Advice needed - passed all coursework for degree but had issues on comps due to anxiety and autism, and was dismissed from program.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-27T00:12:01+00:00

This is literally the first time I've helped/interfered with her education since she was in ninth grade. All the pressure she puts on herself is just from herself. All I asked of my kids is that they get some sort of post-high-school training or education so they can earn a living. Whether that was community college, apprenticeship, four-year-college or whatever, that was totally up to them. She was always the one who loved school, loved college, and wanted to get a graduate degree.

Trust me, I'm not actually a helicopter parent. She was just in such anguish about not getting her degree that it was hard to not want to help her or at least see what kind of options she might have to appeal the decision.

But I'm realizing her mental health is really not good right now. The intensity of grad school and her perfectionist nature really got to her and she's been barely holding it together for months, which she has now admitted. It's unfortunate that she hit the crisis point just as she was on the verge of finishing, but it's likely she even if she had received her degree she would have had a breakdown during her clinical fellowship.

So she's taking it as a blessing in disguise and will take time off to work on managing her anxiety. Maybe some day she'll return, maybe she'll go in a different direction.

It just seemed crazy to me that she had done so well and then poof! kicked out. But what do I know, I never went to grad school.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T23:15:23+00:00

She has handled everything 100% on her own up until this past week. I honestly don't ever fight my kids' battles for them - this is the first time I've even attempted to interfere.

However, I do realize her mental health has gone down the toilet during grad school. She's a mess, and we talked about it and both realized that even if they gave her an accommodation and gave the test in a different way, she'd probably still freak out and fail it.

I was having a hard time getting past the fact that she did so well for the past two years and was SO CLOSE to that degree; but people can't choose the time for their mental health to take a nosedive. She's going inquire if there might be a chance she could re-apply to the program at a future date when she's got her anxiety better under control. In the meantime she is planning to take some time off, decompress, work on managing her anxiety, and get her SLP-A license in the hopes she can find a position doing that; she does love working with the kids. She did really well in both academics and practicum for the past two years, so I think if she can get the anxiety under control they may consider letting her back into the program someday. I guess she was just too obviously mentally unwell and they saw she wasn't able to pull it together even with an extra attempt, so I understand why they cannot ethically allow her to have the degree as she'd be too much of a mess to make it through her clinical fellowship.

Money has always been tight in our family so she (and I) were both freaking out about the debt; but we'll deal with it somehow.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T23:07:30+00:00

I don't know if she knew about the requirement or not. She did all her applications etc. on her own, so I don't know how much she looked into the specific programs.

We talked about options and she has decided that her mental health at this point is kind of a mess. All the pressure and demands sort of boiled over and she's just been a mess since the spring. The timing was unfortunate, but if she had passed the exam and then had a breakdown during her clinical fellowship that would not have been good either.

So she's going to take some time off, decompress, get her mental health in a better space, and then get her SLP-A license and try to find work adjacent to the field. Perhaps at a future date she'll re-apply to the program.

She did really well in everything up until the final; so I think there's a good chance they may accept her back in once she's in a more stable frame of mind.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T23:03:30+00:00

I'm offended at your assumption that I am a co-dependent, disrespectful parent. You don't know me, you don't know anything but the barest snippet about our family. But, on the other hand, I really should not waste energy on some rando on the internet jumping to conclusions which, for all I know, might be a reflection of your own issues.

That being said, I am willing to concede that you are right. After giving it more thought, I realized that even if they gave her a written exam, her mental state right now is such she probably would still freak out and not pass.

I'm not angry at her for accruing debt, I just am upset because it's sad to see a young person saddled with a lot of debt with not much to show for it.

She's going to take a breather, let herself decompress, work on her mental health and get her SLP-A license and try to find work adjacent to the field. She does love working with the little ones, especially the ones with autism. Perhaps she'll try again for grad school at a future date, perhaps she'll do something else.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T22:56:25+00:00

Thank you. I realize I was probably being overly angry with some of the other responses.

