Need some help with what I'm supposed to do for my next semester of college.

[Mystic Muse]

Well, I got my grades a few days ago, and I've got really bad news.

I apparently didn't pass any of my classes.

Please, don't lay into me because of what happened, I already feel bad enough it can't be put into words, you don't need to rub it in any further. I just need to know what to do from here.

[Talanic]

I'm afraid that I don't know enough to advise you well. Why did you not pass any of your classes? What happened?

My brother did the same once, and joined the Army in January of 2001. He's now a Captain, a Medivac pilot in the Air National Guard. Did quite well. But I have no idea if that'd be right for you. He failed out of college because he had issues with self-control, drinking and playing video games too much. The Army brought him discipline.

[warty goblin]

Probably talking to your adviser would be better than a bunch of people on a forum who know neither your college's policies or your particular situation.

That said, every college I've had any experience with really do not want to fail people out, and will put in substantial work to make sure you don't. You definitely need to meet them halfway on this, but it probably doesn't have to be the end of your college career if you don't want it to be. If you've been doing reasonably well before this semester, you'll probably get put on Academic Probation or something similar for a semester or two. Essentially you'll have to prove that your poor performance was a one-time deal, and you really can make this work. Again, your adviser can, and probably will, tell you more about this than I can.

Operating on the assumption that you are put on academic probation, and decide to stick it out, I can offer some general advise for making college work. These are basically the rules I tried to operate by in college, and try even harder to hold to in graduate school.

First I suggest trying very hard to make learning your number one priority. Most colleges anymore do a crappy job of encouraging this attitude in my experience, so you have to get this into your head yourself. And I don't mean just telling yourself that, but making your classwork the first priority every single day, every single week. If you want a day off, make sure you can afford to take it - leisure fills the gaps in work, not the other way 'round.

Be aware that putting learning first requires a hell of a lot of work. Not just the work of study, but the work of forming new habits that encourage study. If something isn't either part of your education, or necessary for the maintenance of bodily and mental health, drop it. This means you will have to give up things you like.

Fortunately you aren't alone in this endeavor. Colleges have tutors, and working with classmates goes a long way for solving problems. There's probably study clubs out there, either formal or informal. If that's a thing that legitimately helps you learn, try to join one. Moreover every homework and test and essay and reading assignment isn't just busywork, but a chance to learn. Make sure you understand what the ideas on an assignment are, and if you don't, get help until you do. When you get an assignment back and you didn't get something right, make sure you understand why. Remember that ultimately the only person who can get information into your head is you.

Finally accept that you will occasionally fail to live up to these expectations - heaven knows I did. Learn from those failures as well, and try to arrange your life to minimize both the frequency and effects of these. Above all else, don't let one failure justify more: even if you don't get any work done Saturday morning, you can still work in the afternoon and evening.

And good luck.

[Savannah]

Do you know who your academic adviser is? If you don't know about any specific adviser in the department you're majoring in, you most likely have a general undergraduate academic adviser, who can probably be found by searching your college's website for "academic advising". You need to talk to whoever your adviser is, as they can tell you what your specific school's rules are, whether you should retake the classes, and what you need to do for next term. Don't feel bad about talking to them about not passing -- that's what they deal with all the time.

Also, if you have or suspect you might have any sort of learning disability, make sure that you get tested/properly documented through your school's office of disabilities, as that paperwork will let you get lots of nifty things (extra time in a quiet environment for tests, free notes from another student, and so on, with the details depending on your issue). Failing your classes does NOT mean you have a disability, but if you do, getting the proper accommodations will help a lot.

(General) what you should do next semester (after consulting with your adviser and determining what you need to do on that end):
1) Do all your homework and turn them in on time. There are students in the classes I TA for who never do a single piece of homework...and they always fail the class. And while I'm on the subject, start your homework early so that if you have problems, you have time to get help.

2) Keep your syllabus and use the heck out of it. Clearly mark when everything is due, all your tests, and so on so that you are never caught off guard. Before handing in any homework or taking a quiz, read the section in the syllabus on that type of assignment to see if the professor has any useful notes.

3) Monitor your grades. Every time you get something back, note what grade you got out of the possible points, and regularly calculate your percentage out of the points you could have earned so far. If you don't like the number DO SOMETHING RIGHT AWAY. Talk to the professor, get a tutor, read the assigned chapter twice, whatever, but do it before you get so many low scores that you can't recover.

4) Attend the class, sitting near the front, with your phone turned off, and take notes (and smile at the professor). First, your professor is more likely to be willing to help you if they recognize you as someone who's been working hard. Second, you're less likely to need help. Win-win.

5) Talk to your professor. Their job is to teach, so make use of that! If you have questions, email them or, even better, go to their office hours and ask in person (seriously, office hours are incredibly boring if no students stop by).

