DS in tears wanting to come home - so worried

[unistress]

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.

My DS1 has a physical disability he first went to university during COVID we lived 4 hours away and bought him an echo to set up in his room. We have ours in the living room but can move it around the house if needed. At first when he didn’t have friends he’d call every evening and just that connection to home was great. It was worth its weight in gold when he caught COVID and had to isolate. We found that sometimes you don’t need to talk just be a presence of home when needed. It leaves his phone free for other things. He’s doing a masters now and it’s still there gathering dust but I know if he needs us for longer than just a phone call it’s there.

He needs to speak to his tutors and get more support. Don’t quit! X

@unistress I agree re the perfectionism. That needs looking at. Does he have any OCD tendencies? My son does and was very keen to make sure everything was perfect. His OCD has been worked on in therapy and he is so much less "perfectionist" now

You’ve already had a lot of very good advice OP.

I was a perfectionist and it worked for a while. I got perfect grades.

I’m not a perfectionist anymore. University, the workplace and life chewed me up and spat me out. For the better. I still do well but now good enough is good enough. My priorities are different and my life is better because of it.

I’ve been there, 4 hours (or less) sleep for months. High pressure, the work never being good enough. It made me physically ill. I wouldn’t stop working so my body made me so ill I had no choice. But I got better and it was probably the first step towards accepting that good enough is good enough. My best doesn’t have to be THE best.

I don’t think my parents or anyone else could have saved me from it tbh. It was inevitable which now as a parent I know is pretty horrible to hear. Be there for him and continue to be there for him.

@unistress Glad things are better today. Yes I agree that when things are calmer it might be worth talking to him about perfectionism and how it isn't necessarily a positive/ gets the best outcomes overall, especially when he's moving into employment.

Honestly (unpopular opinion inbound) I do think Oxbridge has become massively more of a pressure cooker since I was there due to changes in the admissions policies which have become myopically focused on academics and have had the unfortunate consequence of concentrating a tonne of very academically focused (often to the exclusion of any other interests), often socio-emotionally immature, often highly strung young people together to feed off one another's perfectionism without being able to seek or offer one another effective peer support. I can see why they evolved their policies (many other universities have done the same) but it's come with a side serving of misery and Uni shouldn't be a miserable experience. I don't think this is unique to Oxbridge and there are other factors at play (like young people generally being "younger" now than 30 years ago and the impact of smartphones on the social experience) but it's where it's most apparent.

It is also Lent term though which is generally a bit miserable- am sure the weather isn't helping.!

I went to Oxford although not humanities, but found the 2nd term in first year by far the worst. The first set of collections were a huge wake up call and I had the same crisis of confidence and thoughts that I'm not good enough to be able to do this. I got a referral to Oxford counselling and it was massively transformational, along with setting myself up with working pattern rhythms that better helped me to cope and feel I had done "enough" - things like treating it more like a job starting work at x time, working however many hours each day so it's not all at the last minute; working in the Library to help hold myself accountable; doing "pomodoros" of work each day (they are 25 min blocks of work with a 5 min break) and then keeping track of how many pomodoros I had done in a day - the last one really useful. As well as working through the counselling sessions and doing those exercises (thinking of the voice as an unhelpful monkey on your shoulder).

It's true that Oxford is not for everyone and if he decides not to carry on that's completely fine, I'm sure he'll still have a happy and fulfilled life. At the same time - there's no need to write it off now. Don't listen to people saying he should withdraw, they don't know him and they are saying things to back up the monkey voice. I came out with a first but more importantly than that feel really proud of my time at Oxford, getting through it and adapting to the huge change from a comprehensive school to the pressure cooker environment full of absolute brain boxes.

You are doing the right thing to support him. When he says he wants a first maybe you could change your response to say "it's wonderful you feel so driven, how can you help yourself achieve that?" (Eg the working approaches above) Or "you are brilliant just as you are and if you want to go for a first that's fantastic but either way you are still brilliant to me" or something - by saying "oh don't worry about getting a first" he could infer that you think he isn't capable, or that it's not something worth trying for - mixed messages really.

Best of luck to him and you xxx

Perhaps "if you're going to quit anyway, please just humour me and speak to the tutors before you do?" is an option here? I do think that he needs to be encouraged to accept support, since in the world of work he is going to be expected to deliver, perfectionism or no. I had this when I was at uni (not Oxford) and it was incredibly hard but walking away as the first resort is not going to help him and I'd encourage you to keep trying to convince him of this.

He shouldn’t quit without at least tried some support, and it’s not fair to use you as emotional support this much. The occasional wobble is ok, but ringing on a Sunday night when there’s nothing you can do but have a sleepless night before work the next day isn’t on.