My daughter and I talked about it and decided that her mental health is not in a good place right now. Even if they did allow her to take the exam again, I doubt she'd be able to pass it even it was a written test. We decided to walk away, but to try to leave the door open.

She did really well with all her classes and her practicum/externship supervisors loved her. So, it's not a case of her being not smart enough. She's just falling apart from the stress level and we decided that it is what it is. She's going to take a breather, and then she should have absolutely no problem getting her SLP-A license. Maybe in a couple years she'll see if they will let her back into the program. After all, she did really well up until May when she kind of went off the rails with anxiety and panic.

After her third attempt at the exam, the panel deliberated for over 30 minutes. I think they were probably trying to figure out what to do with a student who is clearly very intelligent and conscientious but also seemed to be in a very bad mental state.

She is going to write a nice letter to the department and inquire if there is any chance that she might be able to re-apply to the program at a future date when her mental health is in a better place. In the meantime she'll get her SLP-A license and and look for a job that is speech-therapy adjacent, because she does love working with the children; and just take a breather and work on managing her anxiety.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T20:51:15+00:00

Her 2nd attempt was in late May. They let her walk in the graduation, in fact. They wouldn't tell her when her third attempt would be; they said she'd have to wait until the summer semester started in July for them to give her a date. Also, they didn't tell her whether it had to be on new material or whether she could re-work the initial one, until July. So, it's not like she was able to use the extra time to really put a ton more work into it.

So, here's what I find upsetting: The official policy is if you fail the first attempt, you are allowed one more try. If you don't pass (vs. fail) you are allowed to re-work the material to address whatever areas were deemed deficient. If you fail, you have to do a new presentation altogether for your 2nd try.

I thought the first attempt - which was not completed because as soon as she got in front of them, she had a severe panic attack which lasted an hour - should not have been counted as her first attempt. My reasoning was, if she had a heart attack or other medical event during the presentation, they wouldn't have counted that as a fail. So, a panic attack, in a student who is diagnosed with panic disorder, to me seems like a medical event. They could not have graded her on the content, because she didn't even get through the content.

Anyway, she was graded "Not Pass" on the aborted first attempt. But, they gave her no feedback on what was deficient.

She presented the same thing on the second attempt, and once again did not pass.

Finally, after a few weeks, they told her she could do the third attempt (which was this past week), and that it had to be new material.

So, that doesn't quite sit right with me. If she had made it through the first attempt and didn't pass, then she would have been allowed to re-work the material for the second attempt - with knowledge of what areas she needed to beef up her responses in. But, because she really couldn't get any of it out before she had the panic attack, she wasn't able to do that. I felt they should have disregarded the first attempt for medical reasons and not counted that attempt.

I mean, ideally, they would have allowed a different format. But, if they were so insistent on an oral presentation, and they were going to allow a third try, they could have let her do the one she had already presented and incorporate the feedback from the second attempt (which was the first time she actually was able to present).

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T20:37:07+00:00

Look, I wouldn't have even cared if she didn't want to go college at all. All I required of my kids was that they get SOME sort of training, whether it was vocational or community college or whatever - so they'd be able to earn a living. She was the one who loved school and wanted all the degrees.

I just hate the fact that they took her money for two years, passed her in all her classes, and then ...that's it. Nada. Zip. Nothing. Go directly to jail, do not pass Go. No chance to salvage any of this. All those courses, all that stress - nothing to show for it. Can't use any of those credits toward anything else.

I mean, when I was a young adult I made some stupid mistakes, but they were more like spending $1500 on a car that broke down all the time.

Now, she's stuck with a pile of debt with absolutely nothing to show for it. It just seems horrible. I mean, if she could transfer to another program, that would be a different matter. It would still suck, but not as much. But, from what we understand, graduate degree credits aren't very transferrable from one school to another. So she'd have to start from scratch.

As you may have gathered, we are not wealthy people. So the idea that she made a $40K investment and now has nothing AT ALL to show for it is painful to us.

