time to power down the helicopter?

Parents Forum
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At least on the SAT it’s BEFORE not after, but since my kids are barely awake first thing, it’s no better. ;)</p>

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This is not true at all IME, several of the colleges S2 is applying to says they don’t consider the writing section at all. Most colleges I’ve heard address the issue directly say the personal essays are an opportunity to get a more personal feel for who the student is, and they are not used as a writing sample (unless of course who the person is, is a budding writer.)</p>

<p>I realize ergo and henceforth could be stand-ins for any overly formal language - my point is - students make that mistake all the time.</p>

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<p>^^I didn’t realize the essay was first. Then I am more amazed that DS did as well as he did on the rest of it, as I know he was pretty down after he did his essay.</p>

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<p>It was actually bit of pulling teeth to get DS to move away from formal essay structure for his college app. It had been drilled so much that an ‘essay’ is structured thus, even if it’s under 100 words :)</p>

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<p>“18 year old kids use these words to sound more erudite, while adults usually know better. I’ve read a fair number of essays from CC kids - that’s their biggest failing - not writing in naturalistic English.”</p>

<p>Ding ding, we have a winner. This is the dominant problem I see in my work as a consultant. Personal statements are supposed to be personal! But I see overwritten, overwrought sentences in graduate students’ cover letters and in legal briefs, too. Be direct, be concise, and chances are good that you’re writing well.</p>

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<p>I had my parents over for dinner few nights ago. I started talking about “helicoper parents” to my parents, how parents weren’t like that before. </p>

<p>My dad gave me a puzzled look, “Is that what they are calling it nowadays? I typed all of your kids college applications. I applied to 10 schools for you.” </p>

<p>I said, “I applied to 10 colleges? I am only aware of 3?” </p>

<p>My dad, “Back then we only had typewriter, it was a lot of work, so I just did it for you. All you had to do was to sign, you only worked on 3 yourself, that’s probably why you don’t remember.”</p>

<p>I was completely shocked by that piece of information. My dad said that I got into my first choice, so he just never followed up with other schools when they asked for additional information. </p>

<p>I guess we are not the first generation of helicopter parents.</p>

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<p>LOL^^^^^^^^^^</p>

<p>I can’t spell at all and I gave up on worrying about it a long, long time ago. Though I do appreciate when the poster above me uses a fantastic word I can “plagarize” (sp) ;)</p>

<p>Mathmom: What I am saying is that they are not using the essay to determine whether or not your child can do the work at the school but to get to know them as people. One of my children is a geeky type and this comes thru in her essay. If a kid is an ergo, henceforth type, the whole essay, including the quirky subject pick and the tone will reflect this. But, also, it’s not something to overthink. The kids just need to be themselves.</p>

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<p>poet,</p>

<p>I could not agree more. The essay should sound like the student. It should reflect who they are, not an airbrushed picture or idealized version of them. I don’t understand why anyone would want to go to a school they had to fake out to get into.</p>

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<p>Several comments. </p>

<p>Never got to see the essays 16 year old (since he procrastinated he had turned 16) wrote for college admissions. Found out he once lost points on a college history of science essay test question because he presumed knowledge and didn’t explain a math/science principle that was obvious to him. He wished the GRE computer test had the essays last, not first (he had done extremely well on the ACT/SATs) but he did well enough- a higher score wouldn’t impress math grad depts more. I see where his college grades reflect his interest and relative abilites- a part of me wonders how he may have done if his interests were in a writing intensive field.</p>

<p>Helicoptering is real from the extreme examples given. Aiding a student with disabilities is not the same. I jumped in with my own college contact when I saw the online timetable conflict with course scheduling for some course sequences- alerting both depts saved busy freshmen problems as they changed the time of one course before one dept was even aware of the problem- I might add I even stated in my email that I wanted to be sure there was no association with my kid and me on it (thank goodness for different last names). Helicoptering? PG-13 not X-rated in my book…</p>

<p>Refer way back to post #15 (and, can you tell I’m not a writer after all of the discussions about that). Parents and spouses act as compliments to their kids/better half. Despite equivalent intelligence, education and/or occupation there seems to be an innate difference in organizational skills between men and women (a fascinating area to study- cultural versus physical brain differences). My H years ago said he was the general and I the sergeant- he had the big picture, gave the orders and I figured out the execution and did it, handled details (presuming I agreed with the idea, I have trouble following orders). The comments about the high flying fathers and hovering mothers is true regardless of the mother’s education. Women could use wives to serve the administrative assistant roles they take on in a marriage partnership- especiallly those of us to don’t like some of the detail work we do so it gets done. That said, it is my H who is researching grad programs and sending numerous links, some of which he says son replies he already had. We parents are learning what we can about son’s world by doing our own research. Unlike the college admissions process my biggest advice seems to be be sure you consult with people on campus/use the resources available to you (independence has its good and bad sides, including our lack of knowing what he is doing).</p>

