Reading the fine post about Canadian universities, I started thinking about my nephews: The one every one called the “golden one,” the one who would one day employ us all, had one burning ambition in high school: to earn his AA degree before he graduated from high school. And he did—with AP classes, summer and night classes at the county college. The scholarship offers rolled in, and he took the one from the school that accepted his AA degree and promised to fund his first two years in law school. He was a college junior at 18. His cousin from another state—which at the time promised free tuition at state schools for any resident who had earned a specific high school rank and grade point average—had one burning ambition: to get a “free ride.” And he did. Predictably, both flunked out. The golden boy didn’t survive the first year. Really all they have to show for their short stays at some very good schools are embarrassing Facebook photos. Neither has gotten enough credits together for a degree—still. I sense here on my campus a trend that for many (but not all) of our “best” students it’s all about getting in and setting up—as it was for my nephews. They earn scholarships and awards, impressively announced at their high school graduations; they go to Best Buy to buy laptops, to Target for practical but stylish dorm room accents, and to Bed, Bath, and Beyond for ironic, hipster sheets and shower accessories. They move into the honors dorms, with their parents’ help and staff and administrators “clapping them in.”
Then college starts, and the faculty treat them like college students—after all they have accomplished.
Curious, I offer to CM this weekend thirsty: Are the “flame-outs” common where you are? Or, are they the snowiest freshmen where you teach as they seem to be here?
Well, since I outted myself for having failed out of college a few weeks back...
ReplyDeleteI can't answer for how common they are, but I was certainly one. Honors student, scholarships, high school achievements. I failed out of a very lovely SLAC largely on attendance. In some cases I read books and didn't write papers.
I had a family full of PhDs, an arm load of test scores (not just the SATs) that said I was smarter than the average bear. I just expected "knowing stuff" to get me to pass. When I did flame out it basically destroyed my ego. I futsed around at a community college until someone came into my life that I wanted to be responsible for, and much to my parents surprise and relief I was suddenly a responsible adult student.
Finished community college, transferred to the R1 up the road, finished there at the height of an economic crisis that meant I didn't get into a PhD program. I went and got a masters and from there got into an ivy for my PhD.
I get slightly mortified but my family LOVES to tell this story to strangers because everyone knows a flame-out. It's very strange to have something I was so deeply ashamed of dragged out to waitresses and family aquaintances at a moments notice.
YMMV.
I see this as the future of my partner's little brother.
ReplyDeleteHe's a musical genius, with perfect pitch, 12 years of training, scholarships to special music camps, honorary requests for him to play with the (mid-size city, pretty big deal) local professional orchestra. He has already taken enough courses at the local college to replace 2 years of college. He found out last month that he could have graduated high school last year as a junior. He's been contacted by ivy leagues, conservatories, and state schools. Golden Boy indeed.
But he refuses to get a real job. He refuses to apply to those ivy leagues who look ready to offer him a hefty scholarship (he comes from a very poor background). He wants to play for a conservatory.
What a fucking idiot.
I may be stupid for getting multiple degrees in the Humanities, but I started in music. I know that perhaps 10 people out of 10,000 will "make it" and join an orchestra. Everyone else -- golden boy included -- will work part time, doing weddings on the weekend and paying bills with waitstaff work.
Here is a kid with half his college done, with straight-As, a perfect ACT score, and the extra curriculars to ensure his lifetime earning potential exceeds the national average. And instead, he is using all that talent in the world to become ANOTHER dirt-poor musician.
It sickens me because his sister did the same, and she's a starving artist at 28 living in her parent's basement with no prospects to get out anytime soon and a mountain of student debt going to a freakshow "art college" that churns out worthless degrees. How could smart people raise such foolish kids???
New England Natalie,
ReplyDeleteI wondered if I'd written your post. I also was a fantastic high school student, decent musician too, graduated with high honours and a scholarship into the equivalent of an R1, where I flamed out immediately.
