One of the exciting, and sometimes terrifying, aspects of the college experience is living with a roommate for the first time. Most soon-to-be college students are anxious about beginning their residence hall experience. Some students have thought carefully about what the experience may be like, and others may have an extremely idealized vision of living with a new roommate. As a college parent, there are a few things that you might do to help your student prepare for this new experience. This may provide a wonderful opportunity for some conversation with your student as you give her some things to think about and possibly help her explore her thoughts and expectations.
Supporting Your Student
How to Help Your College Student Use the College Appeal Process Effectively
Your college student may never need to appeal any decision made by their college. They may never be in a situation involving a dismissal from school, late withdrawal from a class, grade change, judicial decision, or other special circumstance. If that is the case, good for your student! However, a few students may feel that some policy or decision should be reconsidered. Those students may need to appeal the decision to the appropriate board or committee at the college.
Is an appeal wise?
Appealing a college decision is not always the best thing for your college student. The purpose of an appeal is usually to allow the student to explain extenuating circumstances or to provide additional information that may not have been available at the time that the decision was made. The student may be able to demonstrate that some circumstance has changed — perhaps a health situation, work situation, family situation, or even a change of focus or field of study. It is important that you and your student remember, however, that an appeal is meant as an exception and to demonstrate extraordinary circumstances. It is not meant as an avenue simply because the student is unhappy with the decision of the college. An appeal may not be in the best interest of the student. If nothing has changed, taking a break or accepting the decision may be in order.
How to Help Your College Student Use the Summer Months Wisely
As a college parent, you may be looking forward to the summer months, and your student’s return home from college, with mixed emotions. You’ve missed your student while they were away, and you are anxious to spend time with them again. However, you recognize that they’ve been on their own for months now, and you’re not sure what to expect. Parents and students who worked hard to make the off-to-college transition, must now work at a new transition to living together once again. There will be adjustments for everyone.
In addition to the adjustments that everyone will need to make regarding living together once again, college students may be faced with the question of what to do during these summer months. Some students may have a job lined up — perhaps the same job that they had before they went away. Others may still be unsure of what the next few months will bring.
Certainly, most students are looking forward to a well-deserved break from school work and routine. However, this doesn’t mean that the summer months are not important, and hopefully productive, months for your college student. After your student has had an opportunity to catch up on some sleep, eat a few home-cooked meals, and do some laundry, it may be time to have a conversation about a plan for the summer.
Parents Can Help College Students With the End-Of-Semester Stress Meltdown
College parenting is difficult. Anyone who has a student headed to college, in college, or recently out of college has realized just how difficult the college parenting job can be. One of the most difficult things about this phase of parenting is feeling helpless at times as you watch your student struggle with something. One of the times when we often see this happening is during that stressful end-of semester period. Parents may see and hear their student experiencing what appears to be a meltdown in response to the pressure and stress that occurs at the end of the semester.
We’ve written an earlier post about helping your student through that end-of-semester push. Although we may often feel helpless, parents can be helpful and supportive in several ways. In this post, we’d like to examine the end-of-semester stress a bit more closely. It may be helpful for us, as parents, to be reminded of exactly what students are feeling and experiencing at this point in the college year.
What causes student stress?
The stress that students feel as the end of the semester nears is very real and is often overwhelming. And this stress is felt by both the best students and struggling students alike. Students often realize that there is more left to do than they realized. They recognize that they may have procrastinated on some projects more than they thought. They worry about deadlines, final papers, projects, presentations, and final exams.
Is Your College Student a Member of the ”Apathy Generation”?
As a society, we want to label each generation. We’ve labeled generations as Baby Boomer, Generation X, and Millennial. Some have labeled the current generation as Generation Apathetic. Whether or not you think these labels apply globally, many of today’s current college students are apathetic about their college experiences. They see college as a phase through which they must move or an archaic pre-requisite for getting a job. They see college as a ”spectator sport” which should require little of them. They approach college with a consumer mentality or market thinking — they see education as a product which their (or your) tuition dollars are purchasing. They are interested in a fast, cheap, degree.
These are some tough accusations.
Of course, there are many students who do not fit into any of the above categories. They are engaged, active, and truly vested in their education. They want to get the most that they can from their education, and they want to contribute to the world. Unfortunately, however, there are more students who suffer from apathy than we may realize. As a parent, you might consider whether your student fits into this category at all — and whether you can help him adjust his thinking.
College Acceptance – or Rejection – Letters: Ten Ways Parents Can Help Students Cope
The wait is over. The envelope may be fat, or thin, or the news may have come via e-mail. However it has arrived, your high school student has received word from his chosen colleges about whether he has been accepted, waitlisted, or rejected. It is a defining moment for most students.