<p>We can find out about son’s academic life since he emails us his downloaded class schedule from the school’s schedulizer program every semester- helpful in knowing good/bad times to try to contact him, easiest way for him to give us the info. We then can look up all sorts of interesting info on the school’s website. It has helped in knowing last class time before a break and when his last final is for planning home transportation (waiting for him to think of it on his own would mean last minute inconveniences). Also satisfies parental curiosity to a degree. I recommend parents ask for the schedule- it saves a lot of questions. btw- once checked on the class info where a grad level math coourse prof gave a (incomprehensible) problem set and specifically stated students were to work on them alone and not with classmates, but were to come to him for help; unlike past courses where I know son collaborated with others. Lurking like this you get impressed with how much your child must know to get the homework.</p>

<p>I can imagine parents with more time than busy college students looking up grad programs and doing other research to present to their child. I can imagine nagging the child to do apps, make appointments, etc. I can imagine helping with travel arrangements and looking for housing and helping with the move when the time comes. I can’t see helping with grad/prof schools the way this overbearing mother in the article did. I have to wonder if some pediatricians are like some elementary school teachers in their outlook on life- viewing the link of parent to child differently than others and forgetting the adult separation the rest of us see.</p>

<p>This is a fun thread for me as a lot of parents with kids approaching grad school are responding- my current peer group. Love hearing about others at this later stage of college life.</p>

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<p>Exactly my point. My son’s essay could have been a lot more polished but it was sooo him that if it counts against him, IMHO, he doesn’t belong at that particular school.</p>

<p>I doubt that ad coms are looking for a perfectly written essays. I suspect they are trying to get a sense of that particular kid’s personality. Grades, scores and ECs can only tell you so much about a person. The essay is the one thing on the application that is entirely unique to that student and comes across (hopefully) in that student’s voice. Will it be the ‘the’ thing that gets the kid in? Who knows? I suspect it is just one more data point the ad coms consider.</p>

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<p>Thinking about the issue of helicoptering, I can’t help being struck by the irony of the fact that Americans are the biggest consumers of “self-help” manuals and guides to living. From guides and articles about parenting, writing resumes, dressing for success, writing the college essay, cooking for one or for a crowd, buying cars or the latest gizmo… In many other cultures, such information often comes from parents or friends.
I was told that the office of career services at Harvard offered tips to students going on the job market about everything from writing an effective resume, presenting themselves during the job talk, how to pace themselves throughout the day of interview, what food to order at dinner to avoid minor disasters (such as dripping ketchup over one’s tie).
Does it matter if it’s a college’s office of career services that provides such coaching or it’s mom or dad?</p>

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<p>Actually I think it does matter that the kids learn to find appropriate coaching outside of mom and dad. We know a lot (which is why they should continue to consult us) but of course we don’t know everything. </p>

<p>I remember writing DS a long letter when he was just starting to take college classes, telling him it was the time to be on the lookout for people who would be good at giving him advice. I told him some specific people who I thought would be willing to act as mentors to him. I told him to use office hours to ask questions that went beyond the course curriculum. I told him he was old enough to consciously start acting as a leader and mentor to younger kids.</p>

<p>As a freshman this year, he chose a frat with a very strong mentoring program, he goes to office hours, he asks upperclassmen about their majors. This is healthy.</p>

<p>This idea that a lot of parents need to be forced away from our kids for their own good just strikes me as silly.</p>

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<p>I too encouraged my D to find mentors from the time she was starting high school, and she has been exceptionally good at it. Now a sophomore in college, she feels no anxiety about knocking on the door of a dean or advisor or professor for help and guidance because she has always done so, beginning with her choir teacher in 9th grade. She never needed “helicoptoring” because she was always independent and confident.</p>

<p>We are trying to instill this in our son, now a hs senior, but he has never presented nearly as well as his sister to adults, and needs to develop this skill more thoroughly. His football coaches love him, his teachers not as much, which I think reflects his relative immaturity and his ADHD personality, which I know can be very irritating sometimes!</p>

<p>Some thought my daughter was a “brown-noser,” but I’ll tell you what, it’s helped her a lot so far!</p>

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<p>Very thoughtful post by wis17.</p>

<p>I think mythmom has exactly the right approach for someone whose job is teaching writing at a college level. And, God bless you for taking on such a daunting task. External help in structuring or editing is typically not appropriate because she cannot tell what the kid needs to know. And, a first time mandatory redo on plagiarism seems constructive. Two strikes and you are probably out, I would guess.</p>