I’m baffled why young adults have to go through this rite of passage at elite universities. Surely, there has to be a better way to develop their academic capabilities without freaking them out? They might end up writing a brilliant essay but at what cost?

I ask this as a friend’s daughter appears to have had a complete break down and ended up leaving uni. Are there any stats on how many people at Oxford or Cambridge develop severe mental health conditions or take their lives compared to other red brick universities?

Is it actually worth its?

Once graduated it really makes little difference which university you went to. Some of the top law partners went to run of the mill red brick universities and had great social lives. At Big 4 they actively recruit from all universities although in certain fields prefer the usual cluster. It might give an edge for banking except they do recruit from a fair handful. Even in research, from what I have seen you can do just as well getting your degree from another red brick and doing a post grad at Oxford or Cambridge.

This is just not what the first year of uni is meant to be like.

I think he should drop out and try a new university. I know people who dropped out of Cambridge (which I assume is similar).

I agree with this. I didn't go to Oxford but it's not like they hide this aspect of it from you! When I interviewed at Cambridge they made it very clear - short terms; intense work; part time job discouraged etc.

I would never have burdened my mum like this (I certainly wouldn't have been standing at the single payphone on the stairs doing it; how embarrassing...). I would have moaned to a friend and then gone to the library...

I bet there is support for them onsite these days as pp says, and they'll know the academics and expectations too.

If an adult child can’t ring their mother for support when they are desperate there’s something very wrong. I could never do this with my parents but there is far greater awareness of mental health now . I would be devastated if my child felt they couldn’t ring me if they were this distressed. When you are first at Uni it takes time to make good friends. Who else is he to turn to ? Student support may be good but he may feel ashamed and overwhelmed.

OP your son will need to learn “selective negligence”. And fast. If he is to finish university (not only this year!)

Selective negligence refers to a coping strategy in which students intentionally ignore, postpone, or deprioritise certain academic tasks in order to preserve their limited cognitive, emotional, or time resources. In highly demanding university environments—where workloads are heavy, deadlines cluster, and expectations are high—students often cannot realistically give equal attention to every requirement.

Instead, they make strategic decisions about what to neglect. This may include:

• Skipping readings that are unlikely to affect grades
• Prioritising major assessments over weekly tasks
• Letting non-essential commitments slide (emails, optional lectures, discussion boards)
• Accepting “good enough” performance in one module to excel in another
Selective negligence is not laziness; it is a rational adaptation to structural overload. Research in educational psychology shows that when academic demands exceed available resources, students use prioritisation and omission as survival mechanisms to prevent burnout, maintain performance in core areas, and protect mental health.
In intense academic settings, selective negligence can therefore function as:
• A time‑management strategy
• A stress‑buffering mechanism
• A form of academic triage

I went to Oxford from a very normal state school background (parents left school at 16). The first year I was probably more unhappy than I was happy. I was completely out of my depth in hindsight. Other students were much more polished than I was and I generally felt inadequate.

When I passed my exams (and some of the more arrogant people didn’t!) I felt a bit better.

I did go home for the weekend every term- not sure why he can’t do that? Please be there for your DS, he is asking for your help and support.

I finished my degree but I probably would have been better suited to somewhere more typical where I could have had a part time job out the bubble. The students at Oxbridge all wind each other up with exam pressure. I’d never experienced that at school before!

He needs to talk to his tutor, dean or another tutor he gets on with. The tutors know it's a lot of stress and I've had lots of friends let off essays if it's getting too much, especially if they show they're working.

This is stress. He's calling you for a reason. Get him home and find out what's really going on. Could be pressure, relationship problems, mental health problems. Better to help him now than deal with much bigger/serious mental health problems further down the line. I hope he is much better soon.

At Oxford, the weekly essays aren’t assessed. They are just to help the students learn and organise their thoughts. But if you don’t write one for a particular week - the tutors don’t care! They just have less marking to do. (If a student skips the essay every week, the tutor will care).

your DS sounds like a smart hard working kid who is expecting too much of himself. This is definitely the time to stop being a perfectionist and learn what counts as “good enough”.

I agree with this. I went to Cambridge but I think by the time we got there (20 years ago) we were more independent and resilient than young people nowadays. This is not a criticism of those young people - they are a product of the school system which cannot allow them to fail (again, not the teachers’ fault, just the system) and scaffolds them through every piece of work allowing them to do and re-do until it is perfect. When we did A Levels there was more independent study involved, and we were expected to balance that with outside jobs, running clubs for younger children, DofE, Young Enterprise, music and sport. We did S Levels which stretched us and made us think in a more “university” way. We also failed school exams and it wasn’t the end of the world - for example, I didn’t revise for my mocks but saw them as a test of what I didn’t know; these days students are understandably worried there will be another pandemic and their mock results will be used to award real grades.