A few differences - I didn't flunk, I managed to keep the Fs down to a level that would just barely allow me to graduate. What I got was mostly Cs, because I rarely showed up in class and rarely did any of the work, but always managed to just skate by on tests & exams. Handed papers in, half-assed work and always late.
At the time, I thought my problems were because I was a lazy, worthless sack of shit who really deserved to be beaten to death with mallets and dumped in a river. I spent years, and years, utterly ashamed of myself. I had no sense of 'entitlement'; I didn't think I even deserved to be there. But the one year I took off to work elsewhere I felt even worse. I knew I belonged in a university even though I wasn't coping with it at all.
One of my sister's friends got through university at roughly the same time I did, not only writing her own papers but writing her boyfriend's papers while he was out with other girls. (He was rich and she was really keen to snag him. She did. The marriage, predictably, failed.) She got Bs and so did he on her work, and they both slid through with no apparent effort or anxiety whatever. And I watched this and could not figure it out at all. I knew I was streets smarter than she was. Possibly an order of magnitude smarter. She was just about capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. And she was getting Bs for 2 people. What the hell was wrong with me? I was disappointing everyone who loved me. In fact I moved out of the house because I couldn't stand to face my parents.
In retrospect, my own unrealistic expectations of myself certainly weren't good for me. Learning cool stuff and doing reasonably well were not good enough. I expected to be PERFECT, I tell you, PERFECT. When that (of course) was not on the cards, I collapsed.
To this day I find it hellishly difficult to get things out the door. Learn cool stuff, sure. Write it down? Ah, that's where the crippling anxiety cuts in ...
My undergraduate experience definitely inflects my teaching now. I think firm deadlines would have been good for me, so I have firm deadlines, with established penalties that I actually apply. I think it would have been good for me to actually show up for class, so I lean heavily on participation grades to encourage that behaviour. And when I have a student who isn't showing up or handing stuff in, I always try to treat them gently. I've got no idea what the poor kid may be fighting. Maybe nothing; maybe they're entitled little frat guy morons skating by; but I've got no way to tell, from the outside, what's really going on for them.
ReplyDeleteSince my R2 state u is not the first choice of most hotshot students (except for a few from immigrant families who don't want their children -- especially their daughters -- living away from home), I don't think we get many of this sort of shooting star. Those who party for a few months before flunking out are more likely to be bright underachievers who got decent but not stellar high school grades and high SAT scores in spite of themselves. But, since we're located in an area with lots of highly-educated families with high expectations, we do get some of the shooting stars on their second (or third) go-'round. They write embarrassed little essays in response to my queries about their educational histories so far, and then the majority of them buckle down and do good, solid work.
ReplyDeleteSome of them have been in the military; some have just worked crappy jobs for a year or two while they got their acts together; some have spent a year in community college. In the case of some young women, the questionable choices included having a baby at a young age, and they've been struggling to work and raise a child for several years (and getting much more responsible and organized in the process, so in some cases maybe it's not such a bad choice after all). The young men tend to be about 23-25, the young women with children a few years older (unless they have very helpful mothers, they usually have to get their kids to preschool/kindergarten age -- 4 or 5 -- before they can manage to juggle work and school, though I've seen exceptions).
Much as I hate to say anything that confirms the "but their brains aren't mature yet!" argument that we often hear as an excuse for snowflake behavior (after all, people between the ages of 15 and 25 have been taking on adult jobs, marrying, and raising families for most of history, and still do so in much of the world, albeit mostly in fairly structured societies that offer relatively few choices and are made up of small extended family/small town units), I suspect that many young people (especially but not exclusively young men) would be far better off starting college at 20 than 18. The trick is to make sure they do something constructive and fairly demanding in between.
I had a high school classmate who applied to Harvard her junior year. She got in, but they wouldn't let her matriculate for a year, so she went to a much less demanding school with good nearby recreational opportunities, where all she needed to do was pass an English class to get her high school diploma. She didn't. Harvard took her anyway (she passed the GED test with no problem), and I believe she graduated on time, but it's interesting to contemplate what would have happened if she'd landed in Cambridge at 17.
