If you were a poorly-motivated, low-achieving teen, what did you spend your time on?

[Rebecca VA]

I was reading the thread about students who refuse to do their schoolwork, and several moms were saying that they were poorly motivated in high school. They refused to do their work because they were bored.

 

My question to those moms is: How *did* you spend your time? Did you watch television? Did you read, and if so, what did you read? Did you have a hobby? Did you hang out with friends? I guess I'm trying to figure out if you did other things that were educational (but less boring), or just hung around and waited to mature (and eventually get motivated)?

 

When you see your own child showing symptoms of this, what do you do? Are you understanding, or do you panic? How do you adjust the child's workload to help him/her?

[Garga]

Read non-stop. My mom only let me read classics, though, due to religious/moral reasons. I kinda giggle when I think about all the adultery and mayhem in a lot of the classics I read. Not to mention all the evil and gore in the fairy tales. What's up with the one with the horses head nailed to the gate talking to the goose girl? Or the one where the stepmother chopped off her stepson's head and then balanced the severed head on his shoulders so that when his sister shook him to wake him, the head rolled off and the stepmother said, "Look! You knocked off your brother's head!" Great stuff. (Tongue in cheek).

 

But I do have an amazing vocabulary now.

[DawnM]

I don't know that I was super low achieving, but I certainly didn't care much about academics! I did the necessary work and no more. I was perfectly satisfied with Bs and Cs.

 

I was an extrovert and much preferred to hang out with my friends and socialize. Hours upon hours of just hanging out. Of course, this was far easier for me since I went to boarding school!

 

Then I went to college and didn't care much until about my junior year. That is when I figured out what I wanted to do with my life and enjoyed the academics I was learning.

[Mergath]

I read every bit of SF/Fantasy I could get my hands on, taught myself to design web pages, did Tae Kwon Do, played video games, and wrote a ton of Dragonriders of Pern fandom. (Yes, I am a nerd, thank you for asking. ;) ) I really didn't stand a chance in school. Between the bullying and the terrible teachers, it's not surprising that I basically checked out for several years.

[EKS]

I read, played the guitar, wrote poetry, drew and painted pictures, and socialized with friends. We didn't have a TV when I was in high school and it was before the computer era. I occasionally would really like a teacher and so would do well in that particular class.

[T'smom]

Well, I wasn't low achieving in general; I graduated with a 3.4 and took all college prep classes. But I was very low achieving for my potential. I never spent any time on homework or studying. I did read a lot. But, really, I spent my time with boys!

[HelenNotOfTroy]

I read all kinds of books, from romance to action adventure to sci-fi/fantasy. I watched TV. I spent time with my friends, both in person and on the phone. I played games with friends or my brother, board games, card games, computer games. I listened to music and daydreamed. And then I read some more.

[Arcadia]

I doodled during my math, chemistry and physics class. I crochet during my history class. The rest of the classes I was half asleep or really catching up on sleep. Teachers do "close an eye" to sleeping if you already have a decent grade for the subject. I was cruising through most of school though. After school I had my girl guides/scouts badges to work on, books to read, computer to program and tear apart, was writing for the school newsletter, involved in science competitions and my piano to practise. Actually some of the competitions were during school hours so I was excused from class to represent the school.

I did the bare minimum to stay out of trouble and did my best for exams that count. So I did managed to get to the university and faculty that I wanted despite not doing most of my homework.

My kids are as asynchronous as me. I'm just playing by ear. For example my kids don't like to take music lessons because they prefer to set their own pace. They are playing quite well for self taught eventhough I could guide them informally. They also pick their own foreign languages. My younger was bored with SM and asked to move on to AoPS, I let him do so.

[ajfries]

Well, I wasn't low achieving in general; I graduated with a 3.4 and took all college prep classes. But I was very low achieving for my potential. I never spent any time on homework or studying. I did read a lot. But, really, I spent my time with boys!

 

 

This was me, too. I read a ton and researched various topics that were interesting to me. And yeah, boys was pretty high on my list.

 

Part of my 'problem', I know now, was that I had a pretty significant fear of failure. Throughout school I was always labeled above average but not quite 'gifted' or exceptional. Had I applied myself, I probably would have done very well, but I was afraid to put a lot into it only to be 'average'. Of course, now I feel like average is pretty darn good. :)

[Crimson Wife]

My middle brother was the underachiever in the family. He refused to do any assignment he considered to be "busywork" and unfortunately that was most of them. He just barely graduated by the skin of his teeth despite acing all the tests. He got an in-school suspension for a week in 6th grade because he refused to participate in the test prep for the state standardized tests. My parents got an apology from the principal after he scored the highest of any student in any grade in any school in the entire district.

