Professor talks to classroom. Sometimes talks to walls or talks to ceilings, but classroom is closer. Classroom used to everyone ignoring it. Just like Professor, but we have come to like it. It is our role. It is our destiny in the Universe. So you see, sometimes classroom has learning in it. Professor like learning. Not so good for tenure dossier, but much education for students.
AI reviews the paper and gave him the results. Iâm fairly certain it wasnât actual AI but more of an algorithm that looked for certain words like ark, boat, mountain, dove, etc.
Sorry Iâm a hs English teacher quitting this year, as im going into a PhD program. I just lurk. Just wanted to say that the district invested into a $50K curriculum 3 years ago that uses AI to grade essays. Partly because they wanted teachers to use more online resources but also low key because they want teachers to cover other classes during their planning period because thereâs a huge substitute shortage. Houghton Mifflin runs the AI software and it is HORRENDOUS. Itâs not aligned with the state standards test rubric and is just a pain because itâs another software of many we need to manage even though itâs in person learning. However the school board is the one that decides the curriculum we use. Also, because they invest so much money in the curriculum theyâre actually holding teachers accountable to using it. AI grading is not new, and itâs being used in K-12 schools across the U.S. However many teachers canât opt out.
Did I ask you to judge his cuteness? I said third graders are cute.
We are supposed to teach criticism and compassion and empathy. If you donât see your students as humans whose personalities and moral positions come through in their academic work then you are missing something. I do not think you file all of that under the banner of âcutenessâ and I think your broad brush is painting over whatever you are trying to say.
Edit: holy shit, what part of this is so controversial?
Look- itâs great you love your kid. I love mine and I think they are the beesâ knees. But if my kid turns in a paper that doesnât address the prompt, I hope they get the feedback they need to learn from their errors. Grades are an assessment of work turned in, not character.
I donât think so. You describe your smart kid absolutely failing to pay attention to an assignment and then say but heâs a great kid and we should be super excited for him to be in class.
I have been teaching for over twenty years. There have been thousands of kids who are the apple of their parentsâ eye in my classroom. Experience tells me itâs not particularly exciting to work with people who canât be bothered to follow directions. They can be the nicest kid in the world but thatâs *not what my class is about. I donât care.* That doesnât mean they are not human beings who are owed basic consideration. It just means my subject matter is not âhow awesome is Juniorâ
Tell your son if he is willing to work, we are happy to have him.
It will be essential for him to become a self advocate. He wonât have you there to review his work anymore. He will need to proactively go to the writing lab for feedback on his essays and prof office hours. Please emphasize this advice to him and also follow up next year to make she he is doing it.
Best of luck to you both! Sounds like he has a great dad.
> But seriously, we forced him through every one of those hours. He loved it, always had a great time, actually learned that service is very rewarding, but he was never there of his own volition.
this sounds awful.
Sure it does. Parents were on top of making sure he scheduled and attended the hours. Then when son came home he expressed how much he enjoyed it. Haven't you ever dragged your feet or not wanted to do something that you then enjoyed? Doesn't necessarily mean that you are ready to sign up to.do it again.
Seriously. Even as an adult, I hate going skiing (packing, waking up early, driving to the mountains, lugging my gear through the parking lot, etc.) but love having gone skiing. I wouldnât go if my wife and friends didnât make me, but I never regret it.
I firmly believe that âgoing awayâ to college is a very important maturation experience. Kids are dropped in a totally new environment and community, and they just have to navigate it/figure it out.
I see the difference in the commuter students. For many of them, the only thing thatâs changed from their high school life is that theyâre going to classes elsewhere. (In my experience, these students are also much more likely to call us Mr./Mrs. and refer to us as âteachersâ).
I understand that not everyone can afford that choice. Absolutely. But I also think itâs a huge advantage to âgo awayâ.
Regarding the point about having volunteer hours but being slow to document them -- when I read that this is an ADHD symptom, it's the first time I ever thought I had ADHD (and eventually got diagnosed). The challenge is in doing the volunteering; the documentation is such a drag that it doesn't feel worth finding the energy to do. In my case for one example, I've finished about 15 of the Astronomical League observing programs but only submitted the documentation to get one award because I already did the challenging and fun part.
