Work Ethic

[jkievlan]

I've had exactly this problem in many areas of my life. Let me ask you something, though: what's your worry? Are you just worried that his grades will be low? Are you worried that he won't find anything to be passionate about in life? Are you worried he won't feel happy or fulfilled later in life?

With respect, I'd advise you not to be upset at the mere idea that he isn't as interested in school as you'd like him to be. That's not necessarily that important (given a long history of successful and brilliant people who sucked in school); and if he finds things to be passionate about, and he's smart, he'll learn what he needs to learn. Also, remember that "success" as our culture defines it is not necessarily that important, either. What matters is whether he feels like his life was worth living, and whether others feel he was worth knowing.

In any case, my point is -- if you think though your specific worries about his future (instead of just a general worry about school performance), it may give you some direction on how to help him. Or, at least, start a conversation in the right direction.

[Gilberreke]

I would urge anyone who is feeling this way to put some long hard thought into how they might go about finding and engaging such people for the sake of their own well being.

I don't want to reply to most of your post, because this is not a topic I feel comfortable enough talking about right now, but let's say I enjoyed reading it, as most of this thread actually :). If there's even a 1% chance that this will help a tiny bit in helping a young kid grow up, that's awesome.

As for finding my peers... right here man. My girlfriend asked me why I keep spending large amounts of my free time on this forum and I told her it's because the level of same-hearted, intelligent people visiting these forums is through the roof. I guess that's why I keep coming back here.

So yeah, pretty obvious that you're better at finding peers than I am :). I'm a pretty popular, outgoing guy IRL, but I don't think I have one friend right now that is able to challenge me. On this forum, I'm very comfortable in the knowledge that for once, I'm neither the smartest, nor the weirdest, nor the most talented person by a long shot.

If it's okay by all of you guys, I'd like to stick around for a while :). Love you guys to bits :)

[Rianaru]

I'm not gonna add too much more than has already been said, so I'll keep it short.

Ditto to the above, similar experiences in high school, beginning of college etc.

OChem taught me that some things just require time and effort no matter how smart you are. My advice is to put him in a situation where he will fail spectacularly in a really personally jarring way if he doesn't work hard, but not in a way that will have a heavy impact on his future. IMO, developing a work ethic requires failure, and I think this is more true the more intelligent a person is. Basically it's a wake up call.

[devak]

OChem taught me that some things just require time and effort no matter how smart you are. My advice is to put him in a situation where he will fail spectacularly in a really personally jarring way if he doesn't work hard, but not in a way that will have a heavy impact on his future. IMO, developing a work ethic requires failure, and I think this is more true the more intelligent a person is. Basically it's a wake up call.

That won't work unless it happens on a regular basis. I had 1 wake-up call for one exam i absolutely had to pass and then i realized i was safe again and went back to bang-for-the-buck.


This whole thread has been going back and forth in my mind for quite a bit.

There's one thing i absolutely disagree with: that the school system is the problem. For me, it never was. It was the other kids. Nothing is worse for your work ethic than an environment that basically punishes achievement. I read a schoolbook on my first year in middleschool (History, my favorite topic back then) and when i told a guy, he reacted like i had told him i'd been to the moon or so.

But this isn't just a one-off. it's a structural teenage culture of rebellion against everything, especially what you're being told to do. At school, you're being told to learn and rebelling against that is more or less the teenage crusade. Getting high grades is nice, but if you neither don't have to work for it, nobody encourages you to get higher grades and being happy about them gets you bad looks, it's just a downward work ethic spiral.

[TheAnarchitect]

God, this is hitting me so hard.

I had a fight this weekend with my son, over a report card. It's the stupidest thing ever. It's not even a bad report card. It's simply that he's had the exact same comments from the teacher on the last 4 report cards he's gotten (Doesn't respect other students, isn't completing classwork), and so I asked him what he needs to do different to solve the problems. He started shouting at me about how everyone in his class hates him, etc etc, and made a huge screaming crying production of the whole thing.

The thing is, I don't even fucking care. The school grade system measures nothing but how good kids are at conforming to their teacher's expectations. I should know, I gamed the fuck out of that system as a kid. All I wanted to do was figure out what the teacher meant by "doesn't respect other's personal space." But my son apparently would rather have an hour long screaming match with his whole family than admit that he ever made anything resembling a bad decision, ever. And so now I'm the kind of parent who has fights with their kid over a report card, when I don't even want to give a damn.

[devak]

God, this is hitting me so hard.

*puts on psychology hat*

I would say that by saying "what would you do to solve this problem" you indirectly blamed him for it, but he doesn't consider it his fault and this pushes him into his defensive mode.

I think it has to be put in a more neutral form, so you can understand the situation before putting the blame (even implying it's his blame can be enough) on your kid. I mean, it's very likely that it IS his problem, but the last thing he needs is to hear it from everyone. In fact, i would say that the last person he wants to hear it from is you.

So yea, just talk about what the teachers mean and what the other kids do without implying it is a problem.


I understand it's absolutely not your intention to make him feel cornered or anything. Don't take this as a blame.

[Mr_Hosed]

@TheAnarchitect

That kind of behavior earned me either a flying shoe or a nearly full beer can. My old man did NOT appreciate tantrums. Not saying it's the right way, but it did teach me as a young kid that the world didn't give a shit what I thought nearly as much as I would have liked it too.

It definitely sounds like your approach was interpreted wrongly though. If he feels you're judging him, rather then listening... yeah, even flying beer cans and leather belts won't get you very far.

[Dreambolt]

Though I'd write a little snippet, but it got long so into the spoiler, hopefully it's comes across well and adds something.

