I attended my first year of college and its a understatement to say it didn’t go well. Subjects and actitivites that I usually enjoyed were now indifferent to me and I lacked motivation to study or just to do anything. Anyway, I ended up getting an email saying I was dismissed from college and gave me several options. One was summer courses but I am OOS so this isn’t a realistic possibility. Another was transferring out of engineering which could be possible. Another was appeal the decision. I thought about this one, I went to my school for help related to mental health and they said it was possible I was depressed and referred me to a therapist. However, I didn’t follow through with this so I don’t have any actual documentation to support this to use in my appeal. The last one is transfer out of my college. Is it still possible to transfer universities this late? This seems like the most likely choice but I am unsure on where to transfer to. If anyone can help me out, it would be greatly appreciated as I am lost and I don’t really have anyone to talk to about this.
Maybe you could take a leave of absence and follow up with the therapist referral in the meantime?
You might need to go to a local community college to restore your GPA. But it definitely sounds like you should see a therapist.
What are the options timeline-wise? Can you take a year off and still return (either appealing to engineering or switching out)?
It doesn’t seem to me that plunging back in, without attending to the underlying problem(s), is going to lead to any better of a result. Engineering school isn’t the kind of thing you can just slide through while you’re not firing on all cylinders. (I speak from experience.)
There may be places you can transfer to this late, but why would you want to rush right into another situation when you haven’t dealt with why the first one didn’t work? It certainly sounds like depression was a factor. (BTDT. When I was a freshman at a highly-ranked engineering school, years ago, I had friends tell me that they thought I was depressed. I was like, “Nah, I’m not depressed - I just don’t know why I need 15 hours of sleep!” Um, yeah. I was depressed.)
I really recommend that you take a break. Get a job that will keep you in a consistent routine. Maybe even get a job where you provide a real service to others who need you. Honestly, sometimes you hit a point in life where the lifestyle of just working and working for your own success becomes too soul-crushing, and you need to spend some time being of real use to someone else. (That’s not criticism of you - it’s criticism of the path we put young people on in our society.) Get into therapy, and get to the bottom of what’s going on with you, and what you really want out of your education and your life.
You will do fine in the long run, but you need to take some time to get your head together and get clear on what you want (not what’s expected of you or what you want to be able to say you did). Most likely you’ll be able to get another chance from your college after doing this, if going back there is really what you want. If not, there are plenty of routes into another college situation. There are four-year schools you could transfer to, or you could do a couple years of community college and rebuild your academic record. It will work out, as long as you put your mental health first and don’t keep putting yourself back into the same circumstances and expecting a different outcome. The way high school and the college admissions process are these days, a lot of kids start college already burned out. If that’s what happened to you, then you need and deserve time to regroup.
@intparent do you know how would that work? if I were to attend a CC, what would happen to my GPA and the classes I took at my college? Would some of the credits transfer? I’m sure its different for each community college but would this be a possibility?
If you passed classes, they likely would transfer. You can’t completely leave behind your freshman year results, though If you go to CC and then transfer to a 4 year school later, you still have to provide your transcript from the first school.
What next? Go get a job and join the “real world.” Re-evaluate after a 6 months to a year. Good luck.
You don’t have to do anything right now. You need a psychiatrist work up to identify any mental illness and potentially get some helpful medication, and you may need to see a psychologist to help you develop a strategy for going forward to get some motivation. .
Without taking care of your mental health and figuring out where to find the requisite motivation, it doesn’t make sense to waste financial resources on getting an education when your body does not have the ability to absorb any material.
Good luck to you. Take your time and get it right. There are always good options once you have your mental health.
To me, “Subjects and actitivites that I usually enjoyed were now indifferent to me and I lacked motivation to study or just to do anything.” indicates depression. Of course it is hard to reach out for help when you are depressed.
What I would do is talk to your parents and ask them to help you get evaluated for depression. If you are diagnosed with depression, then follow your doctor’s orders. Then contact the college and discuss the possibility of a retroactive medical withdrawal…then at least it is possible that your failing grades won’t go into your GPA.
Also ask what time frames you can appeal the decision and what pathways there are.
So it maybe that you take a semester to get on any medications you have bee prescribed, maybe go to Community college for a semester to see if you are back on track, and then ask to be readmitted.
I was just talking to someone whose son had a similar experience. He’d always been a great student, but then dropped off in college and was self-medicating with alcohol and marijuana. He left school, moved back home, and took some time to work on previously undiagnosed mental health conditions.
He then started taking a few courses at a time at a university closer to home. He graduated, and will be starting a fully-funded teaching assistant position to earn a Master’s degree in a STEM subject.
I would recommend not focusing on how to pick your college career back up just yet. Take care of yourself first, and then you can plan a path that gets you where you want to go.
Please do see a medical professional. Getting the right treatment can change everything.
I would speak to an advisor and see if it’s possible for you to take a medical leave. Then get a regular job, get some treatment for depression if that’s what’s going on, and see how things go for a while (like 6 mos - a year.) After you reevaluate, you may find that you are more motivated to go to college and study. Or you may not! But you’ll make a choice at that time based on experience.
I had an old friend who got kicked out of college with a 0.0 GPA at a notorious party school. I was there for one weekend and it was too much for me!
After rehab…he got a job and got back into school. He now has a PhD. in Chemistry, works as a scientist and teaches at a University.
Get some help to figure out why this happened and get a job. That is usually enough of a wakeup call to get your act together. Then reevaluate what you want to do.
Good luck.
What do you want to do? Do you want to return to your current college? Do you want to remain an engineering student? Does the idea of going back to college in the fall sound like something you can handle?
We can’t really advise until we know what you’re thinking and how you see yourself next year. That said, if you really have no clue what to do… taking a semester/year/longer may be the best course of action.