Cubsfan
September 3, 2009, 10:44am
81
astro:
My soon to 19 year old son is going to be entering his 3rd semester of Jr College this fall and has not covered himself with glory to date. The reasons are not mysterious. He is big fan of online gaming, not a big fan of studying, or getting to bed on time, or getting up in the morning. My ex-wife and I were divorced in 97 and my son has lived with his mother the past 7 years. While she has some good qualities her attitude towards the kids academic achievement since day one has been near absolute non-participation in their academic progress. Her notion is that she will provide food and shelter and the rest is up to them. The odd thing is that she has a undergraduate degree in early childhood ed which she never used as she decided it wasn’t really what she wanted to do, so this attitude confuses me as I would expect her to be pro-education and focused on helping them achieve, but her attitude is 180 degrees different and is (effectively) a hands off “they will sink or swim of thier own accord” scenario.
My son barely graduated high school and is now floundering in community college. His current community college cumulative GPA is a very low C at this point. He devotes massive amounts of time to online gaming to the exclusion of almost anything else. This has been years in the making, and his mother’s response to all this over the years has been to call me over to deliver yet another dad lecture when he is at the 59th minute of the 11th hour of failing yet another course, semester or school year. It took me almost 2 years to convince her to let me pull his Warcraft computer (which I had foolishly given him as a birthday present). Pulling the Warcraft computer at the end of the second semester of community college failure was a battle royale, that involved lots of crying, pleading, screaming and furious cursing. It was honestly kind of frightening to see how utterly invested he was in the Warcraft community to the exclusion of almost everything else.
I left him with an HP Pavilion Celeron based Win XP notebook for school work. He then proceeded to install the old school online game Diablo on that machine which he now plays. As usual all my exhortations to turn things around and offers of tutorial help (both mine and professional if necessary) were met with agreement while I am in front of him, and utterly ignored the instant I leave as he turns back to the console.
The odd thing in all this is that I don’t believe he is by nature a congenital slacker, and he is quite willing to put his shoulder to the wheel if given some structure and direction. He and I worked together to complete his Eagle Scout project and numerous other Eagle requirements, and we finally had his ceremony the other day with several other Eagles. He is very proud of this accomplishment.
I’m starting to think that he might not be ready for college maturity-wise, and that another direction might be necessary. I’m thinking of the military but after having attended the incredibly sad funeral of a local 20 year old killed in action 2 years ago in Iraq I’m not so hep on the Army or Marines as a vocational choice. Given his background is the military a viable option or not? I’m not looking for miracles, but if someone has what appears to be a “I’m happy to float along with miminal effort as long I’m being fed, housed and given access to a console” attitude is the military a viable solution to change that attitude?
I just want to say that this is EXACTLY me before I enlisted in 1995.
Graduated HS with a flat C.
Flunked out of a year of CC.
Enlisted in the AF.
Now an officer with a BSEE (Cum Laude) and an MSEE.
It was the best decision I ever made.
CGTom
September 3, 2009, 10:30pm
82
I’m an active duty Coast Guardin’ type guy, so I thought I might chime in on this since people have brought the Coast Guard up.
I feel like it has really been the best decision I’ve made in my life, but that’s not always the case for everyone. Part of my job now is keeping track of the fuck-ups of the Coast Guard, and it’s like herding cats. Please don’t let your son get involved in something he isn’t ready for. I don’t think I would have been ready to handle the responsibilities of the Coast Guard at 19, and a lot of people aren’t. That’s not to say your son couldn’t. I don’t know him, of course. It’s been my experience that guys and gals who are a little bit older than that usually get ahead in the Coast Guard. Everyone is different however.
It’s a good gig though, really. Hard work. But really rewarding. We’re the life saving service. We don’t actively go around and try taking lives. We (as an organization) are out there doing good things, and it feels good to be a part of something like that.
I’d be happy to talk to your son and tell him the things that no Coast Guard recruiter will tell you. I lucked out in that regard, as I had a really nice lady who told me the truth. Not everyone is so lucky.