Day 592 of 1000
This is the tenth in a series of posts on the benefits of skipping high school and going straight to college. The introductory post and index to all the other posts in the series is here. You can see their undergraduate results and post-graduate (PhD) chase here. I try to keep the results updated as they occur.
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The move to full time schedules from Community College to Big State U. (NCSU) was fairly straightforward. The work loads were similar although the upper division classes the kids had to take were more difficult. The single summer course each of the kids took was very helpful. They knew how to get around campus, use the library, ride the buses, and all those other things you do not think about but that take time. The kids felt for the confusion of many of the incoming Freshmen who had to get answers to all those questions at the same time the were carrying a full load of classes.
Socially, the kids at Big State U. seemed to be more immature than the students taking the hard classes at the Community College. It surprised us at first, but, retrospectively, it makes some sense. The students in the hard classes at the Community College were military veterans, people working a job, housewives, generally people who were older, had responsibility, and were paying their own way. At Big State U. it was mostly kids only two years removed from the negative socialization of government high schools.
Kelly and Christian are different in the way they embrace the college experience. Kelly, because she is so social, makes lots of friends, loves to study in groups, and participates in campus activities. Sometimes this costs her. She got into a little hole during the first semester and had to bury herself in the books with little time to sleep, exercise, or even eat for the last four weeks of her semester. She did a truly amazing turn-around and got excellent grades her first full semester. That lesson served her well in terms of managing her work load.
Christian, on the other hand, is totally focused on academics. We worry that he does not get enough sleep because he is so focused on learning the material and getting great grades. He has done well enough over his whole education that his expectations for great grades are something he has to manage carefully.
I write this series of posts with about a month left in the kids Junior year at NCSU. Both of them are scheduled to graduate in May of 2014. So far, they are both on the Dean’s List and have commitments from their academic advisers that if they finish their plans, they will graduate. I will write a final post in the series when they graduate to let you know how that went. Both the kids are planning on graduate school out west–I expect I will write a post or two on their efforts to get into good graduate schools, too.