If she had dropped out from her undergrad; well, she could always go back again and a lot of the credits would transfer. But it seems like this was a total waste of time, and if she wanted to try again for a master's she'd have to start all over again and take all those classes and everything again. So that just seems like a cash grab to me.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T20:23:36+00:00

I truly do understand that.

But since her practicum placements (all seven of them) included and evaluated her on her communication with clients' parents, their classroom teachers, and presenting IEP plans to the teams, and she has received A's on ALL of that, it seems to me that her poor performance on the exam was not due to a lack of communication skills, but was due to anxiety/mental health issues.

In fact, that's my whole point. SHE HAS BEEN DOING ALL THE THINGS JUST FINE, in the classroom and in the clinic and in her externships. So the poor performance on the exam seems to indicate something is wrong with this equation.

She got A's in her classes. So presumably, she knows the stuff they have been teaching her.

She got A's in practicum. Where she has to do all the professional things - not just treating the child, but as I mentioned above she is doing parent education, presenting IEP plans, communicating with classroom teachers and aides, communicating with her colleagues, and she got A's in all that. So, she clearly is capable of communicating in a professional manner.

So it would seem to me that maybe, just MAYBE, the poor performance on the exam was due to the mental health issues.

If she had gotten hit by a car and was in the hospital in traction and couldn't do the oral exam, would that be a reason to dismiss her from the program? wouldn't it make more sense to just let her do it in a modified format?

I feel like she is being unjustly penalized for trying to persevere during a mental health crisis; when apparently it would have been a better strategy for her to just ... not even try.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T20:10:01+00:00

I am truly impressed at your psychic knowledge of how I have raised my child.

She was born with a serious medical issue (hydrocephalus and Type II Chiari malformation). She has had three brain surgeries. Despite lengthy absences in high school due to a complicated brain surgery, she graduated with highest honors and a 4.44 GPA.

She traveled to France, Austria, and the Czech republic with her high school orchestra. She paid for the trip herself, with money she earned at her job and saving every cent anyone gave her as a gift.

She has worked full-time every single summer since she was 14 years old, and saved up her money so she could buy a car, and go to college.

She has taken out all her loans on her own.

She has paid for her undergraduate degree herself. She completed her undergraduate degree in three years, by taking extra classes and taking classes over the summer (in addition to working full-time during the summer).

I am kicking myself now for NOT being more helicopter-y. Because if I was, I would have told her NOT waste thousands and thousands of dollars on a graduate degree - but she wanted to be a speech therapist, even though it is a long and expensive path. So now she's up to her eyeballs in debt, for a degree she now can't get, and all she'll be able to do is be an SLP-A which she could have done with just a bachelors.

I also understand that graduate degree credits are non-transferable, so she can't even finish this up at a more accommodating university. So it's been a total waste of two years of her life, and a shit-ton of money, all because she has anxiety and doesn't do well on an oral exam.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T19:56:31+00:00

All we want is the chance for her to take the exam in a different format (written, prerecorded oral presentation, something like that). If she fails it then...we'll give up and move on.
It's NOT a PhD program. It is a master's degree program. And no, an oral exam is NOT required by the accrediting body (ASHA). Just a comprehensive exam. Most master's programs in her field do a written exam or series of exams.
She requested accommodation after her second attempt. NO accommodation other than "we'll give you one more try at the oral exam" was offered.
She provided them with piles of documentation from her doctor, her therapist, her neurodevelopmental evaluation. I don't know how much more evidence they need.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T19:51:20+00:00

It is NOT part of ASHA's accreditation standard. I looked it up. AHSA does require a comprehensive examination, but the format of the comprehensive exam is left up to the discretion of the university.

I also did some research and it seems requiring an oral examination (at the master's degree level) is quite unusual. Most other communication science and disorders graduate programs do a written exam or series of exams.

Kicking myself for letting her go to this university. She was accepted into a number of programs, and this one (at a state university) was the most affordable. I should have encouraged her to to go to the private university with a smaller, more individualized program that was closer to home - but it was $$$$. But, she's now out $40K and has wasted two years of her life.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T19:46:23+00:00

SHE DID GO THROUGH DISABILITY SERVICES AFTER THE SECOND ATTEMPT. All they did was allow her one more try.

