So… This Isn’t Going Like We Thought

“I got my midterm back.”

“How did it go?”

“Not great.”

“What does not great mean?”

“I got a D.”

The grade is one piece of information. What the young adult begins to think about themselves because of the grade can become a much bigger story.

Maybe I’m not good at this.

Everybody else seems to understand it.

I should already know how to do this.

Maybe I’m not supposed to be here.

Or even:

Now I have to prove I’m supposed to be here.

As parents, we have our own response. We know what our young person has been capable of doing. We remember the grades they earned before, the way they worked in high school, and what it took for them to arrive at this point. So when the outcome does not match what we expected, we are trying to understand what happened too.

This is where understanding the developmental stage helps. A young person does not go to college already knowing the work. They go to college to learn it. They are adding new information and experiences to what they already know and learning how to turn that new information into knowledge they can actually use.

That process takes time.

They Are Learning the Work—and How They Learn

We know what we know based on experience and exposure. College expands both. Our young adults encounter new language, ideas, expectations, ways of thinking, and levels of complexity. Some of that information connects easily to something they already understand. Other material is completely new and requires them to build the bridge.

At PATHworks™, I call what you actually know and can use base knowledge. Hearing information once does not automatically make it part of that base. A learner has to receive it, consider it, revisit it, connect it to something already known, and eventually understand it well enough to apply it.

That process looks different when the environment changes.

The study habits that produced success in high school do not automatically produce the same results in college. A student who could listen in class, review notes the night before, and earn a strong grade may discover that college-level material requires a deeper process. The amount of information changes. The pace changes. The professor’s expectations change. The student now has greater responsibility for deciding when, how, and how deeply learning will happen.

For some young adults, this is also the first time school has been truly difficult. They may have moved through high school without encountering material they could not eventually figure out using the tools they already had. Then they reach a college course and, for the first time, the usual approach does not work.

That can be scary.

The challenge is not only learning the material. They are also learning what to do when the ways they have always been successful are no longer enough.

The Developmental Stage Matters

Our young adults are taking on increasing responsibility for themselves while still developing their understanding of what managing that responsibility requires.

Arnett’s work on emerging adulthood describes this period as one of identity exploration, instability, increased self-direction, feeling somewhat “in between,” and seeing new possibilities. Young adults are separating from earlier structures while figuring out what adulthood will look like for them. 

College puts that development into a completely new environment. Our young people are away from many of their usual supports while they are simultaneously building new ones. They are figuring out different expectations from professors, roommates, employers, peers, and institutions. They are deciding what still works from home and high school and what has to change. At the same time, their development is pulling them toward solving more of these challenges themselves.

That matters.

The young person who would once have come home and talked through a difficult class may now sit with the problem longer because they want to figure it out first. The parent who could see the frustration on their face now receives a phone call after the grade has already arrived.

And sometimes we unintentionally add pressure when we continue to apply the expectations that made sense in the environment they left to the environment they are now trying to understand.

The young adult has changed environments.

Our expectations have to recognize that too.

What Else Is Happening Inside That Grade?

Dr. Margaret Beale Spencer’s PVEST framework helps us understand that young people do not experience events separately from everything surrounding them. Their developmental context, stress, the support they believe is available, how they cope, and how they see themselves all interact as they make meaning from what happens. 

That is useful when we think about midterms. The young adult does not simply see a D. They experience the D inside everything else happening in their life. One student sees it and thinks, Okay. I have to figure out what I’m missing. Another sees exactly the same grade and thinks, I knew I wasn’t good enough to be here. The academic result is the same. The experience of the result is not.

Belonging can be part of that experience too. A young adult who already feels uncertain about whether they fit academically or socially can interpret challenge differently from a student who feels secure in their place. The thought I am supposed to be here creates a different starting point from I have to prove I deserve to be here. This is why the grade alone does not tell us the whole story.

Performance Gives Information

A grade represents performance within a particular learning environment. It tells us something about how the student was able to understand and demonstrate the material according to the expectations of that course at that point in time. Performance gives us information about the learning process.

The difficulty comes when performance and worth become confused. Then instead of thinking, Something in my learning process needs attention, the young adult can move toward Something is wrong with me. That distinction influences what happens next.

When challenge feels like a judgment about who we are, it can be harder to stay open to the very information the challenge is offering. Embarrassment, stress, or shame can narrow the experience until the young person is focused more on what the grade means about them than on what they are still learning. The work of development is gradually becoming able to separate those things.

This is what happened.

This is what I know now.

