Chiming in here:
As one who also found high school (all of it, not just senior year) pointless and unstimulating (with two exceptions, which I’ll cover later), I objected to busy work as well, and did as little homework as I could get away with, hoping to get by on my test grades.
But I did this will full knowledge that my grades would be “okay” instead of terrific. I knew I should have done homework and I didn’t do it. I expected to get lower grades as a result. It’s that whole cause and effect thing, you know?
The only worthwhile things I did in high school were my AP History class and my semester abroad. Perhaps I had an excellent teacher (I did), but I found the AP class to be extremely challenging and stimulating. Rather than have the students just answer every question in the chapter as homework, which my government teacher did the following year (totally pointless, as those questions can be answered by skimming the chapter for keywords, rather than actually reading it, causing you to miss material), the teacher handed out sheets of questions that picked out tiny details from the material. His policy was do them or not, it’s up to you, but you’re the one who has to take his tests, which were equally difficult, and which the questions would help prepare you for. Students in that class were not required to study per se, yet we all HAD to study. It’s the ONLY class in high school I studied for. If he failed to pass a course at that level, it was because he’d always skated by on his own knowledge before, and couldn’t bring himself to study the material. If he really was so smart that he didn’t need to work at it, he should have had no trouble acing the tests without doing the homework. In my experience, if you score 100% on all the tests but do none of the homework, you’ll still get a B (or b-). If that is, in fact, the case, then perhaps he should have brought copies of his tests or test scores to the interview to prove that the grading really was based on completion of pointless busy work. If he wasn’t getting 100% on the tests… perhaps the busy work would have helped.
(For the record, I rarely did those questions in my AP class, but I knew my lack of studying resulted in lower grades. I didn’t whine about low grades when I could have done something about it)
I think the school did the right thing in turning him away. It’s not as if they said, “You’ll never go to college…ever! BWAHAHAHAHAH!” They suggested he try again the following year after investing a year in proving that he was up to the challenge. There’s nothing wrong with spending a year at a j.c. There are still courses that will challenge him there, and he can use those grades as proof of his ability to perform up to expectations. In the end, all that matters is which school’s name is on the degree, not the amount of time you spent at that particular school. One year at a junior college will not materially affect his earning ability in the future. If he feels that the level of education at a j.c. does not match that which he would get at UNC, then he can choose to go the 5-year route, by doing a year at a j.c., then spending 4 years at UNC.
Besides, he really DOES need an indoctrination into the ways of the real world, before it’s too late. Perhaps two semesters sitting next to pregnant 19-year old waitresses in junior college will remind him of the benefits of conforming. Being nonconformist is only interesting when there is some perceivable benefit to not conforming. Any other time it’s just being a horse’s ass.
The long and the short of it is, he is clearly capable of performing up to standard. Even if he wanted to slip off a bit, he could have easily held up a B average for the year by making the slightest attempt at an effort. To do as poorly as he did indicates he just wasn’t trying. Having to wait one year to transfer into an institution which will probably take him if he shapes up just a bit is a perfectly reasonable punishment for blowing it off.
Great, he wanted to start a software company. He made it his priority. Well, when you set your priorities you know that the secondary one is likely to suffer. If getting into UNC was so bloody important, it would have been priority #1, and the software company priority #2. The real truth is that the software company was more FUN than school. He made his choice and he has to live with the results.
Oh, and because this is a thread about education, I simply cannot resist the urge to do this (sorry):
lezlers: renigged – you mean reneged
Shade: vertuous – virtuous
Incubus: rediculous – ridiculous
mic84: genuinly – genuinely
genie: enviroment – environment
lezlers: reniged – again, reneged
mic84: assignements (I should go easy on him, as English is apparently not his first language) – assignments
