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agonyaunt2024-07-05 12:56 am
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2024-07-05 12:56 am
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Pay Dirt: The Reason My Son Refuses to Get a Job in College Is Ridiculous...
... I Made the Mistake of Telling Him So.
Dear Pay Dirt,
My son is 19 years old and in college. He refused to get a job his first two semesters because he was too busy with his girlfriend, with whom he ended up sharing his dorm. I was not aware of this girl’s existence in that manner and now, because I let my son know how disappointed I am of him… it only made matters worse. In their mind, it’s him and her against the world. Yet neither of them work full-time. This is a gentleman I would always see with a book in his hand. How do I knock some sense into him?
—College Job
Dear College Job:
You don’t. Your son is 19 years old, and biologically speaking, he’s nowhere near ready to take on the responsibilities of being a grown-up. His brain will still be developing well into his 20s. But, he is legally an adult, and you have to let him start to experience the consequences of his actions.
But before we get there, how’s the rest of his life going? Is he getting good grades? Is he able to focus at all while being in this relationship? Is he letting his other friendships fall to the wayside? If he’s getting good grades and having fun, but you feel he should (or already promised to) contribute financially to his education, that’s one thing. If his grades are sliding and you think getting a job will be “punishment” enough to get him back on track, that’s another.
Assuming it’s the former, decide what you think his contribution should be. The next time he’s home, you can sit him down and have a conversation with him that goes something like this:
You: Son, we need you to help out with your college expenses.
Son: But I’m working hard for my grades and don’t have time.
You: In life, we all have to make choices we don’t particularly like, and we can’t fund your beer money anymore. We expect you to find a way to contribute X amount to your schooling.
Then stick to it. Don’t bring up the girlfriend. Don’t bring up what you had to do when you went to school. This is just about his agreement to help—you’re asking him to stick to that.
And a word of advice for you: don’t think making him get a job will get him to dump the girl. Instead, try the opposite approach: make friends. Invite her in. As my friend Michael likes to say, “Be on the acceptance committee, not the admission committee.” That way, it might be you, your son, and whomever he’s dating at the moment, against the world.
Dear Pay Dirt,
My son is 19 years old and in college. He refused to get a job his first two semesters because he was too busy with his girlfriend, with whom he ended up sharing his dorm. I was not aware of this girl’s existence in that manner and now, because I let my son know how disappointed I am of him… it only made matters worse. In their mind, it’s him and her against the world. Yet neither of them work full-time. This is a gentleman I would always see with a book in his hand. How do I knock some sense into him?
—College Job
Dear College Job:
You don’t. Your son is 19 years old, and biologically speaking, he’s nowhere near ready to take on the responsibilities of being a grown-up. His brain will still be developing well into his 20s. But, he is legally an adult, and you have to let him start to experience the consequences of his actions.
But before we get there, how’s the rest of his life going? Is he getting good grades? Is he able to focus at all while being in this relationship? Is he letting his other friendships fall to the wayside? If he’s getting good grades and having fun, but you feel he should (or already promised to) contribute financially to his education, that’s one thing. If his grades are sliding and you think getting a job will be “punishment” enough to get him back on track, that’s another.
Assuming it’s the former, decide what you think his contribution should be. The next time he’s home, you can sit him down and have a conversation with him that goes something like this:
You: Son, we need you to help out with your college expenses.
Son: But I’m working hard for my grades and don’t have time.
You: In life, we all have to make choices we don’t particularly like, and we can’t fund your beer money anymore. We expect you to find a way to contribute X amount to your schooling.
Then stick to it. Don’t bring up the girlfriend. Don’t bring up what you had to do when you went to school. This is just about his agreement to help—you’re asking him to stick to that.
And a word of advice for you: don’t think making him get a job will get him to dump the girl. Instead, try the opposite approach: make friends. Invite her in. As my friend Michael likes to say, “Be on the acceptance committee, not the admission committee.” That way, it might be you, your son, and whomever he’s dating at the moment, against the world.
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Well, for fuck's sake.
Though I do actually think late-teen and young-twenties adults are excused from a little bit of immaturity on the grounds of being actually immature. It takes some time to transition from being a kid to being an *adult* adult. And honestly... was LW going to pay for college? Because if LW was always going to pay for college whether or not Son got a job, and is only balking now because Son got a girlfriend then I think LW really needs to stop poking their nose into Son's life unless Son's grades are very bad.
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Also I admit to being delighted that everyone here thought of LW what I thought of LW.
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Obviously there's no bright line where someone wakes up Mature, but 18 year olds are still generally close enough to it that it's genuinely infringing on their rights to deny them autonomy (& therefore some responsibility)
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Oh yeah, because if you don't have time for grades, replacing the girlfriend with an activity that demands even more of your time is *just* the thing to make it better.
If I'd had a job in college, I'd have flunked out.
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1. It won't be "job or girlfriend" it'll be "job AND girlfriend", leaving less time for studying.
2. Girlfriends, statistically, understand "I have finals coming up so I can't do this activity" MUCH better than jobs. College girlfriends often have their own finals.
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I mean, if the plan was always for him to get an on-campus job to help defray costs, having a girlfriend shouldn't stop that. I had jobs and significant others throughout college. On-campus jobs, though, not random ones, so that their expectation of hours and timing went well with my class schedule--and definitely not "punishment for having a sex life" jobs.
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There is so much I would like to unpack in those sentences. Most college students don't work full-time--because unless you're going to a program designed specifically for adult students taking night classes, it's hard to find a full-time job willing to be fit around a course schedule! (I looked up statistics, and the percent of full-time college students in the US also working 35 hours a week or more has held steady at about 10% for decades.)
And is LW unhappy that their college student son is . . . reading books? What does LW think succeeding in college entails?
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Working full time while going to college is a bad idea if you can at all avoid it. There are loads of stats and studies that show that as the average student approaches and exceeds 30 hours of work a week, schoolwork starts to suffer.
There are compromises available. Does son qualify for work-study? If not, are there other campus jobs? Working in the dorm cafeteria isn't the most glamorous job, but it's doable if you're physically able, and most bosses will understand "massive physics project; need to miss a shift."