brothers a dumb ass

otispunkmeyer

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well after 2 years of telling him

do some work

revising the night before wont work

do some past papers

etc etc....

A-level results are in, and despite him thinking he'd done pretty good, the reality i knew was coming arrived.

he's practically failed A2 level maths and physics... U grades in every module but one which was borderline E. his first year (AS level) grades are all thats kept him afloat. end result? D in maths, E in physics.

he said he'd "walk" general studies (which at some colleges is a mandatory topic that covers...well general stuffs, bit of everything really, nothing to indepth) and his result? a C grade....just.

in Politics, the thing he wants to go to uni and do, well he did ok... he still managed to fail on of the modules in it, and didnt do that well on the rest of them but it came out to a C grade too.

now physics and maths, theyre hard sure... but even a little work can get you by. but him, no....it wasnt like he was borderline either...its properly failed by around 20% on the A2 modules. and he resat most of the AS ones coz he failed them first time round too.

General studies...well, the college i went to thought they were so useful that they didnt even offer them. that should be an indication into 1) how little theyre worth and 2) how easy they are

and for someone wanting to do politics....he didnt make a good go of that either.

you'd think after he pretty much failed all his AS levels first time round that he'd get a wake up call and pull his thumb out. but no. he stayed in his virtual reality world where he thinks he knows it all....and came out bust again!

i give up with him now, theres no telling him. he just doesnt want to know, if u try to tell him the things he needs to be doing he just shouts at you. when i did A-levels i got near enough 100% in physics and electronics... i prepared like a demon for those, i did every past paper, i did every question set for homework etc etc. i only got a C in maths, but it wasnt for lack of trying...i find maths difficult (something my brother doesnt), i had a tutor and everything to get me that C.

i do well in my exams coz i spend a good few weeks preparing, understanding the work, and most importantly doing past papers (spot trends, get used to the questions, the level of difficulty etc etc)

i tell him thats what i do, and thats what works..... every single person i know who prepares like that does well, often better than i do, so im not the only one here....its a universal revision tactic that absolutely works.

all i got to say to him really is "i told you so". he keeps relying with " i know the stuff, its just exams im crap at".... well no one cares how much he actually knows, the people handing out the marks only care how you do in an exam. thats life, you gotta accept it and give it a go. alot of people hate exams, they panic and dont do as well as you know they can...but theres no excuse for getting U's in everything. thats just bone-idle-ness

i think the thing im really annoyed about (apart from the told you so part) is that he's definately capable of doing well....he's easily better and quicker on the draw than me at maths, but he just sits there playing games an going out with mates.

its fair enough when the gods just havent endowed you with a decent piece of grey matter, but when they have and u just blatantly waste it....its annoying. I have to work like a trooper to get the results i want (and even then i dont get every result i want), he wouldnt have to try as hard as i do to perform the same but when people tell him, he just doesnt wanna know.

saddly, he'll be working morissons shelves and living for the weekend for the rest of his life, though he fancies himself as some kind of entrepeneur (sp?). but i can say right now, he's too fucking lazy to come even close to the shabbiest of entrepeneurs

i hope this failure registers with him, i really do.... aside from that i dunno what to do about.

anyone got any suggestions? sorry for the long post
 
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Does he seem remorseful? Or does he just not give a shit?

In the latter I think a good ol'fashioned sibling beating is justified, albeit with a life-changing purpose.
 
You've told him and he has choosen to ignore you, get on with making yourself a success, if he needs help just 'be there' if he needs you. You can not live his life for him - let him be.
 
Double edit: I feel bad that this was long and was sorta ranty and personal, but it hits home for me. I don't want to trouble you guys or make you feel angry or bad about it so I'll spoiler it. Those who are willing to read please do, otherwise pretend I said "I like cheese". And don't worry yo, I'm not going batshit crazy like I did that-one-time-that-I-never-want-to-relive-nor-ever-remember.

you'd think after he pretty much failed all his AS levels first time round that he'd get a wake up call and pull his thumb out. but no. he stayed in his virtual reality world where he thinks he knows it all....and came out bust again!

i give up with him now, theres no telling him. he just doesnt want to know, if u try to tell him the things he needs to be doing he just shouts at you. when i did A-levels i got near enough 100% in physics and electronics... i prepared like a demon for those, i did every past paper, i did every question set for homework etc etc. i only got a C in maths, but it wasnt for lack of trying...i find maths difficult (something my brother doesnt), i had a tutor and everything to get me that C.