6) Find out how to access your school's tutors and how much tutoring you can get per class. If you're having trouble, go to a tutor! Sometimes all it takes for something to make sense is to hear it explained a different way, and tutors are great for that.

7) Most importantly, do not be so embarrassed about a bad grade that it prevents you from following items 5 & 6. You're not the first student to fail, nor will you be the last. As a TA, if I see someone fail and come for help, I think they're smart to realize that something's not working and do what they can to salvage the situation (and until you've worked as a TA, you have no clue how many people fail each course....trust me when I say you're not alone!).

The above is general advice, as I don't know the exact reasons you failed your classes. If you know and would like to share, I can try to provide some more specific advice (feel free to PM if you'd prefer). If not, that's cool, too.

Hope this helps :smallsmile:

[Animastryfe]

I agree with the other posters.

It may be psychologically difficult to face an assignment that received a bad grade, but it is very important to have active feedback. It is a crucial part of deliberate practice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice_(learning_method)#Deliberate_practice).

I highly suggest reading the relevant sections of the textbook before class, and reviewing your notes from the previous lesson the night before or a few hours before your next class.

[thubby]

talk to your adviser. they exist to answer these questions.[/obligatory]

most important, you aren't stupid and this doesn't need to end your college career.

things you need to ask yourself:

how much time did you put into classes?
12 credits is called "full time" for a reason. you should expect to spend 40 hours a week minimum on class. most people will spend substantially more.

did you have the necessary background?
a common problem for freshmen, particularly in math, is that their previous education didnt leave off where the college is picking up from. that leaves you to fill in the gap.
many colleges offer remedial courses, but that may be excessive.
one potential solution is to simply take fewer courses. give yourself more time and less pressure to sort out the baseline material.

what resources were you taking advantage of?
most colleges have tutoring centers. there are a number of websites dedicated to college education. even youtube has saved my ass more than once.

you dont have the answer these questions here, just give them some thought.
remember, you can do this.

[noparlpf]

Oh geez. I'm really sorry to hear that.
It's kind of hard to give advice without some more specifics about what happened, but generally...
...other people have said lots of things already. I'll just comment on that a bit instead of starting from scratch.


2) Keep your syllabus and use the heck out of it. Clearly mark when everything is due, all your tests, and so on so that you are never caught off guard. Before handing in any homework or taking a quiz, read the section in the syllabus on that type of assignment to see if the professor has any useful notes.

And don't assume that just because there was a hurricane and the school cancelled a full week that this week's quiz will be put off and you'll only have to make up last week's. Man am I lucky that one happened to be on something I vaguely knew about, so I managed to pull a 5/10 instead of a zero.


4) Attend the class, sitting near the front, with your phone turned off, and take notes (and smile at the professor). First, your professor is more likely to be willing to help you if they recognize you as someone who's been working hard. Second, you're less likely to need help. Win-win.

What I hate is that if you sit in the very front you have to crane your neck to see the projector screen, but if you sit in the fourth row back, there can potentially be several people in front of you playing games or whatever and generally being distracting. Seriously, guys, if there's no attendance policy in this class, why are you even here if you're not paying attention and all you're doing is distracting other people? (Including that one guy who would sleep through every single class from the start to midway through before waking up and leaving, and that other guy who came in just to wear earbuds and play Tetris.) If I were the professor, I'd mark off one point on the next exam every time I saw a student sleeping or using any electronic device aside from allowed calculators or note-taking laptops specifically approved by either me or disability support services. (Obviously announcing that policy at the beginning of the semester and in the syllabus.) Honestly, it's just rude to everybody there to come in, ignore the professor or TA, and do something distracting to the other students.
And yeah, it can also help to chat with the prof. a bit from time to time. In most of my Bio classes so far--actually all of them--I've stayed back a couple minutes nearly every day to chat with the professor briefly, usually about something tangentially related to the class which I'd read about recently or which I was curious about more detail on but didn't want to derail class too much with questions. It really helps when the prof. knows your face if you ever have a question or need help with something really important, and you're more comfortable going to them for help than if you only ever see the back of their head during lecture. It can also help if you're one of the students who asks intelligent questions or answers questions often, or if you contribute a lot to a discussion class (although those tend to be kind of rare at big universities). I was one of the big talkers in a freshman English (well sort of, hipster school is hipster) class at a small school, and the prof. was fairly generous anyway, so when I hadn't done three of the five essays he actually gave me an incomplete instead of an F. That really saved my ass, and my scholarship. That semester was pretty bad in general, depression is poopy.
And to lead off tangentially from that bit--if you do have issues like depression or similar, or even if you're just stressed out and need somebody to talk to about it, try seeing a counselor regularly. And if they're not working out after four or six meetings, switch counselors. I know several people who've been too embarrassed to change counselors even though theirs were completely not helping them. Including one friend whose frankly awful therapist came up with different wild "diagnoses" every week, including multiple personalities, schizophrenia, and homosexuality. :smallsigh: (I still joke about that guy. It was just so ridiculous.) Anyway, tangent.