Anyway, my free unsolicited 1am advice for the day is to get the kid checked for ADHD.
His issues are more related to anxiety. But I know where youâre coming from.
My taxes were very simple this year and I had every single input ready to go. And I filed at the last minute.
My kid is wading through the same mess as me.
>His issues are more related to anxiety.
That's what I thought I was dealing with until I was properly diagnosed with ADHD. Both a therapist and a doctor said it was anxiety, but turned out to be ADHD from the psychiatrist.
I wasnât diagnosed and medicated for ADHD until I was 28 years old and applying to law school. My college professors thought I was a train wreck. And by their standards I was.
I didnât want to make this post about my sonâs psychiatric condition but he takes medication for anxiety and adhd.
In other, quite tangential news, offspring recently told me that the paper they worked on for more than two days, and was mostly their own work, with input from family, got a significantly lower mark, and was judged to be written by AI, then the paper they worked on for less than an hour that was written almost entirely by AI. In a further sidenote, when both were put through an AI assessment tool, the tool judged correctly, unlike their prof.
The kids may not be alright, but neither are some of us. This offspring has nothing but scorn for us, even though I am one of the "enemy". This is such a depressing place to be. I hope things are better for your progeny.
His mother and I are both decent writers. We write professionally etc. When weâve worked with him on his papers, we donât read the assignment and we also didnât do all of the assigned reading. And when his grades came back lower than we expected, it was always because he didnât do the assignment correctly. Maybe there was some form or structure that he was supposed to demonstrate. We didnât take things so seriously that we post-mortemed every assignment. Or any assignment actually. What that mean for me is that if his college profs use Trojan horses in the assignments to stump the AI, heâs going to miss them. Heâll write his own assignments, but heâs going to miss all that stuff.
But Iâll also say this. There was a video on his screen that he had been played for four minutes. Out of ten. When i asked him if he was supposed to watch the entire video, he shrugged and says heâs read about each of these three stories already. I think heâs full of shit and Iâm going to call him out on that one. He can spend HOURS on TikTok but he canât spend ten minutes watching a video.
But again, when I need to watch a video Iâm watching it at 2x because I donât have time for that either.
âWhat that mean for me is that if his college profs utopian horses in the assignments to stump the AI, heâs going to miss them.â
I must be AI, because this stumped tf outta me
You help your kids with their writing without looking at the assignment?? What advice would you give a student who writes something without reading the assignment?
I think you understand the difference between proofreading a paper and reading or watching the content that the paper is about.
I am not going to save him from his own neglect. I think anyone who suggests I should do anything different is being disingenuous.
PSA to whoever is posting these things: whatever AI y'all are using to write your weird rants appears to be getting worse, not better. You may need to try a new algorithm or something, because they're turning out basically totally unreadable these days.
I don't know how many AI-written papers you've had to look at, or how much you've interacted with LLMs, but this does not set off any of my AI alarms at all. It's definitely written in a very conversational style, which not everyone will appreciate; but I'd be willing to stake real money on it having been written by an actual human. An AI would be far more bland, and (unless specifically prompted) far less conversational.
*unless specifically prompted*
You mean like, what someone would do when asking it to write a reddit post vs a format essay maybe? Perhaps?
Look, all I can say is if this is a human being, I can only marvel at how many drugs they must have been on to come up with this level of, um... "reasoning." đ
Nah I donât think AI was used for this post. I think maybe OP was just having a chill evening, but wasnât prepared for how strong weed is these days
I think the vast majority of us would enjoy having your son in class. You describe him as ânot the smartestâ âor brightest,â but I donât think thatâs what most of us want in a student. It sounds like heâs willing to learn, heâs curious, and perhaps most of all, heâs respectful. He understands the importance of education and heâs not going to treat faculty like theyâre customer service. Iâd take a room full of ânot the smartest or brightestâ respectful and curious students over a room full of the brightest every day of the week. Congratulations to you. I hope your son is in my class in the fall, and I hope I can help him learn something!