I understand the worry that you have being his brother, but I'll just say something.

YOUR BROTHER IS NOT YOU

I'm an only child, and as a result I've gotten all the attention and all the blame. My mom berates and demeans me and has said since I was in middle school about how she struggled in India and they had no money so she used to tutor students and earn something that way. She'd keep going on and on about how she did so well in school and gotten rank #1 all the time, and bla bla bla. I don't think she understands.

I'M NOT HER. And I also yell back at my mom everytime she tells me (even now) to go talk to professors, go meet them at office hours, go to discussion, go to class. WTF. At one point I felt like, and I'm 300% sure your brother feels this way too, that I'm not doing it for myself anymore. I'm doing it for someone else, this is someone else's work and someone else's degree. Your brother's doing it for you or for someone else. And that of course is the biggest de-motivator of all.

I had to tell my mom to stop telling me all these obvious things, to stop treating me like a little kid and to just let me go. We're still struggling but through that and after I got a little time to breathe and think for myself I started realizing how much this is about me and my future, about how I need to do well for me. I still have this nagging sense that I'm doing this to sate my mom's academic success appetite but I know this is mostly for me.

Everytime I tell my relatives back home in India something like "Yeah I have a 3.5/4.0 GPA". They won't say "wow that's great considering the school you're going to" or "hey fantastic! Great job". I get a "What happened to the other 0.5". "Who's better than you? You should be #1".

Btw I don't have a 3.5/4.0 GPA. I have a sub 3.0 GPA because the average in the department of astrophysics and in some of my classes is a 2.8. The courses are hard as fuck.

Anyway what I'm trying to say is, I feel your brother's pain. He's stressed out, and as soon as he's told what to do and that he's doing it wrong he gets angry and I would and I do too. I don't want to be told how to do my work, I like doing it my way. I don't need to be told to go to lecture, I'm 21 years old. My mom used to call me every fucking day of freshman and sophomore years to ask me how my day went, if i went to class, how was class, what did i learn etc etc etc. It got so annoying.

Leave him alone. Let him breathe, let him think for himself. If he does bad, don't come up and shout at him and make him feel bad and stupid. Encourage him, say it's ok. He'll come around once he realizes this is all for his sake, not you, not your parents', or anyone else.

To be honest I feel bad for your brother, he has to face so much pressure and stress. Not good.


Edit: Sorry for the edit here, but I just wanted to reassure the mods that I wasn't going to go batshit crazy like last time :p. I don't even want to remember those days, but unfortunately I had to recall them here to make my point.
 
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That text at the top pretty much described my school career, I was lazy as hell, did all the coursework on the last day, got wasted 4 to 6 times a week and in end I was even banned from my boarding house. :D
Still I managed to score 35 IB points which is decent, but doesn't get you into any good university. I pretty much knew that I would have to work hard for my exams, but UCAS didn't really work out for me. The universities I wanted to go to rejected me and in the end I could have only gone to Nottingham or St Andrew, I disliked both places, so I didn't bother we studying for my exams. I could have still gone to St Andrews in the end, but I didn't.

So my simple advice is JANUARY RETAKES!!
 
i know my brother is not me, its up to him what he does with his life, but its a little tragic to see such potential go down the pan.

i dont like to see him down, or see him do baddly, especially after he's bigged himself up and walked round like he knows it all. he just sets himself up for fall after fall.

he is actually very disappointed in how he did today, he couldnt even finish his tea, so i think quietly hes quite upset about it. but he brought it all on himself

im not home most of the time, and i have little time to spend telling him what to do. but just every now and then i just give him tips, tips that i know will help and tips that i wished someone would of given me. i dont try to live his life, if anything im barely a part of it im away from home that much. i dont tell him what do (my mum kinda does, but rather asks him rather than demands), but really its a case of getting him to do anything at all.

if he actually did some work, i'd be less inclined to give him hints, but he doesnt do any work whatsoever so its not like my parents are telling him HOW to work, they're telling him to at least do a little bit of work. i get annoyed when people tell me how i should do things, i know what works for me, but like i said.... he does ZERO work. you cant do work in a certain way if you dont do any at all can you?