 

In high school, he lived and breathed music. He played bass guitar in a rock band and also wrote & composed music for that band. After high school graduation, he got his B.Mus. in audio technology & music production at the Berklee College of Music and has had a successful career as an audio engineer. He still plays bass and writes music.

[Jenny in Florida]

I was so poorly motivated about high school that I basically just quit going about mid-way through 10th grade.

 

How did I spend my time? I read, a lot. I read everything I could get my hands on, tons of fantasy, particularly anything with an Arthurian theme or connection, science fiction, some classics, then-current bestsellers, horror, even some of the then-daring "gothic romance." Oddly, I was especially fond of books that had been best-sellers and critical successes a generation or two before. I loved books like Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys and Auntie Mame and The Group, Rebecca, anything by Edna Ferber . . .

 

I spent a LOT of weekends (and some of the hours when I should have been in school) playing Dungeons and Dragons in my then-boyfriend's garage.

 

We wandered the mall, trying on clothes and eating pizza and seeing the same movies over and over.

 

I did a little bit of writing.

 

I listened to music, loudly, and memorized my favorite songs. Remember, this is pre-internet. So, if the lyrics didn't come printed on the liner of the vinyl album, I would sit next to the record player with my hand on the arm, letting the song play for a line or so at a time before picking up the needle and setting it back to replay that same bit over and over again until I figured out and committed to memory every word.

 

I went to parties and dances with friends. I devoted more hours than I would care to admit to selecting clothing and accessories to wear and to doing hair and make-up before attending said parties and dances and to obsessing over whom to go with and who did or didn't ask me to dance and who kissed whom . . .

 

I browsed thrift shops and worked on my Rocky Horror costume(s) and bugged my parents until they gave permission and rides so we could go to midnight showings of the movie every week for months.

 

I did watch some TV, but this was before the days of even VCRs. So, the viewing opportunities were much more limited.

 

I did love my Atari 2600, especially Asteroids and PacMan, but I don't think it was the time-suck that today's video and computer games seem to be.

 

When not doing any of the above, I got into trouble and made my parents and myself miserable. And I kept on doing that until I had finally made a big enough mess that my parents signed off on letting me leave high school early. I took the California state proficiency exam and then waited out the end of the semester after I turned 16 and was legally allowed to drop out. Because passing the exam was considered equivalent to graduating from high school (legally), I then qualified to enroll full time at community college. I walked out of my high school on a Friday afternoon and started college classes on Monday morning, and it was the best choice I could have made. My only regret is that I couldn't have done it earlier, before I made so many messes that have haunted me as an adult.

 

My husband (who was my boyfriend back in those days) took a similar journey, except that it took him longer to pull out of his tailspin and he never did manage to finish college.

 

Consequently, we came into this whole parenting thing with very strong feelings on the subject of bored, unhappy teens. And we set out from early on in our kids' lives to do everything we could imagine to avoid letting them bottom out the way we did.

 

Specifically:

 

- We chose to homeschool primarily so that they would be able to move at an appropriate pace academically while not having to be rushed in other ways.

- We've allowed them to accelerate when they need to do so, but never required a faster-than-average pace.

- We've encouraged, supported and financed to the very best of our ability their interests and passions.

- We've treated them as partners in their educations, rather than receptacles.

- We've tried to keep in mind that being a teen can be tough, even under the best of circumstances, and we've tried to keep focused on helping our kids get through these challenges with as little damage and baggage as possible so they can mature into healthy adults.

 

So far, so good. Yes, those who've followed my posts about my son over the years will know that I have definitely torn out not-insignificant chunks of my hair stressing about him. It's still not smooth sailing all of the time. I still give lectures and exasperated sighs multiple times each month (okay, each week) about his lack of attention to schoolwork. And we still have a few years to go before he's "launched," giving us plenty of time to run off the rails in various dramatic ways. However, when I step back and take the long view, and especially when I compare where he is is to where either his dad or I was at 15, I can get a little giddy.

 

And, while the kind of radical acceleration my daughter did certainly came with its own challenges and a good number of tears and sleepless nights for all of us, again, by comparison, where she is at 18 seems miraculous.

 

Of course, they are their own people, not clones of us. So, who knows how much actual influence any of our choices have had? Maybe they would have done equally well or better if we'd just stood back and watched. Maybe one or both of them would have done better with a Tiger parent who would have enrolled them in a fancy-schmancy private prep school and made them take violin lessons six days a week. Obviously, this is far from a controlled experiement. All we can do is what makes sense to us and hope it's what these particular kids need.