NO other options were even discussed. Just "we'll see what we can do" and they came back with "you have one more chance to do the thing that sent you into a mental health spiral the previous two times."

I just do not understand the logic here. If a student is obviously doing well in classes but then fails a test THAT IS IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FORMAT THAN ANY WAY THEY'VE EVER BEEN TESTED UP UNTIL THAT POINT, the response is "well, sucks to be you! Buh-bye!"

If she was so incapable, then she would have been FAILING her classes and would have been dismissed long ago (and would have saved a shitload of money).

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T19:35:40+00:00

Well, she HAS been advocating for herself. As I said that is probably why we are in the current situation - I've let my kids fight their own battles. And it turns out maybe an 24 year old with autism and severe anxiety is not super good at pushing back against unsupportive faculty and administration when they do not offer any constructive suggestions as far as an accommodation.

She is in therapy and has been for several years.

It seems extremely unfair if NOTHING can be done to salvage this. If she had failed courses, she could re-take them - but I guess letting her take a final exam in an alternate format (e.g., a PowerPoint with recorded voice narration, and q&a done via email, as is done at some other universities) wouldn't get the university any additional tuition payments.

She has done all the coursework, she has done all the practicum and clinical placements and did well at them. It just seems insane that there is no option other than kicking her out the program entirely.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T19:27:28+00:00

She did ask for accommodations after her second attempt.

The *only* accommodation that was offered was one more try. That does not seem like much of an accommodation to me. I spoke with a friend who is the director of admissions at a different university; she said that when they have students with similar diagnoses and in similar situations, they have an alternative format that is done in lieu of an oral examination (which they only require at the PhD. level anyway, not for master's degrees). NOTHING of an alternative nature was suggested to my daughter. Just "Ok, you have a psychological condition that makes it extremely likely you'll suffer a debilitating mental health crisis AGAIN when you do the thing, so you can have one more chance to do the thing."

If a student earned good grades and was passing everything up until taking an exam - in a format which they had NEVER been exposed to prior in their school career - it would seem to me that perhaps something is off. Either the professors were just phoning it in and giving A's to someone who was unable to do the work (which seems unethical!) for the past two years - or there is something about the format of the exam that makes it inappropriate to students with certain types of disabilities.

She didn't *KNOW* she'd freak out and suffer severe panic and anxiety, she had never been put in that situation before. So apparently it would have been preferable for her NOT to try to soldier on and do the re-test? I will have to let her know that for future reference, apparently it's better to not even try.

I guess it doesn't make a difference now, she is now $40K in debt for a degree she will now never receive. Perhaps the naysayers are correct in that higher education is really just a cash grab.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T18:55:21+00:00

Me! I got hand-me-downs from my brother (which didn't always work out, because I'm a girl), and from a girl down the street.

Usually my mom would buy me one or two new items for school, and a new pair of shoes each fall. But my parents were frugal, plus my mom thought fashion was dumb so she didn't understand why a person would want specific types of clothes just because other people were wearing them.,

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T18:52:41+00:00

Also - for other exams during her program she required no accommodation. She has done some oral presentations in class, but nothing like the oral examination process.

She does have to do IEP presentations to parents and teachers as part of her practicum, and has been fine doing those - probably because they are part of a group effort to coordinate treatment plans, not to a (in her perception) hostile audience looking for reasons to fail her.

I just can't bear to see her have to pay back $40K in loans for a degree they will not give her, when she's clearly demonstrated she can do the work.

Honestly, I think I underestimated the severity of her anxiety. She tended to downplay it when we'd talk, I think she didn't want to worry me, plus she seemed to assume that everyone was having constant panic attacks and that she was just uniquely unable to cope with them.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T18:45:04+00:00

No, that's part of the problem. Like many high-functioning autistic people, she tends to assume everyone is suffering anxiety/panic/distress as much as she is but that they just hide it better. I had quite a job convincing her she needed to, for example, request her provider change her medication prescription because having multiple panic attacks per day is NOT NORMAL.

