Alberta_Rose

My son may have to drop out of Calgary University where he's just completed his second year of an engineering degree. His grades apparently are below the passing mark.
This bombshell fell last weekend, and was initially shocking to all of us.

But you know, as the week wore on, I began to see that now it's happened it seems it's actually taken a huge weight off his mind. He's evidently been worried sick over this possibility for a while now and keeping it to himself. I knew something was up, but he wouldn't admit to anything. I'd began to wonder if he was depressed, on drugs or something worse. Now he's getting his bounce back.

He's going to appeal, but he's adamant that he will reapply in a year if the decision holds and is determined to complete his degree however long it takes. Since then a friend gave me a contact in an electrical engineering company, and he's invited my son to send a resume, and then he'll interview him and see if they can offer him a position in their company, either just for the summer, or for the year or whatever......

As the weekend's gone on I've felt increasingly sure that it's not the disaster it seemed. It will be good for him to take a year out and be working in the field anyway, and if he can't get back into UofC then other doors will open.

Finally I just found a paycheck that I'd forgotten to bank from the end of April (I was wondering why funds seemed rather low!!!) So all in all I'm a much happier Morwenna going to bed tonight!

Many things that seem like disasters at first can work out just fine in the end. If I'd got the grades I needed at A level I would have gone to medical school, I wouldn't have married my Hubby and none of us would be where we are now!

Mrs Miggins

sleep well honey

All the best to you and yours
Mrs Miggins and the Miggins xxxx

ann m

Well, I for one, am happier that Morwenna is happier !

T'is true - the things we sometimes see as disastrous at the time, just turn out to be another path to choose.

My A level results were also a cause for a depressive (vodka fuelled!) session - but hey, who knows where I might have ended up - but it wouldn't have been with mr m, I'm sure, and for that alone, an "E" in English literature was truly worth it

I wish your son well, and you know in your heart, he will be fine, whatever happens and whatever path he chooses .... and with a mum like you, well, hey, how could it be any other way?

dingbat

My brainiac daughter emailed me yesterday and asked if she could take a year out of University. She's just done year one of a law degree in the UK. This was also a bombshell. Two years of fighting to get her in, get home student status, combined with the legal hassles of the rest of the family sprogs being allowed to leave this country.

I took a sharp intake of breath...screamed slowly inside and said "of course you can darling". One very happy, only just eighteen year old. One very scared mother of five, wondering how this will affect my court order giving leave to remove from Canada. I am also looking at potential disaster, and thinking, so what? Shit happens.

I got all the grades I thought I would at "A" level, and went off to University. I graduated at twenty (far too young). I got the degree I knew I would. Had a high flying career. Married a bastard. Had some beautiful children. Became a woman of a certain age in a country I detest. Met new bloke (not a bastard) and had more babies. Kept career going (just). Now it is my daughter's turn to live a life. I don't want her to feel the pressure I did. There is really no need. So what if she goes back next year or the year after. Your son will do what he has to do, when he has to do it. Maybe now, is just not the right time. He has a good Mum by the sounds of it. I hope it all works out.

Mountain Girl

Sometimes I think its better to take a year off and gain some good experience, or travel, I really wish I did.

The experience he gains in that year maybe really beneficial for his degree too.


Good luck to your lad Morw.!

iaink

Best thing that ever happened to me was flunking my second year at Uni. Frankly if it hadnt happend I would not have eventually buckled down and got a 2i, gone on to be a research student, and finally ended up with the job that brought me to canada where I met my wife etc etc.

Call it fate if you like, but everything happens for a reason I guess.

Chin up

hot wasabi peas

Maybe he's considering changing his major to anthropology!

Souvenir

Count yourselves lucky.

Souvette's son has turned into a bum, to put it politely. He's pushing 19 and still hasn't graduated from high school. He still needs to pass French (how frikkin ironic is that?). He flunked at high school; he flunked summer school; he was enroled in adult education. The general idea is that you don't stay up all night playing sodding X-box or porking your girlfriend and then fail to respond to attempts to get you out of bed to go to school, or get a job, or, in fact, do anything other than being a mouthy, lazy, "you owe me" slob.

This all started with the girlfriend. He went downhill soon after he started seeing her. I can't stand her. His mother can't stand her. His biological father and favourite cousin can't stand her. Hell, even her own mother spoke ill of her to me. He's not getting the message that the people who care most are trying to give him.

We tried encouragement, to get him back on track. That didn't work. Cajoling came next, then, frankly, ultimatums. These last efforts were greeted with the threat: "OK, I'll just move to live with my dad".

The little twit has clearly never heard of the boy who cried wolf. He was a bit surprised to be hauled out of bed at 6am yesterday and taken with little more than his clothes to Montreal, where his dad was waiting to take him to Quebec City. His dad is a strict disciplinarian, an ex-soldier and rather robust.

I'm more upset than angry. Things came to a head on Friday, when I learned something that shocked me (and which I won't talk about on here). Over the last nearly ten years I had come to regard him as my own. He betrayed me.

It is not in my nature to forgive. You only cross me once.

Sorry to rant.

dbd33

The youth of today. Shocking. My middle one finished university, made a documentary for the CBC, enrolled in a drug test program, took the funds raised from these activities and set off for Alaska via New Orleans. That went awry somehow and the last I heard she was in Guatemala headed for the ocean. What I wanted from her was to live vicariously a life of educated respectability; the feckless pursuit of adventure I can do for meself.

Alberta_Rose

Ouch! Our kids eh?

I doctor I worked with once asked a completely unlined-looking nonegenarian what her secret was to her young appearance.

"No kids!" she grinned happily.

Thanks for all the kind thoughts, peoples!

Alberta_Rose

He studied anthropology in his first year as an extracurricular subject and loved it!

This year he really enjoyed philosophy and said it was so much easier than engineering!

iaink

Well duh...no wrong answers in philosophy are there Get your answer wrong engineeering and the bridge falls down

Lorna_D

My son was told at the end of his first year (industrial design) that he was not good enough in Math to continue, but the lecuture encouraged him to change to design for media; he has a BA in that and went on to complete a Masters in Graphical Communication. He's submitted a paper as a proposal for his Phd and all this out his longing to be a forklift driver.

newshoney

We're not all the finished article at 18 (or even now!) and hitting the odd bump in the road is a learning experience and character-building. He'll get where he really wants to be, even if it's not by the straightest route. The important thing is to bolster his confidence that he can do it... whatever it is that's right for him! Getting a failing grade at this stage is just a wake-up call... he can come back stronger.

newshoney

Me too. I dropped out of the LSE at 18 to hitchhike around Mexico before resuming uni (four years later)... and got not just a better degree as a result, but also a clearer idea of what career most appealed. After 25 years of broadcast journalism, I've taken the redundo check and now have the chance for some more feckless adventure (in between pampering the OH, raising the teens and caring for 86-year-old ailing dad). Guatemala you say? (Makes plans...)


My OH dropped out of an Avionics degree, took a great-paying job for a couple of years before switching to Electrical Engineering which led to a lucrative career in satellites which brought him to England (and me)... and he says the same. (Lucky me)