im really nervous/feel stupid about this

[insertnamehere]

so i have an appointment in 7 hours to go to the couseling center and see if i cant get my last fall's classes dropped. a lot of people have told me that i should try this. im real nervous though and dont know what to say. i feel like they're gonna think im an idiot and they're gonna tell me to stop wasting their time and its my own damn fault my grades suck and to get out. i know they cant actually say that to me, but they can think it. and they can tell me know. and then i just told a complete stranger horribly embarrassing things for nothing.

i are scared :(

i dont know what to say to them either. um hi i failed all my classes and heres my lame excuse as to why please take them off my record take pity on me thanks.

am i a horrible person for trying to blame my poor preformance on outside circumstances, and for trying to exploit my school's policies on such matters to get my gpa up? i really dont even want to do this but i made the appointment after much convincing by some friends and it seems like it would be stupid to not go and miss my chance at doing this.

[cosmo105]

http://www.livejournal.com

[insertnamehere]

i was actually looking for some kind of advice or opinion or something, not just talking to myself. thanks.

[TimDoolan]

Do it. Withdraw. It's really hard to pull your GPA up after it's been in the toilet. Withdrawing from a class is nothing to be ashamed about.

[insertnamehere]

I just feel like I'm trying to make excuses for things that are my own fault, and I feel bad about not taking responsibility for my own retardedness.

Basic summary of events: exbf dumped me, i hated my life, i got better, i started hanging out with this guy as a friend, exbf found out, followed me go guy friends dorm, caused a ruckus banging on the door and screaming at me and stuff, then he left, then i went to the bathroom later and he had his face in the window, cops were called, campus restraining order type thing was filed, exbf kinda stalked me for awhile, left me presents at my place of employment, begged me to get back together with him, etc. two of my three friends started dating each other so then they were too busy for me. i realized that the only reason im even at this school was because of exbf and my existance here seemed pretty pointless. i realized the classes that i had been taking were mostly to make him happy. i felt like a huge fuckup/retard for everything and pretty much gave up.

does that make for a good stoy as to why last fall should be dropped? should i just not go? man i hate this.

[TimDoolan]

I'm sorry you had to go through all of those things, If you have never dropped a class before or fucked up in school you might have no problems gettting those classes dropped.
Btw what were your grades last fall, and how many hours were you taking?

[insertnamehere]

my grades have never been particularly good, but this is the first semester ive felt really free of these problems. my first semster i was really depressed, id stay in bed for 12+ hours at the time sometimes, and never went to class and failed everything but one class. i think im gonna tell them that it had been an ongoing problem, but that im only trying to get that one semester dropped because its kind of unreasonable to try to get 3 dropped. the semster in question i want to say i was taking 13 hours, i got something like one b-, a no credit for a class i took pass/fail, a d and a couple f's.

this past spring my grades werent great but they were significantly better. hey i passed everything. and this summer i mad an A in the class i took. i was taking another class that i was making an A in the first half of summer but i had to drop it and go home on account of being really amazingly sick to the point of being bed ridden and occasionally requiring IV fluids, and im doing OK in everything right now, passing at least, probably a jumble of Bs with a C and an A in there. so i'm hoping that shows that ive improved since this shit has been over with

[TimDoolan]

my grades have never been particularly good, but this is the first semester ive felt really free of these problems. my first semster i was really depressed, id stay in bed for 12+ hours at the time sometimes, and never went to class and failed everything but one class. i think im gonna tell them that it had been an ongoing problem, but that im only trying to get that one semester dropped because its kind of unreasonable to try to get 3 dropped. the semster in question i want to say i was taking 13 hours, i got something like one b-, a no credit for a class i took pass/fail, a d and a couple f's.

this past spring my grades werent great but they were significantly better. hey i passed everything. and this summer i mad an A in the class i took. i was taking another class that i was making an A in the first half of summer but i had to drop it and go home on account of being really amazingly sick to the point of being bed ridden and occasionally requiring IV fluids, and im doing OK in everything right now, passing at least, probably a jumble of Bs with a C and an A in there. so i'm hoping that shows that ive improved since this shit has been over with

Man, something tells me you've got problems that make mine seem like a birthday party!