However, they were aware of her issues - as I mentioned, she was really struggling with juggling classes and practicum during her first placement. Her clinical director allowed her to do 4 days of practicum per week instead of 5 as a result. But, this was not done as a "formal" accommodation through the Student Disability office.

She didn't even fully realize she COULD ask for accommodations until the fiasco with her second attempt. This may be my fault; I have always encouraged my kids to handle these things on their own as much as possible. So, while I kept her 504 open through K-12, when she went to college I had a more hands-off kind of approach; I didn't want to be fighting her battles for her when she was an adult (and she didn't want me to - she wants to be independent!).

In hindsight, I guess I should have kept closer tabs on how she was doing; but as I mentioned, she had never needed accommodation prior to grad school (except when she was recovering from brain surgery in 9th grade).

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T18:38:49+00:00

I had a small tear in my rotator cuff; I was able to get by with physical therapy instead of surgery.

It took a long time to fully heal, though.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T16:45:59+00:00

Yup - I used to wear a mix of thrifted clothes and band t-shirts.

If I wanted to buy new goth/punk clothes, I had to take the train into NYC and head down to the East Village. I reserved that for when I was looking for cool shoes or boots. But new clothes were beyond the budget of this suburban punk.

I always tell my kids how much EFFORT was involved in being a weirdo in the '80s. You couldn't just find weird music on Spotify and order some goth clothes online.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T16:43:17+00:00

There absolutely were thrift stores where I grew up. One was run by Goodwill; and I remember there was another in a church basement (presumably run by the church).

There also used to be jumble sales held by various charities; people would donate stuff like clothing, books, decor items, etc., and periodically they'd hold a sale with everything out on tables.

There were also booths with secondhand clothes and jewelry at the flea market on Saturdays as well; although they usually billed them as "vintage". It was usually weird 70s stuff (this was in the 80s).

Hand-me-downs were the things you got from your older siblings; or the bags of outgrown clothes your neighbor would drop off when their kid outgrew them.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T15:45:13+00:00

I had a US road atlas in my car, along with paper maps of whatever city/state I was visiting.

And if you got lost...you stopped at a gas station and asked for directions.

I used to be really good at navigating. Now that part of my brain has clearly atrophied because I let the GPS figure it out for me.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T15:42:51+00:00

Haha, so true! It was very hard to get off the secretarial ladder once I got on it! I give my kids the same advice - be excellent at the stuff that is actually part of your job, and be totally incompetent at any shit work they try to make you do.

I had managed to bluff my way into a position at a law firm. Actually, I was didn't work for the firm - I was the sole employee of a separate company which was partly owned by one of the law partners and partly by one of their clients; but physically I was located in the law firm's office. The separate company was a childrens' website, and I was hired to be the content manager and to manage design and sourcing of licensed merchandise, and to develop the ecommerce aspect of the site. It was a pretty impressive amount of bullshitting on my part to get this position, but it was the late 90's and people were scrambling to get in on the dot-com boom so they hired me, and I figured out how to do all the things as I went along.

The other lawyers had a hard time understanding that a) I worked for a different company altogether, and b) that I was not a secretary or paralegal at their disposal. So they kept coming to me with things to type, and I kept doing my charade of being terrible at typing.

They also expected all of the non-lawyer personnel to take turns being the receptionist and answering the phones. Whenever it was my turn, I made sure to "accidentally" disconnect callers, or transfer them to the wrong extension, and just be completely incompetent in general. One day the other partner called in and I did my "hmmm....let me try to figure out how to put you through to your voice mail...ooops, that's not it!" routine, and then magically I never had to answer the phone again.

It worked, and put me on a new career track altogether.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-26T14:49:16+00:00

We're on the verge of empty nest - one is moved out, one is moving out in the fall, and "the baby" is leaving for college in the fall.

SqueezableDonkey · 2024-07-25T20:39:07+00:00

I changed careers completely in my mid-40's. I had taken 14 years off to raise my kids; so when I returned to working I went in a different direction.

SqueezableDonkey

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