lostman
500+ Posts
A while back I posted about Lostchild 2 (aka Lostboy1) and his academic trials and tribulations. As a student in middle school and high school, he was always a puzzle for his teachers - GT (132 IQ), Learning Disabled, and ADHD, graduating in the middle of his class of 900 some students with a 1200 on his SATs. Long story short - we spent about $15K of his college fund to get credit for 1 class his first freshman year at TTU. My original post was just looking for ways to help him see his way through to what he could do next. I really did not want to solve his problem for him, but wanted to be able to help him see options, as he thought he was a huge failure.
Later I posted a little update - he was accepted conditionally at a small school (McMurry) and could swim as well. (He swam in HS and quit when he went to TTU) The coach there joked about how many favors she owed to get him in. He enrolled pretty much as a freshman once again - and decided he wanted to coach and teach.
There were a couple false starts on what he actually wanted to teach - history was his first choice, then abandoned for English. Neither was what I thought a great choice - through 8th grade his learning disability was in basic reading and written expression, so both would be difficult in terms of classes and later as teaching. His strengths are math and science, but math for him is very intuitive, so I never thought teaching that would be a good idea either.
Fortunately, he had to take 2 semesters of English and 2 semesters of History, as well as a Bio class during his first 3 semesters at McM, and he has come to the realization that he is very good at learning and explaining science. And so has settled on that as his field of teaching.
(I am a science teacher and dad is a structural engineer - so I think it is in the genes! )
He just had his first semester of passing ALL classes (although Brit Lit was a D, it was passing!), GPA is 1.9 (almost a 2.0), and last week in their final dual swim meet he posted a time in his 100 Fly that qualifies him for D3 nationals, 50.9 sec.
He laments, once in a while, that he is "stuck" swimming in D3 and I remind him that it is where he "belongs". He has a great group of friends, gets to swim, and has small classes and professors that care. He caught the flu one day and missed a morning class. The professor called him that afternoon to set up a time for him to come in and make up notes etc from that class. That would not happen at a large school IMHO.
We have 2 years until graduation, but he now sees a light at the end of what once appeared to be an endless tunnel. He will have some loans to pay off, but we will use his college fund to pay some of the loans off, determined each semester by how many classes he passes. And he is starting to see that hard work pays off.
If you got this far in this post - to all of you who answered my original post long ago - a huge thank you! I saved your PM's and read them often over and over. They saved my sanity and his self-esteem. Another update in 2 years, hopefully with a grad photo!
Later I posted a little update - he was accepted conditionally at a small school (McMurry) and could swim as well. (He swam in HS and quit when he went to TTU) The coach there joked about how many favors she owed to get him in. He enrolled pretty much as a freshman once again - and decided he wanted to coach and teach.
There were a couple false starts on what he actually wanted to teach - history was his first choice, then abandoned for English. Neither was what I thought a great choice - through 8th grade his learning disability was in basic reading and written expression, so both would be difficult in terms of classes and later as teaching. His strengths are math and science, but math for him is very intuitive, so I never thought teaching that would be a good idea either.
Fortunately, he had to take 2 semesters of English and 2 semesters of History, as well as a Bio class during his first 3 semesters at McM, and he has come to the realization that he is very good at learning and explaining science. And so has settled on that as his field of teaching.
He just had his first semester of passing ALL classes (although Brit Lit was a D, it was passing!), GPA is 1.9 (almost a 2.0), and last week in their final dual swim meet he posted a time in his 100 Fly that qualifies him for D3 nationals, 50.9 sec.
He laments, once in a while, that he is "stuck" swimming in D3 and I remind him that it is where he "belongs". He has a great group of friends, gets to swim, and has small classes and professors that care. He caught the flu one day and missed a morning class. The professor called him that afternoon to set up a time for him to come in and make up notes etc from that class. That would not happen at a large school IMHO.
We have 2 years until graduation, but he now sees a light at the end of what once appeared to be an endless tunnel. He will have some loans to pay off, but we will use his college fund to pay some of the loans off, determined each semester by how many classes he passes. And he is starting to see that hard work pays off.
If you got this far in this post - to all of you who answered my original post long ago - a huge thank you! I saved your PM's and read them often over and over. They saved my sanity and his self-esteem. Another update in 2 years, hopefully with a grad photo!
