Kicked out of college
Well, this could be another reason your young adult isn’t returning for the spring term. They don’t have a choice because they were asked to leave. Except, they didn’t tell you they weren’t invited back until the day before spring enrollment.
Seems avoidant to me. What do you make of it?
There’s no comfortable way to break that news to parents. Period. Especially if the young adult was lying all along about how much how amazing college was. They said they loved their roommate, they loved their professors, and they were making new friends. In truth, they were isolating in their residence hall room, binging on the latest Netflix Original Series and never once left to go to class. If you know how much your parents are spending on your education, and know you aren’t living up to their post-secondary expectations, why bother even getting out of bed?
Unfortunately, this is not something you can talk the university into overlooking. Your young adult didn’t go to class, and now they must live with the natural consequences. No, applying to another institution immediately is not in the best interest. To me, that’s the parents driving the agenda of “school, school, school.” Read that as “redrum, redrum, redrum!” Terrifying? I hope so, because it’s meant to be! If they were asked to leave by the university, take this as an opportunity as their parent to get them help. Living at home because they got kicked out of school is a reward. We are not into rewarding wasting tens of thousands of dollars. At least, hopefully not.
There are several reasons a student could be asked to leave a university. For this specific article, I’m going the “didn’t show up to class, so academically suspended route.” If your young adult’s graduates are spotless and they were still asked not to return, you will definitely want to do more research.
No matter, it’s a real bummer they got kicked out. No need to freak out. There’s nothing that can be undone. Get them connected to a program, a community, or a job that will help them start to reflect on their experience and make better decisions for their future. You need to rebuild trust, as lying about doing well in school is a huge no-no. This is their unfortunate reality now that they throw away a semester of college. Kindly thank the university for not taking another semester’s worth of tuition from you and encouraging your young adult to grow up before coming back. As a parent, now push them forward into launching into life. That will not happen if you let them live at home. Regardless of whether or not they return to college in the future, they definitely cannot spend the next four to eight months living at home doing the same thing they did while in college: nothing.
For questions or comments contact Joanna.