5) Talk to your professor. Their job is to teach, so make use of that! If you have questions, email them or, even better, go to their office hours and ask in person (seriously, office hours are incredibly boring if no students stop by).

Often the prof. won't have enough time in class (especially if the school crams it into a one-hour period three times a week, which sucks) to go over absolutely everything in detail, but if you go talk to them during office hours, many of them will sit down and walk you through whatever problem. My P-Chem prof. this past semester explained basic multivariate calculus better in half an hour than my last Calculus prof. did in a semester.


6) Find out how to access your school's tutors and how much tutoring you can get per class. If you're having trouble, go to a tutor! Sometimes all it takes for something to make sense is to hear it explained a different way, and tutors CAN BE great for that.

Fixed that for you. I've had absolutely awful tutors before, and heard of worse. The assigned class tutor for my Physics I class freshman year, for example, was so bad he actually got chewed out by the prof. for confusing the students more than before they went to the review session. Not that I ever dealt with the guy myself, especially after that.


7) Most importantly, do not be so embarrassed about a bad grade that it prevents you from following items 5 & 6. You're not the first student to fail, nor will you be the last. As a TA, if I see someone fail and come for help, I think they're smart to realize that something's not working and do what they can to salvage the situation (and until you've worked as a TA, you have no clue how many people fail each course....trust me when I say you're not alone!).

My solution to bad grades or something I'm not getting has generally been to pretend nothing's wrong, stop doing the work, and then finally decide to drop the class the day after the drop period ends so I end up having to withdraw and have it show up on my transcript. I did that twice. Trust me, that's an absolutely awful idea. If you have a problem, just go ask the professor, TA, tutor, or even another student; just do something about it. Loads of people get bad marks at some point or other, and the prof.'s job is to not judge you for it and to help you do better the next time.


how much time did you put into classes?
12 credits is called "full time" for a reason. you should expect to spend 40 hours a week minimum on class. most people will spend substantially more.

Clearly I've been doing something horribly wrong this whole time. Oops. Does forty hours of shows a week count?

[Savannah]

Fixed that for you. I've had absolutely awful tutors before, and heard of worse. The assigned class tutor for my Physics I class freshman year, for example, was so bad he actually got chewed out by the prof. for confusing the students more than before they went to the review session. Not that I ever dealt with the guy myself, especially after that.

Well, yes, there are people who fail at their job everywhere. For example, the professor who I had (and reported) who would belittle students who asked for clarification. However I stand by my point that tutors are great for explaining things in different ways, as their sole job is to meet with you and help you understand, while a professor's job is to teach the entire class. If a given tutor or professor fails at their job, or simply doesn't mesh with your learning style, find a new one.

[Morph Bark]

What year are you in?

Also, if you're willing to share this: what are you studying? Why are you studying it?

[Animastryfe]

I don't like to talk about credits, as different universities have different credit systems. How many classes constitutes twelve credits? At my current university, a standard class is worth three credits, while a language class is worth five credits. We have to take on average at least fifteen credits a semester.

[noparlpf]

I don't like to talk about credits, as different universities have different credit systems. How many classes constitutes twelve credits? At my current university, a standard class is worth three credits, while a language class is worth five credits. We have to take on average at least fifteen credits a semester.

Most universities should be relatively similar, though. In general a standard class is three credits. Bigger science courses tend to be four credits; a class with lab could be four credits or could have a separate lab course, depending on the school. Language classes range from three to four credits at the schools I've attended, depending on whether or not there was an additional "lab" section to work on stuff. Twelve credits is usually considered the bare minimum for "full time" status, but most people generally expect to take fifteen on average because most four-year degrees seem to take about 120 credits, give or take a bit.

[Animastryfe]

Most universities should be relatively similar, though. In general a standard class is three credits. Bigger science courses tend to be four credits; a class with lab could be four credits or could have a separate lab course, depending on the school. Language classes range from three to four credits at the schools I've attended, depending on whether or not there was an additional "lab" section to work on stuff. Twelve credits is usually considered the bare minimum for "full time" status, but most people generally expect to take fifteen on average because most four-year degrees seem to take about 120 credits, give or take a bit.

Huh, then it seems that the liberal arts college that I used to attend is the odd one out. At that place, most classes are worth one credit, and 32 credits is the minimum amount necessary for graduation.

[noparlpf]

Huh, then it seems that the liberal arts college that I used to attend is the odd one out. At that place, most classes are worth one credit, and 32 credits is the minimum amount necessary for graduation.

