Failing at school my life will be over.

[FancyNut]

Ok. Here are the facts.

- I've spent two years taking GE classes and messing around...

- I finally changed to Electrical Engineering...

- I started the course thinking I'll get an A in every class, procrastinated, got OWNED in each first midterm.

- Anxiety kicked in. I wanted to catch up and do well on the second wave of exams but could not get ANYTHING done. I'd spend a whole day with my stomach going through hell and sweating as if I was living in an inferno and occasionally crying like a 6 year old. I have an appointment with a psychiatrist now and hopefully some medication will help... Of course spending an entire day on a single chapters' homework in physics while still getting half of it wrong kind of messes with your confidence you know...


Now I have one month to go for this semester. What will happen? I'll either get kicked out of college.. and if I don't my father won't support be beyond next semester (if I continue doing bad). There are a few other reasons (I wouldn't be crying like a 6 year old over a physics midterm :p ) that pretty much will make sure that my LIFE WILL BE DESTROYED FOR THE NEXT TWO DECADES.


Great huh?

In this one last push, I'm re-studying all the chemistry and hoping that if I get a 90+ on the last test and final, I’ll pass with a C minus... as for physics and math? Forget those. Even an A on the finals won't get me to pass. However that's what I plan to do anyway: just study and do my best and get an A on the final. Mabye.. just maybe the professors will think "hey, this is the final and it covered the whole course.. Since he got an A I'm thinking he understands everything we covered and is able to move to the next class.. Maybe I should bump him to a C." *prays*

So what is the point of this post?

1- I need to rant some where. :(

2 - any suggestions? Books? Schaums' outlines are cool but I need something with more detail for chemistry. Those little review booklets don’t help at all and my text's average chapter is 40 pages of filler and unorganized information.


If anybody did read all of this, I'd like to say that I'm sorry I can't give you your time back. Give yourself a cookie though.

 

[TALewis]

You won't get kicked out of college for having a bad semester. You might get put on probation for a while, and might have to retake some courses, but your life will not be destroyed for the next two decades. You are not the first person in history to have a bad semester in college.

As far as your grades go, I have never met a professor who would not make accommodations for a student who does well on a final but poorly on a midterm. If you do well on your finals and you go talk to your professors, I would be surprised if they weren't willing to give you a passing grade in the course.

 

[Vega]

It does sound like you're seriously depressed, of course you also have a very good reason to be. Here's what I would do in your position. First off, talk to each of your professors now. Tell them what's going on with you, and ask them what they would suggest to you. Going to have that talk with them at least shows that you honestly do care. Tell them you know you've done poorly, what can you do to make things better? If you have some classes where your professor flat out tells you it's impossible to even pass no matter what you do, maybe those classes can be dropped and repeated at another time. A lot of times in physics classes, everyone does bad and the grades get curved. Is that possible in these classes?

You won't be thrown out of college, the worst that could happen would be to be put on academic suspension. You have time to make things better. If it's too late for this semester, then you can turn things around the next. Tell your father you're having troubles and that you have a plan to do better next time. Since both the school and your father don't want to see your life destroyed, everyone will try to work with you to help you out as long as they see you're making a good effort. Maybe next semester, take a lighter load so you can handle the stress better.

 

[mathlete]

Cheer up! If they kicked people out for getting bad grades, I guarantee you 90% of students would never graduate. Worst case scenario, you fail all your classes.. but so what? It's not the end of the world. Retake them next semester. Big deal.

Calm down, enjoy life!

 

[kdinser]

Relax, take a deep breath. As others have said, talk to your teachers, any classes that are hopeless, drop. If your getting finance aid, you may have to pay some of that back, it's not a big deal, almost no one gets out of college without being in debt.

Your not going to get kicked out, the university wants your money, academic probation is about as bad as it gets. If your this overwhelmed with your class load, you have 2 options. If your dead set on an EE degree, lighten your load. Most people would agree that doing any kind of engineering degree in 4 years takes more effort then most people are willing or even capable of putting in. Nothing at all wrong with taking 5 years, in fact, it seems to becoming the norm for a lot of degrees. The other option is to switch majors.

What classes are you taking this semester? Looking at your other posts, looks like your taking the first calc based physics course, so I assume you've already taken calculus I. How are you on trig? if it's a weak area of yours, then physics is going to be tough and calc II even harder. How did you do in Calc I? Maybe taking a semester off to get your math skills up to snuff would be beneficial.

Next semester, ease back into it, if you have to, take a semester off. Physics and calculus are hard because you have to train your mind to work in a different way if your truly going to understand this stuff. I've noticed that there are 2 ways people usually approach math, physics, and calculus. They either just memorize the formulas and concepts to try and get through the tests. If you just need calc and physics because it's a requirement of your degree and your never going to use either again, that approach may work out fine for you. If you going into engineering or another math intensive field, your going to have to actually understand what your doing and why your doing it. Look at it this way, the first approach is the same as memorizing that 3+3=6. That's fine as long as no one ever asks you what 5+3 is, or 8+9 is or... It works best for me if I try something and get the wrong answer. At that point, I get a lot more out of the problem if I can understand why my approach didn't work, rather then just figuring out the right answer and how to arrive at it.

Finally, if your school work is actually starting to affect your health, mental or otherwise, you need a break. Straighten out whatever else is going on with your life and then go back. When your in school, especially if your going for a hard science degree of some type, it has to be your only focus. Only you can decide if it's worth it to you. It takes a lot of self discipline, if it was easy, everyone would be an engineer/physicist/scientist.

 

[FancyNut]

edit: no you're not crazy... there was a huge post here. forget about it now. :p

 

[Tide]

Reality check

Did you ever consider that you should be pursuing something else? It looks to me that your heart's not really in it. Seek something you truly want to do.

 

[FancyNut]

Nope, I really want to study EE. My current situation is mostly because of the mistakes I did in the beginning and now they're escalating into bigger problems... It's frustrating as hell when I don't know the answer to a problem for example, but once I see the solution I love the subject (physics and math... not chemistry) even more.

Anyway thanks for your replies again… I really shouldn’t have started this topic though—I should stop worrying about my situation and just study more. One month to go.

 

[ChanDdoi]

As for studying the whole course in about one month, going to study groups with friends really help, at least to me. I would just get lazy and all studying by myself so I usually go to those study groups and just listen. Just by doing that I can get a B on each test, an A would require some more time of studying by myself.