In those days, we were expressly asked at interview “what will you add to the life of the college” i.e. making sure you had extra curricular interests. Now, they’re not allowed to do that because of access concerns, so the intake is made up of incredibly intelligent, hardworking young people who in some cases focus on their subject to the exclusion of everything else. I know that doesn’t apply across the board, and there are still plenty of amazing musicians, actors and sportspeople at Oxbridge. But I agree with the poster I’m quoting that a bigger proportion of the intake has that profile and that will impact the others who worry they are not doing enough work.

OP, you sound like a lovely mum who is doing all the right things to support your DS. Please keep reassuring him that it is normal to have a blip like this, especially at this stage of his studies, and tell him to speak to others who have been in the same boat and tutors who can help.

I haven't had time to read the thread, so sorry if this has been covered already:

1. The Oxford terms are eight weeks long and they are intense. Week 4 starts today, and quite a lot of students are feeling the mid-term hump.
2. First years often overcommit with clubs and societies, both in terms of numbers joined and volume of activities undertaken. Once we add college bops and socialising ... students can be burning the candle at both ends. I think it's important they have their extra-curriculars and time for fun, but they also need to be realistic that there are only so many hours in the day.
3. Tutorial work is part of a learning process. After all, if the students rocked up writing first-class essays and already knew as much as their tutors, then that would reflect pretty badly on the 10, 20, 30 or 40+ years that their tutors have spent in the academy! Yes, students use essays to help revise, but they also have a tutorial process and written feedback to help add insights, address gaps in knowledge and logic, etc. They also have college practice exams ('collections') for even more feedback. (Indeed, if we're just being utilitarian and talking about exam performance, the collections are the most important aspect, as it is here they write their essays in exam conditions.)
4. Strong perfectionist tendencies are a big problem in life, let alone Oxford.
5. You've mentioned your DS's college mother - has he got a supportive college family? Might he chat with his parents or grandparents? (For those outside the system - the college family is made up of students from different year levels, and indeed different subject, and is intended as a way for students to provide support for one another.)
6. In addition to speaking with welfare, your son should also speak with his personal tutor at college and/or one of his subject tutors that he likes. Sometimes students speak with welfare rather than the academics teaching them, and the academics don't learn about this until much later ... and they could have done something to help!

A final few thoughts ... because of the pace of Oxford terms, the problem with taking a complete break is that the work will just pile up. The best way forward, if it is achievable, is to work steadily and with realistic expectations about how much can be done. Your son should prioritise submitting a good essay on time rather than an excellent essay late, because the reality is that pushing back deadlines just means you are making future conflicts with other commitments. (In saying that, I'm not saying he shouldn't ever request an extension, just that this can't become a habit.)

Poor lad. Being a perfectionist in the humanities is deadly because there is always, always more and better you can do. Such a difficult position for you OP. I think he will regret it if he drops out. This is normal but it is a shame he won't see a counsellor. I think coming home briefly and touching base with you would be a really good thing, sounds like he's got himself in a massive spiral and he needs to be able to step outside it for a minute.

I actually don’t think the ease of contacting parents via phones helps. I have seen friends in bits as their student kids contact them terribly upset about every worry or concern of student life which realistically the parent cannot do much about. I hope I don’t sound hard but to some extent they need to learn to manage for themselves - like we did.

He is calling out for help.
He needs your support. Go and visit him.
If he needs to change university so be it.
His mental health and well being is more fundamental than an oxbridge degree.
Life is too short.
Could he not transfer to another university.

He needs to get over his perfectionist tendencies really. He more than likely won’t get a first, most people don’t. It doesn’t matter at all.

i work at Bristol uni and it’s very similar, lots of smart kids used to being top of the class now suddenly nothing special and they can’t cope with it.

the perfectionism causes procrastination and over checking/deleting and starting again. Totally unhelpful behaviour.

This is true but it’s not as simple as saying to someone ‘get over your perfectionist tendencies.’ Schools support this mindset to get kids good results. Also lots of very able students are neurodiverse with black and white thinking.

Sounds to me like he needs the pressure taking off briefly, a hug and some home cooked food.

Very wise words here from @OrangesPloranges OP.

Second term is hard in first year of any top university especially Oxford. ITs a big shock from ALevels.
The advice on here in terms of getting college support and structuring his time is valuable.

I know lots of people at Oxford who struggled in their first year and then it got better. Given these seem like blips and he's not constantly down, I am hoping you can push him to get help from the college. Structuring his time and better planning will stand him in good stead for work too.

best of luck xx