Things To Consider If You Want To Get Your Kid To College At A Young Age
- Home Educating
- 08 March 2017
Your kid may be a genius, so he can move on to college at a young age. This achievement must have made you proud. But college at a young age is so challenging. Being a genius is not enough. A good attitude and capabilities are needed for success in college. Capabilities such as critical thinking, analytical thinking, discussion skills are needed.
As a homeschooled kid, according to the rules in our country we could choose whether we wanted to take:
- National examination, or
- International examination such as Cambridge International Examination, or
- The certification of interest
After I explained about the advantages and disadvantages of each, my son chose the third option. He chose to enroll for the Music Production online certification program from Berklee College of Music!
In September 2016 he started to enroll. The college will last until April 2017. There are four courses of the Music Production:
Course 1: The Art of Music Production
Course 2: The Technology of Music Production
Course 3: Pro Tools Basics
Course 4: Music Production Capstone
When I write this article, he was at fourth course and has passed the first, second, and the third courses with excellence!
The three of us were experiencing a really hard learning curve. Ata young age, many kids may not understand how to study in college. Moreover, online college learning is very different from everyday learning. Thus, help from parents is what they need to be successful.
FYI, here's how learning in college works: students are given learning materials through the videos by the lecturer, and then asked to do multiple choice quizzes and assignments of analysis or presentation. The quiz is rated by software, and the assignment assessed by classmates with guidance from the lecturer.
Things my kid has learned
Music Production is a field that studies the production of art. It’s certainly different from non-art subjects such as math or science. In the study of arts, he was asked to dig up the sense of art inside him. This process is very challenging. My son couldn’t do it alone. He needed my help to learn how to explore the potential of art inside him.
Second, my kid learned about the professionalism of the work, namely how to make a schedule for doing the tasks, find out what he needs to succeed in the task, and the attitude to meet his deadlines. We taught them directly during the learning and practice them immediately. In the process, our kid also learned about the weaknesses that he had to overcome to succeed in college.
Third, he had to practice his capabilities to analyze, included self-analysis, as well as analysis of the musicians and the music. My son learned that the more he understands about a topic, the easier he will be at analyzing it.
Fourth, he learned that in order to be creative, he had to use every means to study. When he first started this course, my son has never had any musical instrument. We introduced him to online software that can be used to produce music. We also emphasized that he did not have to use anything that would be hard to obtain, like an expensive musical instrument that we can’t afford to buy. Here he learns to struggle and be creative in using every tool he can get.
Things that I learned
Honestly, I am very happy to see my son want to spend a lot of time on his passion! He showed great commitment to learning and being successful. Therefore, I am happy to become his main supporter to motivate him, helping him to "open the door" to solving the problem, become his friend, and provide snacks for after learning time!
We also help our son to explore his thinking, his views, and his opinions. We don’t directly provide the answers for the quizzes. But we provide him with the guide to get the answers. That's how we accompany him. There is a saying in our culture: “Berikan pancing, bukan ikan” which means: give the fishing rod, not the fish. That’s what we applied so that my son will be able to solve his problem if one day he wants to learn new things. Because fishing rod can be used to obtain a variety of delicious fish to eat.
Comments
(I'm your neighbor at the Homeschool Blog and Tell Link UP this week
I didn't have a CLUE as to what I wanted to study until I was around 22(ish). I WISH I had known earlier, it sure would have saved a lot of time!
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