he's definately not me, he could be so much better than i, if he tried.

my parents dont expect him to follow me.... i've done ok for myself, in reality they cant, theyre not at that stage yet. they've not got past the first stage which is to get him to at least do some work. i mean after all the time and money they invest in him, they have a right to expect him to at least try at school. thats the least he can do


you say "leave him alone" and "let him breathe".... well i know ive done that... i dont even talk to him that much when im away (which is most of the year), my dad works abroad and my mum works as well.... i think the problem is too much of leaving himself to his own devices....and clearly its not worked because he chooses to be lazy instead.


i think his mistake may of been trying to emulate me and do physics and maths (he even took further maths at AS) but thats a lot of work and you cant be lazy for those topics, you got to work at them, which he isnt prepared to do. i dont even know if he could go back to college and take some new topics that arent so cut n dry like maths n physics....afterall he wants to do politics...you dont even need to have done politics to enrole so he definately doesnt need math n physics

he actually got in northumbria, his second choice, but hopes to transfer to Newcastle after the first year. to do that he needs to get at least a 2.1 or else they'll just say no. hopefully if/when he gets to uni....he'll be with people that actually work, and he'll twig on that thats what you have to do.

at the end of the day, yes its a lot of pressure...from firends, parents etc, living up to expectations, perhaps doing things you dont actually wanna do etc....but thats life, it only gets harder and if you dont work hard now you'll likely be forever consigned to jobs where people tell you what to do and make you do things you dont want to. you gotta man up early.
 
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I see loads of people like that, I didn't do A-levels because I'm a fool and did a National Diploma which meant getting into uni was a struggle, so I worked my ass off to prove myself and it still might not be enough. I get frustrated by people like your brother who think everything is going to be OK. But then again maybe your brother isn't suited to classroom based learning, a lot of people aren't, it doesn't make them any less intelligent it just means that they don't have bits of paper with grades on them to prove it.

Also, there was a guy in my class at college that had done 2 years of college and turned it around by doing another 2 years. He can always try again, maybe with a better and more mature attitude (bit rude of me to say that as he's properly the same age as me).
 
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But then again maybe your brother isn't suited to classroom based learning, a lot of people aren't, it doesn't make them any less intelligent it just means that they don't have bits of paper with grades on them to prove it.

Damn right! It might be annoying to see talent wasted, but people have to find that out for themselves. I have a friend as well who is in a pretty easy direction and still manages to fail completely. However, he's a friendly, talkative guy. He won't get bigshot jobs, a huge house and a fast car later, but he will be happy and will stay a down-to-earth, laid-back personality.
I'm not a brilliant student myself (quite lazy, actually... I should be studying right now) and I consider people who can only think and talk about points and results and numbers and papers to be much more annoying than somebody who could get good results, but wastes them with doing nothing.

Off course, when you are young you might make mistakes which you can greatly regret later on, and I can understand that you want to prevent him having an experience like that. However, once somebody reaches a certain age, they should think for themselves.

If I were his parents, I'd do this: stop giving him money and paying for his studies. Let him find out the "big world" for himself, for a year. Let him get a shitty job and struggle to make the end of the month. I'm quite confident that will change his opinion and be glad to get back to studying, and if it doesn't, than he simply isn't cut out for studying.
 
When I was in college I was going through a severe case of "I know I have talent, but why should I bother, life's pointless and cruel".
When I was in the Netherlands, I didn't go to class at all, and instead either went to the computer lab to play games (usually Papyrus' Indianapolis 500) or I took the train and went to Amsterdam or something like that.
After I moved to the US, I picked an easy college here, since I only was after getting a piece of paper as I viewed it (my college degree).
I didn't need to learn anything new, I already knew how to develop software long before I got into college (or even high school).
At least I attended class in college in the US, but that probably was mainly because I lived on campus in the middle of nowhere and probably would be just as bored as I was in the classroom.
Actually I majored in Psychology as well, partly because I was bored, and partly in a poor attempt to figure out my particular attitude towards life.
 
well after 2 years of telling him

do some work

revising the night before wont work

do some past papers

etc etc....

