First Gen American asks:
How many of your chronic procrastinator students sink vs swim come college time? Asking for a friend.
If you’re talking about my students here at the R1 where I work… most of them do just fine. They’re smart and they’re good at pulling things off last minute. Sure, they might get Bs instead of As, and maybe the occasional C, but they’re fine. It’s not that hard for procrastinators who were good enough to get into the school to do fine in my major. Because generally they’re smart or they couldn’t have procrastinated and gotten in.
If you’re talking about student at say, MIT or Caltech… not so much. There is a lot of sinking. The people who do well aren’t necessarily the smartest (smart, definitely, but necessarily super-geniuses) but they’re the ones who can handle failure and know how to work hard and start early.
Which reminds me also: DH taught in an engineering major at my R1, and his students were definitely sinking. They’d sunk out of one major and into his and many of them were on their way to Political Science (where they would likely be fine) or just dropping out.
In the above two engineering situations, people were smart enough to get in and had enough flex in their high schools to be able to deal with procrastination, but they couldn’t cut it once they got to college.
Academic Grumpeteers, what’s been your experience with procrastinators?
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 