Hadn't heard from the DS for a while, so I sent him a text. He called me back, sounded a little down. A little prodding... and I found out he got a C on his first Calculus II test. Anyhow, you know how overachievers can be...I told him to study more. He said some are constantly doing all nighters, but his plan is to get sleep since he's in it for the long haul. He said a couple of his classes are really hard. Is this normal? How's everyone else DD/DS handling the stress?
Mine also values sleep and avoids all nighters. He said he needed the sleep to handle it all, as it wasn't just about the academics but all the other "stuff." There are a lot of stressers outside academics during their 4 years, especially their C4C year.
Some classes were and are more of a struggle for him than others. He doesn't have a photographic memory nor is he an uber genius, and he has always had to study to get good grades. His high school was challenging and didn't hand out A's like candy, so studying for a good grade wasn't really a new concept for him. But he does have to study a lot more now than he did in the past. The struggle is real!
Like all colleges, some of the instructors there are great and some are not so great. There was a Russian instructor last fall who was let go after one semester. The USAFA does tend to weed out the horrid ones. There are also some fantastic teachers there, so even though my son didn't get an A in their classes, he said he learned an awful lot, liked those teachers and thought the those teachers did a great job. Also, there are various teaching styles which your son may not have experienced before. He may want to check into EI or peer tutoring if he is having difficulty. Lots of kids use EI, though some hesitate because they think it reflects on them negatively. This isn't the case at all!
One other thing, they do like their grade distribution curves at the USAFA. So someone has to be in the top and someone in the bottom of the class. Some courses curve, while others are know to have a base line built in curve , like Chem (10 points). Other classes don't tend to curve at all. Makes for an interesting game of "guess my final grade."
I asked my son about tests and all, as I was getting confused, and he finally shared it with me. This is my basic high level understanding of what he told me.
Each instructor has individual quizzes and tests that he or she can give his/her own class.
All classes for a particular course will take the same high level test called a GR (graded review). A GR is not necessarily a midterm or final, though it can be, and they usually have around 4 of them a semester (could be more or less depending on the course). GRs are designed by the academic department.
Some papers are instructor dependent, and some are required by the academic department for that course.
GR's and academic department papers are weighted a lot more in grade computation than the instructor tests, quizzes and papers.