This is how I've always done it and it has been very successful for me (5A*s, 4As at GCSE, 3 As and a B at A-Level and currently on a high 2:1 in Law at Uni). However, I think very very few people can actually get away with this technique.
It works for me because I have a very good memory, almost photographic, so I need only a brief read through to get everything back to the forefront of my mind. The problem is most people don't or they never bother doing the work in the first place. My brother did the same but crashed and burned at AS level and was very lucky that he had been accepted onto an apprenticeship before the results came out.
 
I never really took high school to seriously, I got a fairly average 75/99.9 (my high school average was 59/99.9) but I managed to get into university into a course that I wanted to (it was a new for this year job so the entry score was just less than what I got) Now the score to enter my course has jumped up almost 10 so I wouldn't of gotten in a year later.
 
Too much reading, but your brother is a big boy -- let him figure it out for himself. You can't learn if you don't make mistakes.
 
This is how I've always done it and it has been very successful for me (5A*s, 4As at GCSE, 3 As and a B at A-Level and currently on a high 2:1 in Law at Uni). However, I think very very few people can actually get away with this technique.
It works for me because I have a very good memory, almost photographic, so I need only a brief read through to get everything back to the forefront of my mind. The problem is most people don't or they never bother doing the work in the first place. My brother did the same but crashed and burned at AS level and was very lucky that he had been accepted onto an apprenticeship before the results came out.

different strokes for different folks isnt it.

i personally cant use colours to revise...it doesnt work. black and white is best. i cant usually revise too well by re-writing and condensing notes, but i do it to start with, get a baseline set up in understanding the major parts and writing my own explanations out (and getting them checked by the lecturer), if you have complicated things explained in a form you can easily understand when you come to look at it again, your laughing.

mostly though, we bash through as many past papers as possible, and do them 2-3 times. basically learning by repitition...time consuming yes, but it works.

like you and others say.... he may well not be able to revise like i do. but thats not the problem here, he doesnt do any to begin with...its trying to get him to at least try and find out what works for him.

he may also not be cut out for classes and that style of learning...again lots of people arent, but then again its still the most respected way of earning a good education in this country, you just have to accept that and either take it on or quit.... vocational courses may be on the rise, but if you have the right grades on a piece of paper from your college, university's general wont quibble about letting you in. i know plenty of people that didnt do A-levels who are now on my course with me at uni....only trouble is its taken them an extra 2 years to get where i and the rest of the A-levels people are.

still, he's got into his second choice, northumbria, not sure how good that place is since it used to be a polytechnic and must be the equivalent of going to the Uni of Teesside (which sucks) for people living in newcastle. but the course is apparently not too disimilar to the one he chose at Newcastle uni (first choice).

who knows, hopefully these frankly quite appaling results will be the wake up call. he had his heart set on Newcaslte, but his blase attitude to college (the i know what im doing i dont need to revise) has stopped that dream. Uni is a very different learning environment...theres no one to tell him what to do, how to do it or where to go. so maybe this culture change may work in his favour. he has a target now... a 2.1 or a 1st in the first year of his politics degree and theres a good chance Newcastle will allow him to transfer...so hopefully he works for it.

(that and the fact its costing him ?3k a year just to go + costing my parents a hell of a lot more in addition to that to fund other things. i know its parental pressure but when theyre investing thousands of pounds of their own money you'd agree that you'd have to be a complete twat to squander it all by being a lazy fuck)

he's a grade A bullshitter though, you should here him... gift of the gab for sure. he will acutallly make a very good politician, he can talk his way out or round nearly any problem.
 
Give him a candy if he does right. I'm sure it's a candy shortage.
 
Give him a candy if he does right. I'm sure it's a candy shortage.

i think he'd rather have money! lol

anyway, its sorted now, northumbria isnt looking too shabby a choice atm, but transfering to newcastle is what he wants. lets hope he's prepared to work for it. hopefuly uni culture will change the way he operates
 
i think he'd rather have money! lol

anyway, its sorted now, northumbria isnt looking too shabby a choice atm, but transfering to newcastle is what he wants. lets hope he's prepared to work for it. hopefuly uni culture will change the way he operates

I've found with most of my units that the lecturers/tutor do actually remind you when stuff is due and generally try and assist you if you have any issues, my brother does engineering at the same uni and they're nothing like that. So even the different faculties work differently and the 'lifestyle' education wise will be different for all
 
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