By contrast, I have a friend (another high school classmate) whose daughter earned the highest marks in her high school class, got into a very good SLAC with strong financial aid, deferred for a year, worked for 9 months helping out a family with a child with Down's syndrome, then used part of her savings to go trekking in Australia for a couple of months. She graduated from the SLAC on time and with honors, and went on to grad school. That's the way to go, I think: some hard work, some fun but mind-expanding recreation, and then back to school.
Since I'm at a CC, we have few superstars, and those we do get are not the typical ones that you're describing. But I think this phenomenon demonstrates the point that fit between a student and an institute of higher education is very important. On some other academic sites, I've endured those who pontificate about how OF COURSE it's important where you go to school and you must go to the very best school if you ever hope to become someone of significance. But I don't think the R1 experience is the best by default or that those who don't get it have somehow missed out on the one experience that would have made their lives complete.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the SLAC experience was ideal. I liked the small classes, the personal attention, and the sense of overall community, none of which I'd had in high school. It also helped that they had a great English program and the professors wanted to see me join their profession. For my brother, who wasn't sure what he wanted to do, community college was better. He still had relatively small classes, was able to pursue a variety of interests without breaking the bank for himself or our parents, and figured out what he wanted to do as a result. He transferred to an R2 and graduated. My husband, who's in a STEM field, went R1 but to a uni within an hour of home. He was offered a scholarship and early admission to Prestigious State U but turned it down because they didn't have the kind of program he wanted. And while he did have a minor flame-out during his first year away from home, he got the kind of education he wanted because resources were available to him to do the kind of labs and field work that he wouldn't have gotten in either a SLAC or a community college. We all ended up with jobs in our field. I don't think Ivy League or Prestigious State U would have been best for any of us.
I didn't flame out because I knew I couldn't. I was a pretty lackluster high school student, urged by the guidance counselor to consider a trade or some sort. "Fuck her, I'm going to college," I thought. I was a bit ahead of myself despite my low grades, so I graduated from high school two years early and worked and saved. That money ran out after a year or so. Then I was still paying for everything myself and working two or three jobs plus taking out loans to get through school.
ReplyDeleteI graduated magna cum laude. Had the antithesis of helicopter parents (one dead dad and a completely disinterested and unsupportive mom), and so I did well because I knew if I didn't, no one was going to be there to pick up the mess but me. I also knew I belonged in school.
Not everyone that flames out would thrive under those conditions, but for some of them it would be an advantage.
One thing no one else has mentioned--flaming out as a passive-aggressive way to get back at parents, and all the pressure that such golden children must be under. I know my attempts at success were in part due to the fact that a lot of people thought I was a fat, worthless sack of shit.
Which, in a reverse of Merely Academic's case, I knew I wasn't. So I worked hard, because fuck you, people that think I was a fat, worthless sack of shit. Seriously, fuck you.
CC: I became a master at that embarrassed little essay. I was so happy when I reached a state in my academic career when I would never have to write one again.
ReplyDelete@Natalie: so maybe I shouldn't be asking the questions that lead to it? The thing is, I do sometimes get some useful information, and I'm not really demanding a full accounting (this is a questionnaire, not a formal assignment). In fact, they could skip or gloss over the part of the question-cluster about whether they started college at our u or elsewhere, and I probably wouldn't even notice. I suspect it's the students who have mastered the embarrassed little essay, with its concise combination of facts and appropriate responsibility-taking, who are ready to succeed, and do. I've yet to have a student who wrote it, and then failed. Some of those who do fail probably have similar or even less illustrious histories, but they conceal or pretty them up.
ReplyDeleteCC: I think it's worth keeping if for no other reason that you will know the ones who at least know they need to take responsiblity for their questionable GPA. I guess what I was mostly saying was that after writing some version of it for years, it was very strange to be in a place where it really didn't why my CV started with the institution I graduated from at 31.
