn’t want to stay in our small town so I put together a resume and went on some interviews. Luckily for me I got a job as a computer programmer. I really liked it and I was pretty good at it. I think it’s important to find out what a slacker is interested in. Once they figure that out they probably won’t be a slacker.
We told our kids they need to support themselves after graduation. They can’t come back home and crash. Okay if they are waiting for a job to start or doing something at a local college. But otherwise they need to figure it out. Have them some incentive…
Our DS1 was definitely a slacker with regard to academics. He knew exactly how much work he had to do to pass classes and graduated from high school with 1 extra credit. He is very bright and was not a slacker in anything that interested him- he is very hands-on, loves building things, loves being outdoors, and hates sitting in any office. . He is very charming and got most jobs he applied for. He spent around 4 years bouncing around community colleges, dropping a lot of classes and scraping by. Finally when he was about 23, something clicked, he finished up his GE’s at a CC, and transferred to a State 4-year. Did so well his junior year that he got the Departmental full-tuition scholarship for his senior year. Got an internship his senior year that turned into a great first job. After 2 years, he decided he wanted to live somewhere he could easily mountain bike and snowboard so found a better job in a different state and moved. He has now started his own business and is doing quite well. He puts a lot of hours in and loves every minute of it. It just takes some kids longer to find their fit and to mature a bit. We had really pretty much given up hope that he would graduate from college, but it all worked out.