All through high school I was a “straight A” student and I graduated with a 3.83 GPA. I always worked hard and I never had to worry about my parents being disappointed with me. However, last week I failed my first (hopefully last) college exam.
I went into the exam completely confident that I was going to do well. A few days later, I saw my life flash before my eyes when I saw that I got a 32% on my chemistry exam. My midterm grade at that time was a C so I knew this was going to drag me down big time. Since I am a pre-PT student, it would be a disaster if I failed this class. I ended up withdrawing from the class. Now that you have a little background about my academic crisis, I’ll share some steps I took to make myself realize that everything was going to be okay:
1) Email your professor.
When I saw my score, I knew that it had to be some kind of a mistake. Even though my professor did enter the right score, you want to make sure you don’t drop a class when it was a score that was entered wrong by mistake.
2) Call your parents.
This is by far the most important step! After I found out that I indeed did fail the exam, I worked up the guts and called my mom. I was absolutely terrified that she was going to tell me that she was disappointed in me or that I’m messing up my life. I was completely wrong. My parents told me that they’ll support me in whatever I decided to do (drop the class or not) and that they just want me to be happy. During this phone call I started crying, not because I was still upset about the exam, but because they were so supportive (if you’re an ugly crier like me, hardly anyone walks by the Joan of Arc Chapel around 8:00pm).
3) Talk with your academic advisor.
This is a pretty obvious thing to do if you’re considering withdrawing from the class like I did.
4) Get Starbucks.
No, you shouldn’t reward yourself for failing at something. But you shouldn’t torture yourself. Every now and then you gotta treat yo self to feel a little bit better.
5) Convince yourself that everything will be okay.
There’s not really anything you can physically do for this. Just tell yourself every day that you’ll try harder and that things will get better.