You’ve been away from home for about a month now. You’re settling in the dorms and having the time of your life with all the new friends that you made. You’re joining school clubs, you’re playing intramural sports, and you’re also getting close to the cute girl/boy that lives a few doors down from you. Your social life is thriving, you’re having fun non-stop, and you’re pretty much in paradise. After another fun, wild weekend, you return to class on Monday and the professor returns the exam you took the week prior. He places the exam facing downward to probably hide the fat ass “F” he wrote on the top of the paper. You turn it over and there is actually a “F-” at the top. You go into panic mode and quickly realize that you might be screwed. You rush back to your room after class, open up your laptop, and log-in to your school portal to take a look at the progress of your other classes. You open it up and you see that you’re failing all of your classes with such low percentages, that they’re pretty much unsalvageable. You’re probably thinking, “WTF do I do now??”
If you’re in a situation similar to this (I’m sorry, because you’re probably stressed the hell out), you’re in luck! In this post, we are going to go over what you need to do to get your ass back on track, so you get out of academic probation and successfully graduate college!
Reflect on the Semester and Try to Figure Out What Went Wrong
After your first semester, you’ll probably be entering Winter Break. These breaks typically last a couple of weeks to a month. During this time, you should try your best to decompress and relax, and come to terms and accept the fact that you had a rough first semester. Take some time to be sad and even cry if you have to. After you’re done with that, take a look back and reflect on the past semester. Figure out what needs to be fixed in order to make the second semester a better one.
Take out a piece of paper and come up with some hard hitting questions for yourself to answer. Write questions that might get to the root of why the list of F’s were placed on your report card.
For example, these questions might look like this.
-What do I need to change?
– Do I need to change my major?
-Do I need to take less classes?
-Do I need to drop some clubs?
-Am I partying too much?
After you answer these questions, you should have an idea as to what needs to be fixed, or at least have an answer to what went wrong.
Manage Your Time
Time management is extremely important and it is something that you will need to focus on well beyond your college years. The goal of time management is to get the most out of your day. It’s to make sure you’re not spending your days just socializing and hanging out with your friends, but also setting aside time for other important things, such as studying and doing homework. If you find balance in your life, you’ll notice that life will begin to fall into place as it should be.
One of the best ways to manage your time is to schedule your days. You can do this on a planner notebook, or you can use the Reminder app on your iPhone or a similar app on other smartphones. When you first start scheduling your days, you might notice that it’s a bit difficult to stay 100% on track, but don’t let that discourage you. Just remember to stay mindful of what you need to accomplish for the day, and eventually it’ll get easier to stick with your schedule.
Meet With Your Professor During Office Hours
One of the best ways for you to stay on top of your classes is to regularly meet with your professor during their office hours. Most professors will have office hours, which is meant for students to come in and ask questions about the course that you’re taking with the professor or to discuss what might be on your mind, usually regarding the course. I feel like this is something that most students don’t really utilize until later in the semester when they find out that they’re failing the course. The office hours are not set up so you can go and beg and cry to your professor to not fail you. The office hours are there to prevent you from begging and crying to your professor to not fail you.
A lot of college students have the mindset of wanting to beeline back to their home after class is over. Put an end to that habit. Put it in your schedule that you NEED to meet with your teacher outside of class hours, even if it’s once every other week. Chances are, your gray haired, old ass professor probably isn’t even getting paid extra to have these office hours open. They just want to see you succeed and pass their course. So take advantage of the office hours and you will see your F’s turn into A’s..hopefully.
Retake The Courses That You Failed
If you failed all of your first semester classes, chances are you will probably have to retake them at some point. Retaking these courses will be very beneficial to your GPA, because the F’s will most likely be replaced by the grade that you receive after you retake the courses. So it is highly suggested you retake the course and maybe even mandatory if you want to graduate. If you feel that a certain course was too difficult the first time around, maybe don’t retake it immediately and maybe take some easier classes next semester. Sharpen up your study habits before you take a second go at the difficult course that you failed. Maybe the course wasn’t too difficult but it was just the professor that was difficult. In that case, take a look at RateMyProfessor.com.
Use RateMyProfessor.Com
This site is one of the most amazing websites to ever be created. RateMyProfessor is a site that gives you student reviews on almost every college professor. It allows students to give an overall rating of a professor and the reviews are on display for others to see. The ratings are done on a 1-5 scale, with 5 being the best. You rate the overall quality of a professor and the level of difficulty as well. You can also write out your thoughts of the professor and the course that you took.
Taking a look at this site before you sign up for next semester’s courses, allows you to have an idea of what you’re in for. If you’re in a situation where you need to get straight A’s in order to boost up your GPA, I would pay extra attention on the “Difficulty” rating for each professor the most!
Conclusion
These are just a few key things that you can do if you failed your first semester. I know this isn’t an ideal situation to be in, but just know that there are many others that are in the same situation. There are also many people that were in the same situation and got out of it and successfully graduated. It’s only your first semester and you can definitely overcome this. Good luck!