I think you're making too much about this. I think tommorow you're going to do alot of walking around because I think you have to go to the heads of all these departments and beg for mercy. I had to drop two classes before I changed my major, and that went off without a hitch, so I think you'll be ok.
Maybe you should change your major, that is if you have a major.

[insertnamehere]

well my school has this policy, i dont know if all schools do this or not, but if you have bad shit happen to you, you can go to the counseling center and talk to a counselor about it, and if they decide that the bad shit is legitimately bad enough to cause you to fuck up in school, they can get the semester in question removed from your transcript.

so basically, i have to go talk to a shrink and admit to him what a huge fuckup i am and tell him the whole long story about everything that happened and then he decided if it goes on to the heads of the departments and whatnot.

ive actually known a few people to do this, so i feel like maybe its not all that difficult? i dunno, i guess it depends on who you get to talk to. also, it kind of feels like cheating. like you could fail everything cause you partied too much and then you just have to go tell them how depressed you were and you get a clean slate. i dont know, it seems to simple.

mostly im nervous about talking to the guy. i went to the counseling center once before just to ask for some advice about changing my major and the lady was really bitchy and made me cry.

[TimDoolan]

well my school has this policy, i dont know if all schools do this or not, but if you have bad shit happen to you, you can go to the counseling center and talk to a counselor about it, and if they decide that the bad shit is legitimately bad enough to cause you to fuck up in school, they can get the semester in question removed from your transcript.

so basically, i have to go talk to a shrink and admit to him what a huge fuckup i am and tell him the whole long story about everything that happened and then he decided if it goes on to the heads of the departments and whatnot.


Fuck that. I would go to the department heads and tell them about your problems. Ask for advice from them, even if you don't need it. At least you're being proactive about it. At least you're doing something instead of waiting for these counselors to decide wether you're a fuck up.

Man I hate school. I'm so glad I'm finished with the whole mess.

[insertnamehere]

if i went to the department heads im sure they wold tell me to go to the counseling center. that's just the standard procedure for this kind of thing. like if you want to get something dropped, this is the route you HAVE to take.

[ScarySquirrel]

Sounds legit to me, son. I went through the whole depression thing and not going to class a little while after my dad kicked the bucket... so I was basically failing everything. Went to my counseling center, started feeling better about circumstances of life, got my shit straightened out and dropped from my transcript and picked up the pieces the next semester. Best move I did.

[little j]

so how did the appointment go?

[insertnamehere]

yesterday was a horrible day. everything important that i had to do, i fucked up in pretty much the worse way i could. i didn't make it to my appointment, and its probably for the best that i didnt have to talk to the counselor that would be decideing me case.

i can reschedule sometime. i will get charged for not showing up yesterday... eh. nothing i can do about it now.

[little j]

if you're at risk of failing an entire semester please heed the advise of somone who did that... me... i failed an entire semester and my GPA dropped down to a 1.4... that was 6 years ago.
it has taken me 6 years to bring my GPA up to above a 2.5... (i was going only part time for a while though) so probably about 3 years full time. and that is getting As and Bs in all my classes....

its not worth it... trust me.

[Documad]

If there is something that you can say to the counsellor that is honest, and if you truly believe that you have made positive changes, then I believe you should take advantage of the policy. I think that when you talk to the counsellor, you should accept blame for what happened in that semester. You need to explain the drama and the impact it had on you, but don't just blame it all on the exboyfriend. It wouldn't be true to blame it all on him and people don't like it when you blame things on other people. If you look back, there were surely things that you could have done during that semester that you didn't do. Perhaps you weren't mature enough to know that at the time, but you have undoubtedly grown up and learned something by now. If you had new boyfriend drama next semester, certainly you would handle things better or seek help immediately, right? And the counsellor is going to know that you didn't have a history of being a straight A student who had one bad semester. You've never been a star student but you still had a really bad semester and you've learned from it and you're showing a positive trend now, so you should point that out.

