Damage Control

Graduate School
1

Hey everyone. So I feel like I’m screwed.

I should’ve listened to those here. I didn’t. Now I need advice on what to do at this point.

I think I’ve lost all motivation to be in grad school this semester.

I think it’s because I got what I wanted so badly. What kept me going in undergrad was the fact that I was on-track to graduate with a legitimate 4.0 GPA with no drops and no repeats. But since I accomplished that, I honestly have no motivation to continue into grad school.

I applied to grad school for all the wrong reasons. I mainly committed to a student organization’s president position and didn’t want to back out of that commitment. So I decided to apply to grad school here at the same institution and fill the position.

Really I’m not all that satisfied with being in grad school this semester. I feel like I should’ve taken a year off and traveled–seen the world; done everything I’ve wanted to do but complained that I “didn’t have time”. Right now, I’m not doing so hot in one of my classes and that’s likely to turn into two by the end of this coming week. The first class I’m not failing per se, but I got a 44 on the first exam, which was the lowest score that anyone made by a huge margin. The main reason I believe I failed was that I ran out of time. Normally I use extended time granted to students with disabilities, but I told myself I needed to stop hiding behind disability accommodations. So I didn’t use them for the exam and failed horribly. I don’t think I will do much better on future exams. The lack of motivation will likely be why I begin failing another class later this week.

It’s currently October. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Likely I need to begin instilling some form of damage control because everything I’ve read here and elsewhere is that your graduate transcript will follow you forever. I definitely have to finish grad school at some point in my life, so minimizing the impact of this semester is probably a good idea. I’m pretty sure I’ll be highly scrutinized for having a 4.0 and then taking such an abrupt downturn. Really, I want to transfer somewhere else, but I don’t think that’s going to be possible anymore due to this semester.

2

To do list:

Talk with your advisor about taking a leave of absence. Maybe you could get out of there and on with your life by the end of the week. Find out about dropping one or more of your classes. Find out about taking an Incomplete in one (or more) of your classes and then finishing up when you are ready to focus on them next semester or next year.

Have a nice long visit with the counseling center about your failure to use good sense about extended time on exams, and with the disabilities office about the accommodations that you will need to ask for once you enter the workforce.

Get honest with that student organization. They need to find a replacement for the presidency, and they need to change their policies so that students who are on the point of graduating aren’t allowed to run for that office.

When you apply to grad school in the future, it won’t be a “transfer”. It will be a new application. They will ask for both your undergraduate and graduate transcripts, and they may or may not accept any of the graduate-level coursework as applying toward a new grad program. If anyone asks what happened to your GPA, your answer will be along this line: “I was burned out. I realized that I needed time off. After working for X years, and accomplishing Y and Z in my life, I now know what it is that I want to study, and I am ready to pursue graduate studies.”