[happypamama]

I would describe myself as low-achieving because I didn't bother to read anything challenging that wasn't assigned, and I didn't put any extra work into things that could get easy A's. Why shoot for more, or a 99%, when 92% was easy and showed the same on the transcript? I also didn't really develop any serious hobbies. What did I spend my time doing? Reading easy fiction, but mainly, doing afterschool activities. (I wasn't low-achieving with the afterschool activities, though; I did head up several of them, and they all looked good on my college application, I'm sure. I *was* busy and wasn't just sitting around. I just wish I had done more, academically.) In retrospect, I wish I had developed some hobbies, and/or pushed myself to read more classics, or something. I took a bunch of college classes (which meant evening classes a lot) in high school, so I had a lot of open time in my regular high school day; I spent most of it as an assistant to a teacher or two, and that was worthwhile (especially tutoring ESL students), but I wish I had been more encouraged to take some academic electives. It just generally wasn't, though; for students in the high academic track, home ec or whatever really wasn't done very much and was often difficult to schedule. And taking a second language was also not done; I wish I had taken a second language or had been motivated to teach myself a language at home. The internet would have been a handy tool and may have been the encouragement I needed. (Otoh, email and Facebook would have sucked up a lot of my time too; my boyfriend was away at college during my junior and senior years, back in the days before easy internet and cheap cell phones, so we relied on weekly phone calls and written letters. Internet contact would have been bad for me getting anything done, LOL.)

[Ravin]

I read. I wrote stories. My husband found working a higher priority than school (he had a job from age 14). We both graduated, but we were both accelerated/gifted and probably capable of more. For me it was about figuring myself out, I had to do that before I could put academics really front and center with my focus.

 

My husband probably would have put his heart into it more if he'd had support for the type of education he actually wanted (military school, which his dad could have afforded but didn't care to send him off for).

[jennynd]

I doodled during my math, chemistry and physics class. I crochet during my history class. The rest of the classes I was half asleep or really catching up on sleep. Teachers do "close an eye" to sleeping if you already have a decent grade for the subject. I was cruising through most of school though. After school I had my girl guides/scouts badges to work on, books to read, computer to program and tear apart, was writing for the school newsletter, involved in science competitions and my piano to practise. Actually some of the competitions were during school hours so I was excused from class to represent the school.

 

 

we would make good friends if we were in the same school. I played poker with my friends during class... lol

[Alenee]

I read nasty romance novels, watched soap operas, had a great job, and hung out with friends. Like Mergath, "Between the bullying and the terrible teachers, it's not surprising that I basically checked out for several years." I was that kid who always had report cards with notes saying, "She's a pleasure to have in class but is not working to her potential." There were too many things going badly in my life to be able to focus and function in a school setting. Someone else up thread said this too, I would occasionally have a great teacher and would work hard for them. Those were few and far between though.

[trinchick]

I'm another one who did well enough but never really applied myself. Probably could have done lots better if I'd actually done some homework. I wouldn't be surprised if I have some kind of undiagnosed ADD because this is still my MO.

 

I read, watched MTV, talked on the phone, had a part time job. I also spent lots of time hanging out with my mom who somehow wasn't suspicious that I was never assigned any homework.

[Joyofsixreboot]

I read, mostly mysteries and poor quality romance. I worked quite a bit waitressing. I hung out with friends ALOT( don't ask what we were doing but dancing and concerts featured heavily). I wrote and had a radio show on the high school station that I poured time into.

[Cafdog]

I had my nose in a book every chance I could. I worked many, many hours during high school, and counted the days until graduation. I couldn't wait to leave. As soon as I had diploma in hand, I was off to backpack in Europe. I was a terrible, bored student in high school - but I loved college and graduate school where I could study what I wanted. As soon as I had some real-life goals, my academic performance improved immensely.

[Anne in CA]

I read, read, read. Besides hanging out with other low achieving friends I rode my horse, wrote poetry, made doll clothes for my little sister's Barbies, and baked a good deal. I would have made art if I had known that with practice I could get better. Unfortunately I had been incorrectly taught that you could only be good at art if you were born with a lot of talent you did not have to work to develop. I practiced the piano. Where I lived there were no lessons available when I was a teen, so practicing what I already knew was the most I could do. I cleaned the house and played with my little brothers and sister.

[BlueTaelon]

I was one of those kids who failed my way though school, refused to do in class work/homework and knew they couldn't do anything to me because I always passed the tests (sadly my dd is the same way I just realized yesterday when all her grades from PS became available and noticed the patten of F's on classwork yet A's on most tests). I read a ton of science fiction, watched a lot of TV, LOVED PBS and documentaries on various channels. By Jr year life was miserable at home and I was attending a continuation school which got out at noon and rather then go home I trained in Tae Kwon Do 8 hours a day, 6 days a week until graduation. The master kept me training hard realizing I was a ticking time bomb with my home life and I was dating his adult son, he made sure I was to dang tired to sneak off with his son for some "fun" lol. I miss having 6 pack abs lol