<p>More generally, she has it right in another way:</p>

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<p>I think the primary purpose of education is to educate and a secondary purpose is to sort. I have been clear with my kids that in high school, the primary objectives are to learn how to think and how to learn and as part of that to learn key skills like writing and math. Grades are important because there is a game called getting into college but learning and grades are not always positively correlated. the same is true in college.</p>

<p>I’ve told my kids that my key focus for them is on learning. And, beyond that, my focus is on success in adult life, not getting into the “right” college or doing well in college [although those can both be helpful]. What does he or she need to achieve or master to increase the odds of a successful adult life? Learning to think, write and communicate (despite, in my kids’ case, learning disabilities) will be important. Being organized and learning to planning ahead are important as is learning to draw on the help you need to achieve your objectives. But, these skills have to be learned and high schools (and colleges) tend to try to teach these by osmosis rather than taking them head-on. [mythmom sounds like an exception to this general statement]. Raising a dyslexic gave me a clear sense of the predominance of the osmotic method in teaching reading and writing. While sorting is useful to society (colleges, businesses and grad schools want to know how to evaluate incoming applicants), it is important not to see sorting as the primary function. </p>

<p>When we went to parent’s night at my son’s HS, each teacher spoke primarily about their grading policies (and not about how exciting the subject was or what kids would learn). I used to call the HS a cathedral to grade-earning and grade-giving. A kid who was trying and got a B or C in math is allowed to pass to the next course and no one gives it another thought. The school closes its books and upon giving a non-failing grade, considers it has done its job successfully. Yet, because the kid’s ability to succeed in next year’s math class will be harmed by his failure to master this year’s material, closing one’s eyes to the failure to master the material is negligent (IMHO). Most kids should, with proper effort and teaching, be able to master almost all HS courses (well, there may be some exceptions to this but for kids within the CC parents population, I think this is generally true]. If the kid was trying, my instinct is that a C represents a failure both of the teacher and the student. By focusing on sorting rather than mastery, our schools really fail to achieve as much as they could on the educational front. </p>

<p>To me, the US educational system is skewed toward a primary role as a sorting mechanism and many parents tend to absorb this and view the world that way. In doing so, I think we abdicate or partially abdicate (if there is such a concept) our responsibility to really ensure that our kids learn to succeed at a high level in later life.</p>

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<p>@marite above re use of foreign words: never use a foreign word when an english one will do, see favorably</p>

<p>[George</a> Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946](<a href=“http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm]George”>http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm)</p>

<p>Nice to have such good stuff available at our fingertips.</p>

<p>I read most of the posts above, and I was surprised to see that a lot of the discussion centered around writing and editing for undergrad work. On a personal level, I think someone needs to edit the work for it to improve, and if it is the prof, then I love that. Unfortunately a lot of papers are not so well edited. I did not really learn to write well until grad school, and then only because I was an editor for law review. I had written “tons” of papers in college, and sad to say, never got enough individual attention. I also had been one of the top students in my HS in english, seriously.</p>

<p>I really started the thread because I had been so unfavorably impressed myself with young professionals who are too tied to “Mommy”. I think it fine to seek advice from parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, coworkers, counselors, etc. As often as needed. However,in the end, the student or young professional should “own” the decisions. If you could see the graphic on the NYT article, the student was like a puppet with the mom pulling the strings. I think no one really wants this for their child, but sometimes parents may go too far out of good intentions. You can’t have Mom or Dad step into that stressful merger negotiation when you are a corporate lawyer, but yes hopefully the senior partner will guide you. I see this as a huge difference. Even if Dad was Joe Flom (I guess more like great granddad -but it is just a hypothetical anyway), it would not seem right for him to interject himself.</p>

<p>I can’t seem to get my browser to “go advanced” so sorry that most of this is all one paragraph, and that I can’t see to edit it. I hope the points come through ok.</p>

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<p>Shawbridge, excellent post, well articulated. I’ve thought that for a long time, and wish I could have said it as clearly as you.</p>

<p>Many times DS would get a puzzled reaction to his self-directed learning. “What’s the rush?” people would ask. When he’d reply, “this is what I want to learn,” they just didn’t get it; they couldn’t figure out it was that simple. The next thought would be to think it was some way of elaborately gaming the system.</p>

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<p>shawbridge - great post!</p>

<p>One of the most effective classes I had in college allowed us to redo our problems until we got them right. By the time the exam came aroung, those of us who took advantage of that opportunity had mastered the material.</p>

<p>I am very much trying to steer my son toward colleges where inquiry, learning, and mastery are emphasized. It’s so difficult because we look for the easy way to evaluate students and schools (i.e. rankings and ratings) and don’t have tools to “measure” the change that our kids undergo.</p>