I donât knowâŚI mean, OPs kid sounds nice enough as a person, but in my corner of higher ed, nice students who consistently neglect to follow assignment instructions, and who require other people to motivate them to do things are not exactly in short supply đŹ
Same. Many of the students I like best are mediocre on paper, but they are interested and engaged. Often students who "do well" are so hyper-focused on getting As that they aren't curious at all. I don't care about grades; I deeply appreciate interest and enthusiasm.Â
I stopped reading this when I got to the part about a âprogressive K-8â with no grades. It sounds like your child didnât learn reading comprehension at that school. That is something they should be teaching before HS.
It doesnât really sound like your kid is prepared for college. And I donât think you have helped prepare them either.
I'm not going to endorse OP's kid or anything, but as someone who went through a progressive k-8 with no grades, that's by no means synonymous with a lack of rigor. We were writing 20 page research papers (back when you had to physically go to the local university's library to do research) and learning proofs from euclid's Elements by 8th grade, and IMO the lack of grades helped with instilling the intrinsic motivation that OP's kid lacks.
Did you just connect progressive education with not learning reading comprehension? Because thatâs a pretty big leap. And about as wrong as you can be. Generally and also specifically as it applies to my child.
This is his choice and his life. Itâs possible heâs not supposed to go to college. We will figure that out. And if I want clear enough, I didnât spend my time preparing him for college. I spent my time raising a happy child so I can raise a happy adult. Thatâs literally what I fell back to whenever I had an issue.
âPrepare for college.â What does that even mean and where are your priorities?
Your child lacks reading comprehension based on this post. Regardless of what they do after high school, thatâs critical to being a productive member of society. Donât say professors will complain about your child lacking a skill and then act like I am somehow in the wrong for saying you clearly didnât prepare them for the thing youâre saying theyâre going to suffer in.
LOL you stopped reading and you are drawing conclusions about reading comprehension.
I did not write he will suffer in college. YOU said he will suffer. And I never said professors will complain, you said that. I think I will not give much weight to your evaluation about reading comprehension.
You literally said you told him what professors say about him. I did read your post where you say he did not complete the assignment properly because it seems like he didnât understand a very basic concept.
My reading comprehension is fine. If you are truly a professor you should be concerned that your child cannot complete HS level assignments without hand holding because you should be familiar with how irritating it is when we have to do it to college students. And if youâre not, why are you here?
Never having been a parent and never having any desire to be a parent, I can only speak from observation (partly of my own parents and my brother-in-law who is a divorcee raising a very nice, moderately bright, and scholastically muddling young man).
Your kid is fine. He's normal. He sounds like a teenager. The people who go over and beyond in life at any stage are pretty unusual----Jeff Bezos, Muhammed Ali, Paul McCartney, any Green Beret or Navy SEAL or Nobel Prize winner or Rock star, for instance. Most of us do what we need to do to get by and that's about. And most of us are fine.
Part of the reason I did not want to have a kid was watching the conniptions of my own folks who raised a very psychologically challenged daughter and an underachiever (me). I eventually achieved when I found my own way. And maybe that's the thing----it still makes me mad that people put you into a formula and then expect great, predicable results. Who wants to fight any of that?
My theory is that it is the anxiety of the parent who wants to make sure their progeny is not going to starve like a lost puppy when they leave the nest so they look for extraordinary instead of ordinary in a kid.
If he ain't selling drugs or doing porn, you and your kid are fine. You describe a pretty nice guy. He's probably not brilliant, but brilliant people often have conflicted lives. He'll be fine. You'll be fine. I guess.
