My Experience at College & What I Wished My Parents Would Have Done Apr 20 '01    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet The Bottom Line If your child is unhappy at school, be openminded and receptive to their feelings and help them as much as you can. What Should I Do If My Student is Unhappy? Back in the fall of 1975 (gosh am I THAT old?), I entered college with all of the eagerness and anticipation of having my dreams come true of becoming an author and journalist. However, after attending classes for about four weeks, I was in total shock from having been traumatized by the experience of dealing with professors who really did not seem to care about a student’s dreams. They weren’t even concerned about helping a student at all with becoming better individuals, and about mid-point through the semester, I found myself rather depressed with my grades and overall experience in school. From being an honor student in high school, I found myself struggling and even when giving my best work, I would wind up with a D in many of my classes. This really made me lose sight of my goals that I had long aspired to obtain, and I was very disenchanted. My parents could not understand what was going on as well. I tried to explain to them that I was doing my very best but even my best wasn’t good enough in the professors’ opinions. By my second semester, I continued this decline and by the end of the semester, it was quite apparent that I would have to change my major. At this point in my life, I truly wished that I had received some concern from my parents at home to help understand that I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I felt like I was being forced to make a decision on something that would affect my entire life in just a few days and I was upset that I didn’t receive any understanding. From my memory, the only thing that I truly understood was that they wanted me to be out of college in four years with a degree. Changing my major even at this point in time would cause me to lose credits so I would have to attend longer. I wound up having to go to school during the summer to make up for these lost classes so that I would be on the same level in the fall. However, summer school with its accelerated schedule really continued to do me in. I chose a major of Secondary Education – Social Studies as a major. By doing this, I could have no minor according to the course catalog at school. Having experienced a horrendous time in English and Journalism, I was disheartened to even consider those for a secondary major anyway, and I plodded on half-heartedly to seek this degree that I felt I had to have but did not really want as my goal in the first place. Eventually I did get a job teaching, found that it was incredibly stressful, and went back to work full time at a bank instead of continuing my life as an educator. At age twenty-four, I found myself beaten, depressed, with a degree that I could not really use, and a desire in my heart that was essentially dead. What Should My Parents Have Done? I really wished with all of my heart that my parents would have listened to me back then and not thought about the consequences of me being in school additional semesters or the cost. During that time in my life I really was rather lost as to what I wanted to do with my life and I felt that I could have done much better if I had not decided on a major when I first entered college. In addition, I really believe that when I was in trouble with my studies if I had been allowed to stay at home without having to work part-time, that may have helped me as well. I really felt pressured to do things that I didn’t believe I could do, and this set me up for a lot of failure and depression that could have been prevented if I had received compassion and unconditional love. Six years later, my youngest brother went through this shell shock of college as I had done. From being salutatorian at his high school, he found himself struggling as I had done. Because of the pressure, he was given the option of taking a ½ year off to help him sort out his options and during that time, he was allowed to live at home and work at a grocery store as a cashier and bagger. Eventually, he want back to school and earned a degree in Computer Science and the university was so impressed with him, that they didn’t want him to leave but gave him a job right after he received his degree. He now heads the Computer Science department now at this university and is a great success. As for me though, my dreams of writing and being published were put on hold from the time I graduated high school until seven years ago. It was only when I discovered computers and online services where I began to write my thoughts out on bulletin boards that I began to believe that I could have these dreams of being published once more. My Advice to Parents My advice to any parent who has a child struggling in school, be it high school, college or whatever, is to listen to them open-mindedly and compassionately. If your child truly is trying their best and tells you this, then do whatever you can to help them be the best that they can be. Ask your child if they need a tutor, or time to make a major decision about their college major and then no matter what the cost, please do whatever you can do to make their dream stay alive. If a child would like to transfer to a lower grade of school, then allow it and put aside any notions of your own to have a child be something that you never were. Each child is different, has a heart, and a desire to be something in life and parents should try as hard as they can to help their children support their dreams and not cause them to be discarded.

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