1/18/2016
Parents,
Students should have all of their classes now and the semester is well underway. The first round of tests is not far away. By now, all of our students should have a good sense of what’s expected of them.
I thought that I would discuss somethings that you might want to start thinking about for next year. Most of our students have a car by their sophomore year in college. Since most of them will have off campus housing, a car can be critical for such chores as buying food, doing laundry, etc.
If your student hasn’t learned to cook yet, that is something they need to learn. When I survey our seniors and ask them what they really enjoy doing, cooking is one of the most often mentioned things.This is especially true for the male students.
Another major item for next year is financial support. Applications will soon be accepted for scholarships for next year. Students should complete an online application at: The application should soon be active. Students must be in a major by next fall to be eligible for a scholarship. They also need to complete a FAFSA. Scholarship awards will be made this summer.
While you are making the investment in your student’s future, you may be wondering if that investment will pay off. For the past week, I have been meeting with our seniors to do reviews with them from their past semester and discussing with them their plans for their careers. A number of them already have jobs lined up.Most of the December class had jobs prior to graduation. In virtually every case, the students who already have jobs are those who started having internships after their sophomore year in college. Those students made gaining experience a part of their regular work load. While having good grades can help in getting an internship, putting in the effort is just as important.
I know that you would like to have your students home in the summer, but you need to encourage them to get experience wherever that experience may be. An adjustment you will need to make this semester and for those to come is that your student’s trips home will become less and less frequent. By their senior year, you will probably see them only at major holidays or semester breaks. Many of my seniors told me that when they went home during this past semester’s break, they found that their parents had begun to use their room for other purposes. I tell them that is probably a hint that they need to find a job.
While a number of you commented that you saw a lot of changes in your student over the past semester, there are a lot more to come. At some point in the near future, there will be some event (seemingly small at the time) when you realize that your son or daughter has become an adult in every respect. I would love to hear from you at that time.
Let me leave you with the story of Bill. I didn’t know Bill when he made his first attempt at college, but it did not go well. He was suspended. He decided to go into the military to see if that was a career he would enjoy.
Four years later, Bill returned to WVU. That’s when I got to know him. He really struggled the first semester back. Discipline wasn’t the problem this time. He was just really rusty in math and chemistry. His grades didn’t improve and he was due to be suspended again. But it takes time for the suspension letters to go out. Students can’t be suspended if they are currently in classes. I had helped Bill get enough easy classes for the summer session to boost his GPA above the suspension level. He was able to appeal the suspension once he received the grades for the summer and stay in college.
From that moment on, Bill made steady progress. While he was never a great student, he did have a real talent in working through ambiguous situations which are characteristic of the practice of engineering. I received the following email from him after he had been working for five years.
“I'm nowsitting in the corner office here after only 5 years, when I started I was sweeping the floors because they did not know what to do with me. Our revenues for my department are as follows
Year 1 -$230k
Year 2 -$530k
Year 3 +$980k
Year 4 +$2.7M
Year 5 +$3.5M 20.8% margin
Even though we have seen the worst construction markets in a very long time, we continued to build and improve on basic efficiencies that have brought us through. It has been a very difficult struggle for myself toget people to see the light but our successes have everyone wondering "What are they doing in the MD Shop?" Feels good when the Owner is asking that in a $500 million/yr company.
On the personal side, I just passed the Professional Engineering exam and have now completed a lot of the course work for my Masters. I should be promoted to Major in the Reserves soon. My daughter Madison will be 4 this month and I’m planning to marry her mother as soon as she finishes Nursing School.”
Bill is one of the reasons that I can never give up on a student.