DS in tears wanting to come home - so worried

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I just don't know what to do for the best. He's at Oxford doing a humanity degree and in his first year. Home for Christmas full of how great it was - had positive feedback and couldn't wait to be back.

Since he got back he's said he doesn't like the new units he is doing and is struggling with the essays - it's one a week there, sometimes two. Last week he rang in the middle of the night the night before his essay was due saying he couldn't do it. However, he got it done, said feedback was 'fine' and was messaging excitedly about the optional modules for term 3 he's had to pick this week.

But tonight he rang again in a state. He has two essays due tomorrow - well, one was due this afternoon but is obviously late and the other was an extension from last week - so it's piling up. He says he has done loads of reading and he has a plan for both but they're 'shit,' and he can't write them. He started off saying he would do them overnight but then switched to saying he wanted to come home and he's dropping out. I have persuaded him to stay until the next holiday (4 weeks) as it seemed so sudden and rash. I told him to email the tutor, sleep tonight and see welfare tomorrow but after saying for a while he wanted to drop out he said he was going to do both overnight. I then offered to pick him up but he said no.

I'm so worried I've done the wrong thing and should have just collected him. It's 2 hours away. He says he is getting 4 hours sleep per night as that's the only way he can get all the reading done and it's not enough so he should drop out. He is prone to perfectionism and catastrophising but I don't know if this is more than that. I just don't know what to do.

First year shouldn’t feel this pressured

FloralAmber do you say this with recent experience (whether direct or vicarious) of Oxford undergraduate humanities courses?

I would say that the first year is particularly pressured, for a mix of reasons.

I’m in my 20s and got a 1st class degree. Second and third year were more stressful. I didn’t go to Oxford because I know the pressure wrecks a lot of students’ mental health. Another university might be a better option.

Second year is definitely the least stressful at Oxford - you’ve passed Prelims in year 1, got used to managing the workload, and don’t have finals until year 3. As the OP’s ds appears to have recovered from his essay crisis so quickly, it sounds to me more like he was just exhausted, hasn’t yet fully worked out how to balance work, play and personal ambitions, and is still a long way from having to consider whether Oxford is the place for him.

You really think he can weather 4 years if he's struggling this much already?

I mean it could be a settling in blip tbf but ...I mean it sounds like the next 4 years will be hell even if he completes them.

Ambition? Great, if you enjoy what you're pursuing. If it isn't ruining your sleep and your sanity.

I'd tell my kid he doesn't need to punish himself like this. If he's smart enough for Oxford he could do pretty much anything he sets his mind to. That doesn't require half killing himself.

I suppose if everyone thought that way we wouldn't have doctors lawyers but, doesn't mean we have to do it.

This isn't very typical for Oxbridge, though. For all sorts of reasons, the first year can feel like a real period of adjustment, much more than elsewhere.

TBH he sounds as if he's having totally typical struggles of the kind lots of students have, and lots of non-student young adults this age have.

I found it really revealing when I went from supervising students at Cambridge to working alongside young adults who, typically, had minimal if any GCSEs. I am pretty convinced that there is a proportion of young adults who just find the transition to adulthood rough. I don't think it has to do with where they are or what they are doing.

Of course some people struggle more than others, and some people struggle because they are doing something to which they are not suited, or in which they are not adequately supported.

But many of them would be having a bit of a crisis wherever they were and whatever they were doing, and it is just part of being that age. There's no reason to think the OP's son is anything other than a typical, bright, keen student who will come through this stage absolutely fine. It is clear he's already making very sensible steps forward, and it's obvious he's got a caring and thoughtful mother who will look after him.

The first year at Oxford is a baptism of fire, possibly particularly with humanities degrees such as History or English where you have relatively little contact time but are expected to produce one to two essays a week, negotiate new friendships, adapt to living away from home etc etc. It sounds as though you were at a uni where exams which counted towards the final classification were split between Y2 and Y3, so a totally different structure; not really comparable.

Crossed with SarahAndQuack.

Why not go to a university with more contact time and longer terms? I meet lots of young people who have been to Oxford and Cambridge. So many complain about the weird pressures, both during their degrees and subsequently. With hindsight they seem artificial and unnecessary when they move on to graduate study with students who didn't go to Oxbridge and seem perfectly well prepared but have suffered less to get where they are.

The answer to “why not go to a university with more contact time and longer terms” is that different people suit different systems. The key is to establish whether this is a ‘standard essay crisis’ or a straw in the wind indicating it’s not for him.

Finding out what you need in order to enjoy the experience overall is part of what you gain from attending.

FWIW, I still (in my sixties) have a post it note pinned to the notice board by my desk, with the words that got me through my first essay crisis. It was a revelation in my first year and still comes in handy to remind me that I can do it <whatever new thing I’m trying to do> and the panic I’m feeling welling up is just a ‘standard essay crisis’. Some of us need that pressure to produce our best work.

A horses for courses kind of thing.

The contact time thing is a humanities thing rather than an Oxford thing and so a different uni would solve nothing on that front anyway.

No, humanities degrees at other universities have far more contact time.

Not in my experience teaching them!

Definitely in my experience of laboriously counting up contact hours across courses and making Excel spreadsheets ;)

so what’s written on your post it @FinallyHere ? i’m curious

What prompted you to do that Ceramiq?

Also interested to know which were the top five UK unis for contact time for History for example?

I can send you a proposal if you'd like. I charge for this stuff!

Who on earth are your clients?!

Schools. Parents. Obviously they don't buy just the raw data but analysis.

I think low contact courses are more of a problem than they were because of so much being online- I did history at Cambridge in the 90's. I had one hour of contact time a week in year 1. You could go to lectures if you wanted but I mainly didnt. But because there was no online library I would go to the actual faculty every day to do my reading and as a result, socialise/ smoke with/ talk to other students on my course and (critically) ones in the years above who would give me top tips re reading/ essay writing/ how to deal with specific supervisors etc. I will also confess to occasionally using other people's previous year essays as a "template". Low contact courses now can be incredibly lonely as you don't need to leave your room- just log onto the online library and crack on. Peer support structures seem incredibly weak, particularly between years - first years don't seem to have those links to friendly second/ third years who will point you in the right direction when you're having a nightmare.

Maybe this is just me being nostalgic but I do think there are massive downsides to the loss of the "traditional Uni experience".

Completely agree. This is a great post and you aren’t just being nostalgic.

I'd be interested to know how 'contact time' is being calculated here. If lectures, seminars, classes and supervisions/tutorials are all counted in, I'm not clear how Oxbridge would come out lower than most other places? Or are we only talking about mandatory contact hours?

I would not choose where to study for a degree on the back of a “spreadsheet analysis” of what someone else counts as contact time, particularly where that someone states a view that is clearly not neutral on the relative merits and disadvantages of the courses on their spreadsheet. I was perfectly happy having the large amount of attention required to be paid by my tutors to my weekly essays and tutorial discussions and with the regular feedback I got from that, and enjoyed the freedom of the library in between times, formulating my own ideas. I even went to some of the lectures, but was very happy I didn’t have to. As others have pointed out, different things suit different people.

As you say, different things suit different people and the information people wish to collect in order to reach crucial life decisions varies. Contact time is a very important criterion for some parents in some cultures when deciding how to spend their hard earned cash on their children's HE and it varies massively between universities for courses that have similar names.

I think contact time is a very poor way to pick a university. Looking at the actual course and the modules offered would be much better and more likely to lead to someone enjoying their university years.