This may also be a defining moment for you as a parent as well. You will need to think about how you react to any news, and how you support your student no matter what that news may be. Your responses will help set the tone for your student. Your reactions will send important messages to your student. If the news is good, you’ll want to celebrate with him. If the news is not what he had hoped for, you’ll need to help your student deal with his disappointment.
Giving thought in advance to how you will respond may help you to be prepared for any eventuality. Here are ten suggestions of things to consider as you, as a parent, confront the college acceptance — or rejection letters.
Your Role as a College Parent: Information to Get You Started
If the college acceptance letters have just begun to come in, congratulations! You are now officially a college parent. You are excited for your student, and possibly a bit overwhelmed for yourself. You’re not sure what you should be thinking about, or doing, or how to help your student prepare for the next phase.
Here at College Parent Central we believe that the more information you have, the better you will be able to support your college student as he navigates his new experiences. But the problem with lots of information is that it can feel overwhelming. Here are a few posts that we think might be a good starting point. You’ll want to read more specific information later, but if you’re a new college parent, these posts should help you think about your new role and help you get started on your journey. Congratulations!
Communicating With Your College Student: Six Principles to Help You Make the Most of Opportunities
When your child leaves home for college, you may worry about losing contact. They will be living at college, and perhaps not returning home for several weeks or months, so you worry. However, with some effort on your part, your communication with your student may become even more meaningful than when they were home.
This post is the fourth in a series of five posts that may give you food for thought about how you communicate with your college student. Some of our suggestions are common sense reminders, and some may be new ideas for you. Obviously, communication skills are interrelated, so please consider all of these suggestions together. Our first post concerned how you listen to your student, our second looked at nonverbal communication, and our third discussed perception checking. In this post we consider how to ask the most helpful questions and how to apply some interviewing principles (yes, interviewing). In our final post we’ll look at how to frame some of your messages so your student may be more willing to listen. We hope that thinking about how you listen and talk to your student may help you to keep all of your communication doors wide open.
A conversation is not an interview, and we don’t like conversations that begin to feel like interviews — or worse, interrogations. However, those of us who have experienced well conducted interviews know that a good interview can feel like friendly conversation — and can elicit extremely helpful information. Thinking about, and applying, a few basic principles of good interviewing may help you make your conversations with your student more productive.
We don’t want to suggest that you should strategize every exchange with your student — that’s obviously not the kind of communication that you want. However, these principles may be most helpful when you need to have a serious or directed conversation with your student.
How Parents Can Help Their College Student in Difficulty
When your college student began college you both had high hopes and expectations. You knew that there would be challenges ahead, but you both did everything that you could to prepare. Now your student seems to be struggling and having difficulty at college. You may be feeling helpless and concerned for her. Perhaps she hasn’t applied herself to studying, or perhaps she doesn’t understand what is required to succeed in college, or perhaps she has worked hard but is still unable to accomplish what she needs to do.
Whatever the reasons may be, your college student is now struggling and you want to know what you can do to help. Obviously, every situation is different and every family dynamic is different, but here are some posts that may help you as you try to decide how you can help support your student as he works to improve his situation.
Communicating With Your College Student: Are You Sure You Understand?
When your child leaves home for college, you worry about losing contact. They will be living at college, and perhaps not returning home for several weeks or months, so you worry. However, with some effort on your part, your communication with your student may become even more meaningful than when they were home.
This article is the third in a series of five that may give you food for thought about how you communicate with your college student. Some of our suggestions may be common sense reminders, and some may be new ideas for you. Obviously, communication skills are interrelated, so please consider all of these suggestions together. Our first article concerned how you listen to your student, our second looked at nonverbal communication. In this article we discuss how to check perceptions to make sure you understand what your student is really saying. In our final two articles we’ll look at how to ask helpful questions, and how to frame some of your messages so your student may be willing to listen. We hope that thinking about how you listen and talk to your student may help you to keep all of your communication doors wide open.
You listen carefully to your student and you consider the nonverbal signals so that you can read between the lines. You know you’re getting the message. Maybe. No matter how much care you take to try to get the message correctly, you may be wrong. One technique that can help to improve your communication with your college student is called perception checking. It is simply making sure that what you think you heard is accurate. Don’t assume that your understanding is correct.
The goal of perception checking is that both you and your student have a shared understanding, that both you and your student know that you are working together to understand each other. This cooperative approach helps you to clarify what you’ve heard, but not put your student on the spot. It shows your respect for your student because you don’t assume that you can read their mind, and it shows that you recognize that your perspective may be different from your student’s.