Admittedly I only know about a handful of schools personally, but from what I understand that seems to be fairly standard at least around here.

[Anarion]

I see the OP isn't back yet and there's already a ton of great advice here. So, rather than add more specific tips, let me add a piece of advice on general mindset. Whatever may have happened, Mystic Muse, it's done. It's past, it's gone, it's over. It's not who you are and it's not who you have to be. Your job now is to sit down and figure out what steps you need to take going forward (lots of great advice in this thread for that), and then talk to people that can help you and make sure you're doing them.

[snoopy13a]

You should talk to someone in your college's academic office. We really have no idea of the details of your situation or what options you have.

Anyway, worst-case scenario is that you flunk out of college. This is not the end of the world. If this does happen, move back in with your parents, get a job, hang out with your high school friends back home and take a few months to think over what you want to do next.

[warty goblin]

I see the OP isn't back yet and there's already a ton of great advice here. So, rather than add more specific tips, let me add a piece of advice on general mindset. Whatever may have happened, Mystic Muse, it's done. It's past, it's gone, it's over. It's not who you are and it's not who you have to be. Your job now is to sit down and figure out what steps you need to take going forward (lots of great advice in this thread for that), and then talk to people that can help you and make sure you're doing them.

This is indeed excellent advice. I second it.

[AttilaTheGeek]

Another, more general piece of advice: Every class you have that offers section, go to it. All the time. Every single week, no exceptions, just as if it was an extra class. My average jumped like 10 points when I started going to sections halfway through last semester.

[thubby]

Another, more general piece of advice: Every class you have that offers section, go to it. All the time. Every single week, no exceptions, just as if it was an extra class. My average jumped like 10 points when I started going to sections halfway through last semester.

im assuming sections are like recitation/study periods?

[Ecalsneerg]

I failed an entire year of university.

And you know what? You can resit it. I understand I'm in Scotland and not the States, where there's less financial burden, but honestly, failing isn't a reason to give up. This time, you just work harder because you're not academically aware of what happens if you fail, now you've experienced if first-hand.

Unless, of course, this isn't something you want to do... then you know what, dropping out doesn't make you a bad person. Anyone who claims it does, and puts you down for it... well, who's the bad person in that equation?

[AttilaTheGeek]

im assuming sections are like recitation/study periods?

Each class has a section, which is a review session, lead by the teaching assistant each week. At the very least, it's a third way to hear the topics explained (in addition to the professor and the textbook). Often, it's that extra couple hours of studying you had been meaning to get around to, but so much better because there's a TA in the front of the room. And at best, it's the difference between understanding the material and being completely lost.

[warty goblin]

Another, more general piece of advice: Every class you have that offers section, go to it. All the time. Every single week, no exceptions, just as if it was an extra class. My average jumped like 10 points when I started going to sections halfway through last semester.

As somebody who runs those things now, I have to say it really makes your teachers a lot more positively inclined towards you as well. It's a lot easier to give somebody the benefit of the doubt if you know they've figured it out once before, and are genuinely trying.

[noparlpf]

Each class has a section, which is a review session, lead by the teaching assistant each week. At the very least, it's a third way to hear the topics explained (in addition to the professor and the textbook). Often, it's that extra couple hours of studying you had been meaning to get around to, but so much better because there's a TA in the front of the room. And at best, it's the difference between understanding the material and being completely lost.

Yeah, my current university calls those "recitations", although some people who can't pronounce such long, complicated words call them "resuscitations" (which oddly is longer). Some of them are run by the prof(s), some by the TA(s), some by both. It's usually a mix of going over things that we only covered briefly in the main class, and answering questions about homeworks and exams and such. Depending on the teacher, though. I had one TA (in history) who just lectured the entire recitation period, so I switched to another section with more discussion. However, not all classes have recitation periods, and the period is usually only an hour or an hour and a half, which for a big class means there's not much time for one-on-one work with a prof or TA unless you go to office hours. (And my old school didn't have them at all. Some schools don't have enough money or TAs or whatever to manage it.)
And of course those aren't optional. I don't know why anybody would think they are. It shows up on your schedule (at least at my school), so you should go to it.

[Bonecrusher Doc]

What are you studying? Why are you studying it?

Personally I think all the advice on good study habits isn't going to help if you you're not really motivated.

Maybe research some careers that don't require college. If you like what you see, great! If you don't like what you see, it might help you refocus on what you want to be doing with your life. Or you can always do one of those "finding yourself" experiences like doing a year with the Peace Corps or something.

The reason I mention this is because a close family member of mine failed out of college three times. He's very intelligent and I'm sure he thought about all sorts of things like study habits, etc., but the drive just wasn't there.

One more piece of advice is to take a look at the kind of people you hang out with when you are at school and consider if you think they are headed down a path you want to share. If not, you may want to reconsider your social circle.