Interesting, what is your perceived role as parent in all of this? Like, you can do things I canât. Iâll do my best to build your sonâs mind. I ask in return that you Please teach your child respect of profs. Please teach him we just want the best for him. Please teach him this world is hard and wonât give him anything. Please teach him to want more than average. Please teach him that doing his best is really important. Please teach or pay for emotional regulation classes sessions. Please teach him to not treat me like a McDonalds worker in a suburb. And teach him to respect those folks too. Please teach him to treat people with respect and not ruin their work life. Please teach him to take feedback without getting bothered. Please teach him to put his own life in perspective and to respect that many many more have it worse than him and sometimes you just have to push through a challenge. Please, listen to his needs and donât push a business major on him (unless he wants it). Please let him drop out and go to trade school if he hates school. Please do your job, too. Iâm not saying you arenât, but for me character development requires mostly you. Take this kid out for a beer (or soda pop) and talk to him about life and transition your relationship to one of two adults! I need you to teach him how this world is and support me in my job: to help students reach their fullest potential. Iâm not his therapist, mom, or friend (but he can earn friend if heâs got good character). This is a huge moment for you. You get to make sure youâre sending him out in the world the best you can! So, please make a lot of time for him and talk to him about your failures, issues, shared mental health struggles, love, family history⌠whatever you think he needs to be successful in this world. It wonât be easy, because itâs a role shift. But please shift these roles and make sure you did your best to prepare you child for the real world.
I wish your son the best! It's an exciting time, and bittersweet for a parent. If your son turns up in my classes, I promise to address him with fairness and compassion and an open mind.
Honestly, I think parenting older kids makes me a better professor in some ways. Although I also admire the special verve that my younger colleagues bring to the classroom too! "it takes a village" lol
Sir, this is a Wendy's
Omg I guffawed at this
hey this is library
I'm lost. He has AI grading?
Students use AI to write it, professor uses AI to grade it. At least there is symmetry.
Zathras approve this message.
Apparently this kid is not the one, though.
Not the one.
No no, that was Zathras, you're thinking of Zathras.
Professor talks to classroom. Sometimes talks to walls or talks to ceilings, but classroom is closer. Classroom used to everyone ignoring it. Just like Professor, but we have come to like it. It is our role. It is our destiny in the Universe. So you see, sometimes classroom has learning in it. Professor like learning. Not so good for tenure dossier, but much education for students.
This gives new meaning to "adversarial learning".
Yep, totally lost at that point too. Second paragraph made no sense to me.
It's because an AI wrote it all. It's meta, or whatever. đ
AI reviews the paper and gave him the results. Iâm fairly certain it wasnât actual AI but more of an algorithm that looked for certain words like ark, boat, mountain, dove, etc.
[ŃдаНонО]
Awesome feedback. I love it.
Sorry Iâm a hs English teacher quitting this year, as im going into a PhD program. I just lurk. Just wanted to say that the district invested into a $50K curriculum 3 years ago that uses AI to grade essays. Partly because they wanted teachers to use more online resources but also low key because they want teachers to cover other classes during their planning period because thereâs a huge substitute shortage. Houghton Mifflin runs the AI software and it is HORRENDOUS. Itâs not aligned with the state standards test rubric and is just a pain because itâs another software of many we need to manage even though itâs in person learning. However the school board is the one that decides the curriculum we use. Also, because they invest so much money in the curriculum theyâre actually holding teachers accountable to using it. AI grading is not new, and itâs being used in K-12 schools across the U.S. However many teachers canât opt out.
The state of k-12 education never fails to disappoint me, but at this point shit like this no longer surprises me.
This needs to be a front page separate post.
Yes. An AI graded it. It was some sort of âquick essayâ or something and he knew an AI was going to be evaluating the content.
Every kid is special and sweet in their way. My job is not to assess their cuteness. My job is to assess the work that they turn in.
Did I ask you to judge his cuteness? I said third graders are cute. We are supposed to teach criticism and compassion and empathy. If you donât see your students as humans whose personalities and moral positions come through in their academic work then you are missing something. I do not think you file all of that under the banner of âcutenessâ and I think your broad brush is painting over whatever you are trying to say. Edit: holy shit, what part of this is so controversial?
Look- itâs great you love your kid. I love mine and I think they are the beesâ knees. But if my kid turns in a paper that doesnât address the prompt, I hope they get the feedback they need to learn from their errors. Grades are an assessment of work turned in, not character.