This is what I still need to understand.

That cognitive shift does not happen automatically because someone turns eighteen or walks onto a college campus. It develops through experience.

Effort and Effect Are Different

There is another important discovery happening here.

Effort and effect are not the same thing.

A young adult can work very hard and still receive an outcome they did not expect. That can be especially disorienting for a student whose previous experience taught them that effort usually resulted in a strong grade. They know they studied. They know they spent the time. Then the result comes back and does not match the investment.

Now they are learning something more sophisticated than “work hard.” They are developing the ability to examine how their effort actually affected learning.

Research on self-regulated learning describes learning as involving cognition, motivation, metacognition, reflection, feedback, and adjustment—not simply time spent completing academic tasks. Those capacities continue being refined as learners encounter different content and environments. 

Our young adults are beginning to recognize the difference between I worked for five hours and the way I used those five hours helped me understand and use the material. That awareness takes time to build.

And when a young person is stressed, embarrassed, disappointed, tired, or worried about belonging, the emotional experience sits right alongside the cognitive work they are being asked to do.

Their Usual Support Is Not Right Beside Them

Our young people have faced challenges before. What is different now is where they are standing when they face them. Their familiar support system is no longer necessarily in the next room. They have more autonomy, more decisions, and more responsibility for determining when they need help and where that help will come from.

At the same time, many young adults want to handle the situation themselves. That is development too. They are learning the difference between independence and isolation. They are discovering what they can solve, where they need more information, and when reaching for support is part of solving the problem rather than proof that they could not solve it.

Parents are adjusting on the other side of that process. We do not have the same visibility we once had. We receive pieces of the experience—a grade, a phone call, a frustrated comment—and we have to resist filling in everything we cannot see.

Understanding the developmental context gives us something important to hold onto. Our young adult can be struggling and still be developing normally. They can be capable and still need more time. They can need support and still be growing in independence. And they still have to do the work.

What They Receive From Us

We cannot learn the material for our young adults. We cannot build the bridge between new information and their base knowledge for them. They have to have the experiences that teach them what learning now requires. What they still receive from us is part of the environment in which that learning happens.

When they tell us about an unexpected grade, our response can give them space to consider what happened before deciding what the experience says about them. We can be interested without becoming alarmed. We can recognize disappointment without treating it as disaster. We can remain confident in the young person while they are still figuring out the process.

That does not remove responsibility. It gives responsibility somewhere productive to go.

A grade connects to performance. Performance connects to a learning process. The learning process is still developing in college whether the young person was an excellent student, an average student, or struggled academically in high school.

And the young person is developing too. Our response can help them keep those things in their proper place. They came to college to add to what they know, expand what they have experienced, and develop greater capacity to use what they learn.

They were never supposed to know it all before they arrived.

Go a Little Deeper

Let It Teach

A grade can enter loudly,
like it owns the whole house.
Let it sit down.
Ask what it came to teach.

Your young adult is still building bridges
between what they knew and what they are learning now.
Some bridges take more than one crossing.
That is why we build them.

And Parent—you are learning too.
You do not have to retake the midterm from home.
Stay close. Stay curious. Leave some room.
Growing up still needs somewhere to happen.

Continue the Conversation

What helped you learn to separate your own academic or professional performance from your personal worth? How are you helping your young adult develop that distinction?

Share your thoughts, lessons, or questions with us here at Parents Need Love.

PATHworks™ Love Them to Life introduces parents to ideas that can strengthen relationships, support development, and prepare teens and young adults to increasingly understand, manage, and advocate for themselves.

About Ms Patricia

Patricia Wicks, MSW, is a human development expert specializing in young adults and founder of PATHworks™, with more than 30 years of experience helping young people build the tools needed for a successful transition into adulthood. She partners with families and the organizations that serve them to strengthen relationships, build independence, and improve outcomes through coaching, consulting, training, and facilitation. Learn more at www.pathworksglobal.com.

Check out our free resource HERE:
https://pathworksohio.kartra.com/page/1L2L

Research and Resource References

Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55(5), 469–480.

Spencer, M. B., Dupree, D., & Hartmann, T. (1997). A phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory (PVEST): A self-organization perspective in context. Development and Psychopathology, 9(4), 817–833. 

Schunk, D. H., & Zimmerman, B. J. (Eds.). (1994). Self-regulation of learning and performance: Issues and educational applications. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 

Research note: PVEST stands for Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory. Spencer developed the framework to help explain development in context, including how stressors, supports, coping responses, self-appraisal, and identity interact over time.