ReplyDeletedidn't matter I should say...
ReplyDeleteAn article entitled "The Secret to Raising Smart Kids" in the September 2007 issue of _Scientific American Mind_ also indicates that many smart kids 'flame out' not because they aren't smart, but because they've been TOLD they are smart and THAT is why they achieve high scores and do well in school. Those who are smart but were told they did well because they worked hard did better at achieving long term success because they did not tie their success to only their intellect. The article indicates that those who flame out do so because they don't want to try something they know they're not good at, since it is tied to their identities and self esteem (if they fail, they think it's b/c they're not smart enough, not b/c they didn't try hard enough), and therefore, end up failing at what others expect should be easy for them.
ReplyDeleteI see this in some of my classes where students are given a task (as simple as making an origami bird, for example). Some students refuse to even TRY, because they think that failure of doing such a task means they aren't smart enough to do it. Sad phenomenon!
@Natalie: that makes sense. Actually, that kind of c.v. is better to have than mine, which records college graduation at 22 (though that isn't obvious), and then a *very* long period from the beginning of grad school a year later (marked by a fellowship) to degree date. Of course there are reasons for that, too -- some of them my responsibility/fault, some not -- but it's harder to disguise (and I've never tried, though, come to think of it, removing the fellowship might do it). If anything, potential employers probably just assumed that you were a decade or so younger than you are.
ReplyDeleteCC: Bingo, that's exactly what people assume these days. From my BA degree date through the rest is a time frame that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteContemplative Cynic,
ReplyDeletethat's it in a nutshell.
this is exactly why my money is always on the freshman that comes in with a decent SAT but without a 4.0. They know how to work hard. "Brilliance", largely, doesn't matter for shit. I would rather do research with hard working students than the brilliants. the brilliants are mostly too frustrating, they almost always let you down. i'm happy to hear that some of you brilliants figured it out and got your acts together! gives me hope for some of the brilliants i've met at my slac.
ReplyDeleteConteplative Cynic,
ReplyDeleteI would certainly agree that that was one of the issues with me. I had a lot of reasons for what happened that people would have seen as valid but fundamentally it was about my own psyche. It wasn't so much entitlement as I had a (really crazy PhD) parent who told me I had a god given duty to use my intelligence to make the world better. So when I crashed not only had I disappointed my family, I had wasted a gift from god.
@New England Natalie: I have a friend who has had a similar experience. She actually IS brilliant, like you, too, but doesn't believe it. Amazing how we are controlled by our psyches when logic tells us otherwise.
ReplyDeleteAcademic Monkey--Just standing up for the fucking idiot musician for a minute...
ReplyDeleteThe big difference between music students and Other Smart Kids graduating from high school is that any musician with even a shot at a conservatory education has to have picked up a modicum of discipline along the way--if he's not practicing 3+ hours a day, he shouldn't even be bothering, but assuming he is, he may well be fine.
There's a lot of space between the 10 in 10,000 and the casual wedding part-timer. There's a pretty healthy group of individuals who gig full time, are self-employed, and that IS their real job. Health insurance is a nightmare unless you're married to someone with good benefits, but it's eminently do-able. Ask me how I know. :-)
What he should do is get a conservatory DEGREE at a school with other stuff going down. Indiana U or Oberlin or someplace where he can get the B.Mus degree but still have access to some decent classes for the academics he'll still have to take and can kick ass on. (I don't know his instrument, or whether those two are the schools he'd be looking for, but there are plenty like them.) But even if he goes to Eastman or Curtis or Juilliard or whatever he may well get plenty of work. There is work out there for the good players.
My mom thought as you do, that I should have gotten a degree that would prepare me for a "real" job. I still, 20 years later, enjoy rubbing her nose in the fact that my degree did prepare me for my "real" job, the one she thought I'd never get.
--J