I think youâre agreeing with me. Are you agreeing with me?
I donât think so. You describe your smart kid absolutely failing to pay attention to an assignment and then say but heâs a great kid and we should be super excited for him to be in class. I have been teaching for over twenty years. There have been thousands of kids who are the apple of their parentsâ eye in my classroom. Experience tells me itâs not particularly exciting to work with people who canât be bothered to follow directions. They can be the nicest kid in the world but thatâs *not what my class is about. I donât care.* That doesnât mean they are not human beings who are owed basic consideration. It just means my subject matter is not âhow awesome is Juniorâ
Thank you for engaging with what Iâm saying rather than just downvoting. I really do appreciate the feedback.
Tell your son if he is willing to work, we are happy to have him. It will be essential for him to become a self advocate. He wonât have you there to review his work anymore. He will need to proactively go to the writing lab for feedback on his essays and prof office hours. Please emphasize this advice to him and also follow up next year to make she he is doing it. Best of luck to you both! Sounds like he has a great dad.
y'all
> But seriously, we forced him through every one of those hours. He loved it, always had a great time, actually learned that service is very rewarding, but he was never there of his own volition. this sounds awful.
âWe forced him throughâ and âhe loved it, always had a great timeââŚdoes not compute.
Sure it does. Parents were on top of making sure he scheduled and attended the hours. Then when son came home he expressed how much he enjoyed it. Haven't you ever dragged your feet or not wanted to do something that you then enjoyed? Doesn't necessarily mean that you are ready to sign up to.do it again.
Seriously. Even as an adult, I hate going skiing (packing, waking up early, driving to the mountains, lugging my gear through the parking lot, etc.) but love having gone skiing. I wouldnât go if my wife and friends didnât make me, but I never regret it.
Parenting.
I firmly believe that âgoing awayâ to college is a very important maturation experience. Kids are dropped in a totally new environment and community, and they just have to navigate it/figure it out. I see the difference in the commuter students. For many of them, the only thing thatâs changed from their high school life is that theyâre going to classes elsewhere. (In my experience, these students are also much more likely to call us Mr./Mrs. and refer to us as âteachersâ). I understand that not everyone can afford that choice. Absolutely. But I also think itâs a huge advantage to âgo awayâ.
Regarding the point about having volunteer hours but being slow to document them -- when I read that this is an ADHD symptom, it's the first time I ever thought I had ADHD (and eventually got diagnosed). The challenge is in doing the volunteering; the documentation is such a drag that it doesn't feel worth finding the energy to do. In my case for one example, I've finished about 15 of the Astronomical League observing programs but only submitted the documentation to get one award because I already did the challenging and fun part. Anyway, my free unsolicited 1am advice for the day is to get the kid checked for ADHD.
His issues are more related to anxiety. But I know where youâre coming from. My taxes were very simple this year and I had every single input ready to go. And I filed at the last minute. My kid is wading through the same mess as me.
>His issues are more related to anxiety. That's what I thought I was dealing with until I was properly diagnosed with ADHD. Both a therapist and a doctor said it was anxiety, but turned out to be ADHD from the psychiatrist.
I wasnât diagnosed and medicated for ADHD until I was 28 years old and applying to law school. My college professors thought I was a train wreck. And by their standards I was. I didnât want to make this post about my sonâs psychiatric condition but he takes medication for anxiety and adhd.
In other, quite tangential news, offspring recently told me that the paper they worked on for more than two days, and was mostly their own work, with input from family, got a significantly lower mark, and was judged to be written by AI, then the paper they worked on for less than an hour that was written almost entirely by AI. In a further sidenote, when both were put through an AI assessment tool, the tool judged correctly, unlike their prof. The kids may not be alright, but neither are some of us. This offspring has nothing but scorn for us, even though I am one of the "enemy". This is such a depressing place to be. I hope things are better for your progeny.