I'd tell the counsellor that you were immature when you started college, and that you've learned a lot about your own personality, and that the thing with the exboyfriend was when you hit rock bottom but that you assessed things and you have been making positive changes ever since. I'd tell the counsellor that the bad semester is dragging you down and that it would be easier to focus on the future and to work harder in school and hopefully get better grades if you weren't constantly worried about what that bad semester was doing to your prospects. It would be like getting a fresh start and you think you could make the most of that if they give you that opportunity.

I don't know you at all, but even I can see from reading your posts off and on that you've matured and that your self esteem has grown. It wouldn't hurt for you to talk this stuff over with a counsellor so that you keep on this healthier path. Other people may disagree with me, but I think that counsellors love people who had problems, accepted their role in the problems, and made positive changes. Sell that to the counsellor.


I have a long complicated story that no one wants to read, but I was a lazy student with a very active social life who got good grades till I started taking classes where I had to do the homework (Spanish, advanced math, etc). Then I was in big trouble. I had a serious car accident and used it as an excuse to blow off all the finals for those classes. I was put on academic probation. I had already been accepted to my major program and they let me stay. They also told me that my GPA was starting over and that all that mattered to my major program was what I did in classes from then on. I became a whole new student, started attending classes, left the walkman at home, sat in the front row so I wouldn't be distracted, joined a study group with other students (who I never learned to like half as much as my former slacker friends), and started interacting with teachers when I had a question or wanted to contest an answer to a test. It was the idea that I could put the bad quarter behind me that made me change, but I also admitted to myself that I had bad habits for a long time.

Almost everyone I met in law school had a bad semester in college where they hit rock bottom and had to turn it around. You're not alone. It's too bad that American kids just kind of float into college because they think it's where they're supposed to go after high school. We don't appreciate college like we should because most of us don't know what we're doing there.

[insertnamehere]

First of all, thanks to everyone that had a story to share about their own shortcomings in college. Sometimes I start feeling like everyone does really well in everything and that I'm the only fuckup, so to see that other people have done poorly and gotten though it makes me feel better. I was an amazing student in highschool, well, my graders were amazing, and I never did shit to get them. I thought I was so incredibly smart. Then I came to college, I fucked around, I STILL haven't gotten the whole studying thing down pat but I'm doing better. College just makes me feel stupid. Especially at an engieering college where most people are taking class that I could never deal with. There's a girl in my suite that's a freshman, this is her first semester, but she like, took all the calc she could in highschool, and her last year of highschool she came here to take calc, and now she's taking some math I've never even heard of before, and it's really disheartening to be like, yeah... I failed calc 1... a couple times.

Little J, it's not this semster that I'm trying to get dropped. This semester I'm doing ok. Not as good as I would like to be doing, but I'm passing everything, I'd say a lot of Bs and some Cs. This is for last fall, so it's already all on my record. I just have to get it removed.

Despite the fact that I'm still not making stellar grades, I think I've shown improvement, my first semester here i had something like a 0.67 gpa. At the end of the srping semester it was still well under a 2. I was unsuspended from school. I went to summer school and managed to get it up to a 1.8, which at that time (with the number of hours I had) was sufficient to be let back in. By the end of the next spring i had it at like a 1.97 or something, at a time when I needed a 2.0, so I was suspended again. I did summer school again. Right now I stand at a 2.05, and that should go up after this semester. If I get last fall taken off, not taking this semester's grades into account, I'd go from the 2.05 to a 2.5, so yeah, it would make a big difference.

Documad, I know that it's not other people's faults. That's why I feel bad using this loophole to cheat my way out of having those grades on my transcript. That's what it feels like I'm doing, anyway. You've helped convince me though that that's not the case, and I may make an appointment to go talk to someone, and just look at it as a chance to talk to them about it rather than the sole purpose of my visit being to get my grades dropped.