Spoiler

Show

Well I don't know who it might help but I'll throw my two cents in, so I'm 21 4th year university (Botany/Philosophy Double Major) had a relatively shitty year by all standards, literally the day before my fall semester my father passes away whom I'm living with. Though this will become more useful to the discussion topic a bit later, though for people sake I'm doing very well, was super busy and never alone (it helped a lot) thanks to a very supportive partner. Though since I was living with my father at the time to keep costs low, so I've really had to grow up fast in the last 3 months

So lets go back to Junior high, in retrospect it wasn't the worst, but fuuuck did it suck, like damn If i wasn't as good at letting this roll off as I am, and did have as much support I'd be a fucked up mess (sound like exaggeration, but it was scary how close I was at times at just doing absolutely nothing remotely productive), but work ethic I didn't have an once. I would escape into a book or a TV show or a computer game, or hell my own imagination before I'd crack a text book (barring an art project here or there). For me it was being a social outcast in a small town, and not being naturally motivated, it just became impossible to convince me to work. I wasn't a complete idiot it was just an agony at points to give a single shit about most things.

Not sure what you could have done for me, probably the only thing that world have worked was moved at this point, but my only other school option wasn't an option at all (long story, but it wasn't) so I just kept on going along.

Not a whole lot my parents could do other then some how dealing with the constant bullies, but really I just should have gotten in a couple ugly fights and just scared them off, but I didn't get that aggressive or any good at fighting until after high school (damn testosterone! where were you before!).

High school things started to turn about, my peers stopped being assholes (I got a little crazy so that helped, 5 year of torment makes for some excellent dangerous moments were people just reconsider the what they where doing) A couple things also changed, one around 16 I got a lot more emotional control and I stopped letting my peers get to me and was finally able to throw it back (I'd just get upset not witty). I also got a bit more grateful, I realized to a larger extent the life was good I saw my place in it and I knew it could be so much worse.

So by grade 11 my only problem was a still didn't care about school (or anyone in it), or putting any effort into much of anything other than world of wastingmytime craft. Though University held promise for me so my mother helped to convince me that matriculating was in my best intrest so I pushed on and found the start of a passion in biology. I however was still pretty useless at school, still hated it and more or less did the bare minimum to get c's and b's and it always felt like banging my head would be more interesting but meh soon it was over and I went to university.

Now don't get me wrong University wasn't some magic bullet, but I found peers, for the first time I found peers i could relate too. That was and still is wonderful and washed away most of the pain I ever felt during high school. Hell it got a lot better, and the work was harder, but actually had some meaning though the first two year of biology, chem, Computer science (I learned so much about computer and programming in general here also that it is the opposite of was I should ever do as a career), but i also took some woman studies classes, which where mighty cool, and made me aware that a) i in fact wasn't an misogynistic ass (thank goodness), b) I had a mountain left to learn (I think I've been making good progress), and c) I had a lot more to be thankful for. I'm a White Cis-gendered male, who present strongly male comfortably, but still doesn't feel oppressed by societal presser, and was born to some what affluent parents in a wealthy country. I might sound like bragging, but it meant for first time I knew what hand i was dealt, and it was a good one bearing a lot of responsibility. And that helped, suddenly I was less about me and more about what could I do.

Now too keep this short, I finally started taking Philosophy courses (it never fit in my schedule before), awesome times with ethics, but that aside I began volunteering, I also started lovely my subject found that plants where something I could fall in love with, and food crops came with some real job stability, then this year I got royally fucked by the dice and I found my self dealing with my fathers estate and moving out of my home, though with help I invested the insurance money I got, found a place to live, and found myself here typing a little snippet hoping that my ranting might be at least interesting.

If there's any take away from this is when things got better I was more self aware and grateful for my life and how I can use it to help others not just how I can assure my future(though that's been important too.

[agentwiggles]

Having read through this, I was going to make a big long post about my life history, and how much better it would have been for me if I'd grown up being told that I was a hard worker rather than being told how naturally intelligent I was. But it came out stupid, so I'm paring down to this:

The hardest lesson I've learned in the past 4 years (since I started at college) is that my natural intelligence is worth fuck all. It might have helped me get a 33 on my ACT, but it means jack shit now that I'm in college as a CS major. The only way that I can get good grades in school is by working hard to learn the things that I'm supposed to learn. It took an unbelievable amount of me fucking myself over for me to have that realization, and now I think I'm at a bit of a disadvantage compared to people who didn't think they were God's gift to intelligence, because I'm a senior in college and I'm only just now learning how to study and manage time like a decent human being.

I like to think sometimes about how different life would be for me now if I could go back in time and tell my teenage self what I know now - that nothing is going to be handed to me, that natural intelligence is bullshit, and that teenage me should shape the fuck up so that he wouldn't have such a miserable first 2.5 years of college. The most unrealistic part of that particular fantasy is not the time travel - it's the assumption that teenage me would have listened. I had to fall on my ass so many times and so drastically to realize I needed to start trying, and I still have trouble being productive to this day. I don't think teenage me would believe that he was going to fail so miserably if Cthulhu himself rose up from the depths of the ocean and ran across the country to come to Ohio and shout it in his face. I think it's one of those things that you just have to figure out on your own.

edit:
Think I may have come off more cynical than I really feel, so I'll just say this:
My attitude towards school and life in general have changed drastically in the past year, hugely for the better. After being fed up to the point of going damn near crazy, something clicked for me about the pure magic of computer science, and I'm a lot more inspired to work hard to understand it. This applies in math, too - I've been working my ass of in calculus this semester and I've developed a similar appreciation for calc and math in general. Computer science is really just an extension of math, and I think it's easily arguable that the two topics are humanity's most incredible, useful inventions - relied upon by pretty much any kind of progress. Being one of the operators of that kind of power is the closest thing I'll ever do to being a wizard, so I practice hard :)