So, my best friend is in the same college as mine. He had finished his diploma in Electronics so his current course in Electronics degree will be well and good for him. However, it isn't. :bang: First, he did not that good in his O-Levels - almost all the Ds and Es in the science subject. It seems that his maths isn't up to that task yet. The most perplexing thing is, he did his 3-yr Electronics diploma course and still couldn't handle ALL the Engineering Maths and the other subjects. He even failed his Basic Electronics paper, and he's now redoing it for the 2nd time. I asked him whether did he learn all his PN junctions and the basic stuff of the transistors (collector current, base current, et cetera) back in his diploma days and he said he only know about PNP and NPN transistors. Oh goodness. The college is way too loose to be even accredited by the governmnent, and I say, it's worse than too loose. Now, if he ever destroyed his 1st semester resit, he'll be terminated. and he has still time to go to the cinemas with his friend, or outings despite telling me that he didn't. He could have lied to me, but I couldn't just intrude into his life and monitor him every second of it right? Basically, I told him to take this one by one. I told him, "if you don't understand some topic better go ask me, don't do it in the last minute". And he did that in last minute. :bang: Any ideas? (Don't worry I don't worry too much of him - just a concern for a best friend)
Well if he came to you too late to help, there is only so much that you can do. If I were advising him, I would start talking about other fields that he might consider. It is not uncommon to switch majors, at least at colleges in the United States. Speaking from experience, as a Calculus 3 two-time failure, I changed majors and still was able to leave with a degree that I could be proud of. There are also people that drop-out or fail-out of college, come back later in life and do superbly. It isn't something easy to watch, seeing the self-destructive choices (i.e. going to the movies, etc. instead of studying). In the end, that is a lesson that some of us are forced to learn, even at that level.
About all you can do at this point is offer emotional support, as he's gonna be in this one by himself. He obviously knew he was in over his head, or at least the signs were there, had he cared to heed them. Either he's gonna work his ass off and salvage this, or he's gonna drop out and have to find another path. When a problem arises that you can't handle, get help right away, or the problem will swell into something that's completely out of control. This is the lesson to be learned, and I can guarantee that it'll be infinitely more valuable than anything else he's learning in any of his classes. Lex
The thing is, the problem has already swell into something that is beyond any control. Basically, two semesters ago, he flunked all of the papers except the English paper. And then, he have to resit his 1st semester smack right from the start on this semester. He had procrastinated. I told him not to play the fool around, yet he's still hangin' out with his friends. But nowadays, he do it much lesser, and in the meantime he's insisting me to mix around. Oh man. He should have come to my house and talk about his homework. However, when I asked him how's all his tutorials, he said fine, and then in the last minute, he told me he don't know any of these. sighz. I don't usually mix around too much, and if I mix around, I'll do it in my casual pace. Anyway, it isn't about my social life - he has the biggest problem. One more fail and he could be terminated. He has thoughts of switching courses, and he wanted to enter Computer science.
Exactly. It's now too big for him to handle. He had many opportunities to fix it, but he chose not to. And now it's all about to come to an end. Actions have consequences. That's another lesson to be learned. There's a fairly good chance your friend won't learn them, though. He might just write off the university as "a bunch of inflexible idiots", absolve himself of all blame, and go on to the next stage of his life. Lex