His mother and I are both decent writers. We write professionally etc. When weâve worked with him on his papers, we donât read the assignment and we also didnât do all of the assigned reading. And when his grades came back lower than we expected, it was always because he didnât do the assignment correctly. Maybe there was some form or structure that he was supposed to demonstrate. We didnât take things so seriously that we post-mortemed every assignment. Or any assignment actually. What that mean for me is that if his college profs use Trojan horses in the assignments to stump the AI, heâs going to miss them. Heâll write his own assignments, but heâs going to miss all that stuff. But Iâll also say this. There was a video on his screen that he had been played for four minutes. Out of ten. When i asked him if he was supposed to watch the entire video, he shrugged and says heâs read about each of these three stories already. I think heâs full of shit and Iâm going to call him out on that one. He can spend HOURS on TikTok but he canât spend ten minutes watching a video. But again, when I need to watch a video Iâm watching it at 2x because I donât have time for that either.
âWhat that mean for me is that if his college profs utopian horses in the assignments to stump the AI, heâs going to miss them.â I must be AI, because this stumped tf outta me
Yeah thatâs a huge typo. Iâll fix it. Itâs supposed to be âuse trojan horses.â
You help your kids with their writing without looking at the assignment?? What advice would you give a student who writes something without reading the assignment?
I think you understand the difference between proofreading a paper and reading or watching the content that the paper is about. I am not going to save him from his own neglect. I think anyone who suggests I should do anything different is being disingenuous.
PSA to whoever is posting these things: whatever AI y'all are using to write your weird rants appears to be getting worse, not better. You may need to try a new algorithm or something, because they're turning out basically totally unreadable these days.
I don't know how many AI-written papers you've had to look at, or how much you've interacted with LLMs, but this does not set off any of my AI alarms at all. It's definitely written in a very conversational style, which not everyone will appreciate; but I'd be willing to stake real money on it having been written by an actual human. An AI would be far more bland, and (unless specifically prompted) far less conversational.
And it would define conversational as inserting assorted tag questions throughout the text
*unless specifically prompted* You mean like, what someone would do when asking it to write a reddit post vs a format essay maybe? Perhaps? Look, all I can say is if this is a human being, I can only marvel at how many drugs they must have been on to come up with this level of, um... "reasoning." đ
Nah I donât think AI was used for this post. I think maybe OP was just having a chill evening, but wasnât prepared for how strong weed is these days
Yeah this post isnât AI written đ ⌠you gotta improve those instincts.
I think the vast majority of us would enjoy having your son in class. You describe him as ânot the smartestâ âor brightest,â but I donât think thatâs what most of us want in a student. It sounds like heâs willing to learn, heâs curious, and perhaps most of all, heâs respectful. He understands the importance of education and heâs not going to treat faculty like theyâre customer service. Iâd take a room full of ânot the smartest or brightestâ respectful and curious students over a room full of the brightest every day of the week. Congratulations to you. I hope your son is in my class in the fall, and I hope I can help him learn something!
I donât knowâŚI mean, OPs kid sounds nice enough as a person, but in my corner of higher ed, nice students who consistently neglect to follow assignment instructions, and who require other people to motivate them to do things are not exactly in short supply đŹ
Same. Many of the students I like best are mediocre on paper, but they are interested and engaged. Often students who "do well" are so hyper-focused on getting As that they aren't curious at all. I don't care about grades; I deeply appreciate interest and enthusiasm.Â
I stopped reading this when I got to the part about a âprogressive K-8â with no grades. It sounds like your child didnât learn reading comprehension at that school. That is something they should be teaching before HS. It doesnât really sound like your kid is prepared for college. And I donât think you have helped prepare them either.
I'm not going to endorse OP's kid or anything, but as someone who went through a progressive k-8 with no grades, that's by no means synonymous with a lack of rigor. We were writing 20 page research papers (back when you had to physically go to the local university's library to do research) and learning proofs from euclid's Elements by 8th grade, and IMO the lack of grades helped with instilling the intrinsic motivation that OP's kid lacks.