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<p>anothermom2:</p>

<p>“never use a foreign word when an english one will do”</p>

<p>What nonsense! The legal profession would be nowhere without Latin or French. Where would we be without habeas corpus, amicus curiae, stare decisis and all those Latin words that lawyers use all the time? And what about Oyez! Oyez!, an archaic French word if ever there was. I’m not sure that French lawyers use the term voir dire, either.</p>

<p>Actually, I use French and Latin far less than a lot of Americans, having spent my entire freshman year trying to learn colloquial English while my fellow students were trying to learn polysyllabic words that were far more familiar to me. Which is how I use “as such” as opposed to per se and never ever “per say.” Yuck!</p>

<p>Shawbridge: Great post!</p>

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<p>My ears are burning for good and bad reasons. I have disappointed some and not others. Plagiarism, as in not proper citing appropriately, will always seem to me to an error not a crime, especially in the case of community college students who have deep understanding of academic debate.</p>

<p>By penalizing them I would just invite more lying and defensiveness. The problem can be better solved by giving papers that grow directly out of class discussion. I don’t even give research papers. Today I heard a colleague whose class period abuts mine telling a student the same thing.</p>

<p>And if it’s a more complex issue like, “did your father write this?” I want a study to say, “yes,” so I can say, “why don’t you redo it?” I see no point in punishment whatever the student’s understanding.</p>

<p>My goal is more literacy and I will stick by it.</p>

<p>And yes, I have committed lapses of judgment and academic dishonesty in my personal life and not helped my kids and learned the hard way to stay out of their academic lives and learned that parental anxiety can lead some of us, though obviously not all, into a thorny and dishonest thicket.</p>

<p>And for that, I do hang my head.</p>

<p>But I am pleased about the compassion and understanding it has given me.</p>

<p>I love teaching writing. I want to see unvarnished papers. I have spent a lifetime learning how best to help students, and I want to do it, usually out of simple love.</p>

<p>And many of our students have never experienced the love of a teacher, and it is a great motivator, greater than F’s or academic probation as far as I can see.</p>

<p>I taught three classes today, a grueling day and a lot of traffic, too.</p>

<p>But the rewards were manifold.</p>

<p>I am truly sorry that my moral lapses have lost me respect of some forever. </p>

<p>And I am truly grateful I have a compassionate heart, black though it may be.</p>

<p>And I plan to continue in this way – helping student by student. </p>

<p>I did have the son of a friend in a class; he was taking a college level course instead of high school English. He’s now a very successful engineering student at Bucknell. He got terrible grades in writing. I took a look at his writing. I thought he wrote quite well. Everything was just too brief because no one had ever taught him to exemplify. So we wrote brilliant, concise generalizations and got low grades because his papers were a fourth the length they should have been.</p>

<p>I told him, and his father, that he was a gifted writer. The father said, “Are you on LSD?” a knock at my hippie past. But I was able to teach him that concrete examples were what his writing lacked. He wondered why no one had ever told him that before. I couldn’t answer him.</p>

<p>His father, a psychiatrist, could never accept that his son could write well and continued to add to all his papers. I told the mom, another doctor, and my original friend, to tell the boy to send me papers directly. He never did. Amy said I could give her boy a low grade, but I didn’t because I knew he would have earned an A on his own anyway.</p>

<p>I can’t imagine what he’s going to design, and I can’t imagine any way the world would have benefited had I blown the whistle on this boy. I made my position clear. I taught him what I could.</p>

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<p>BTW: I never use ergo. But maybe that’s just personal choice. Vonnegut said he’d never used a semi-colon once in his published writing.</p>

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<p>Mythmom, I like Vonnegut, and I have probably used far too many semi-colons in my life. I really liked what Orwell had to say in his essay, and I had first read it when handed out by one of my child’s teachers. I like Orwell as an author too. </p>

<p>As for the legal profession, in some states there is a movement to require plain language documents. The use of terms of art is not really what Orwell was writing about anyway.</p>

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<p>I know that Orwell was not talking about legal jargon.
Still, I never knew what a thesaurus was until I came to the US. And since it’s pretentious to write in French, I won’t quote Boileau about the connection between clarity of thought and ease of expression. :slight_smile:
When my SIL moaned about the expansion of franglais, I pointed out that Americans love to say of someone that s/he is " la creme de la creme," and exhibits a certain “elan” or exudes “joie de vivre.” As for teenagers’ sturm und drang, why, that’s the zeitgeist. ;)</p>

<p>Mythmom: When I was in college, I had a prof who warned the students: “I do not want another paper on xyz…” Obviously, too many students found that particular topic easy to research and write about. I was reminded of him the other day as I googled something and one of the first things to crop up was an offer of term papers on the subject!
I think it behooves profs to think up paper topics that do not lend themselves so easily to “subcontracting.”</p>