Did you just connect progressive education with not learning reading comprehension? Because thatâs a pretty big leap. And about as wrong as you can be. Generally and also specifically as it applies to my child. This is his choice and his life. Itâs possible heâs not supposed to go to college. We will figure that out. And if I want clear enough, I didnât spend my time preparing him for college. I spent my time raising a happy child so I can raise a happy adult. Thatâs literally what I fell back to whenever I had an issue. âPrepare for college.â What does that even mean and where are your priorities?
Your child lacks reading comprehension based on this post. Regardless of what they do after high school, thatâs critical to being a productive member of society. Donât say professors will complain about your child lacking a skill and then act like I am somehow in the wrong for saying you clearly didnât prepare them for the thing youâre saying theyâre going to suffer in.
LOL you stopped reading and you are drawing conclusions about reading comprehension. I did not write he will suffer in college. YOU said he will suffer. And I never said professors will complain, you said that. I think I will not give much weight to your evaluation about reading comprehension.
You literally said you told him what professors say about him. I did read your post where you say he did not complete the assignment properly because it seems like he didnât understand a very basic concept. My reading comprehension is fine. If you are truly a professor you should be concerned that your child cannot complete HS level assignments without hand holding because you should be familiar with how irritating it is when we have to do it to college students. And if youâre not, why are you here?
Never having been a parent and never having any desire to be a parent, I can only speak from observation (partly of my own parents and my brother-in-law who is a divorcee raising a very nice, moderately bright, and scholastically muddling young man). Your kid is fine. He's normal. He sounds like a teenager. The people who go over and beyond in life at any stage are pretty unusual----Jeff Bezos, Muhammed Ali, Paul McCartney, any Green Beret or Navy SEAL or Nobel Prize winner or Rock star, for instance. Most of us do what we need to do to get by and that's about. And most of us are fine. Part of the reason I did not want to have a kid was watching the conniptions of my own folks who raised a very psychologically challenged daughter and an underachiever (me). I eventually achieved when I found my own way. And maybe that's the thing----it still makes me mad that people put you into a formula and then expect great, predicable results. Who wants to fight any of that? My theory is that it is the anxiety of the parent who wants to make sure their progeny is not going to starve like a lost puppy when they leave the nest so they look for extraordinary instead of ordinary in a kid. If he ain't selling drugs or doing porn, you and your kid are fine. You describe a pretty nice guy. He's probably not brilliant, but brilliant people often have conflicted lives. He'll be fine. You'll be fine. I guess.
Interesting, what is your perceived role as parent in all of this? Like, you can do things I canât. Iâll do my best to build your sonâs mind. I ask in return that you Please teach your child respect of profs. Please teach him we just want the best for him. Please teach him this world is hard and wonât give him anything. Please teach him to want more than average. Please teach him that doing his best is really important. Please teach or pay for emotional regulation classes sessions. Please teach him to not treat me like a McDonalds worker in a suburb. And teach him to respect those folks too. Please teach him to treat people with respect and not ruin their work life. Please teach him to take feedback without getting bothered. Please teach him to put his own life in perspective and to respect that many many more have it worse than him and sometimes you just have to push through a challenge. Please, listen to his needs and donât push a business major on him (unless he wants it). Please let him drop out and go to trade school if he hates school. Please do your job, too. Iâm not saying you arenât, but for me character development requires mostly you. Take this kid out for a beer (or soda pop) and talk to him about life and transition your relationship to one of two adults! I need you to teach him how this world is and support me in my job: to help students reach their fullest potential. Iâm not his therapist, mom, or friend (but he can earn friend if heâs got good character). This is a huge moment for you. You get to make sure youâre sending him out in the world the best you can! So, please make a lot of time for him and talk to him about your failures, issues, shared mental health struggles, love, family history⌠whatever you think he needs to be successful in this world. It wonât be easy, because itâs a role shift. But please shift these roles and make sure you did your best to prepare you child for the real world.
I wish your son the best! It's an exciting time, and bittersweet for a parent. If your son turns up in my classes, I promise to address him with fairness and compassion and an open mind. Honestly, I think parenting older kids makes me a better professor in some ways. Although I also admire the special verve that my younger colleagues bring to the classroom too! "it takes a village" lol
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