<p>Life is not a straightforward journey. You think getting into college is the hardest part, but it’s not. My daughter only took 3 classes freshman fall; failed one, got an A- in another and a C in the third. Did better in the spring (but not great).</p>
<p>I’m now worried about my son, who is a HS junior. Doesn’t seem to take school seriously. Has a learning disability; doesn’t use the resources available to him. I think letting him go away to school is going to be a huge waste of $$$. Because honestly, if he can’t handle high school, how is he going to handle college?</p>
<p>OP – in the long run, you will overcome this bump in the road. Your parents may vent and yell, but they’ll get over it. </p>
<p>Telling your parents is a part of growing up. If you are afraid of your parents reaction, it’s understandable but being straight and honest is maturity.</p>
<p>Learn from this please. </p>
<p>Don’t make excuses for yourself, just learn and change strategies.</p>
<p>You have been given great advice. In the morning, please reach out and try to resolve. By noon, tell your parents the situation and how you have tried to resolve. This allows them a day & 1/2 to also try to resolve before holidays. </p>
<p>Good luck. I do find it surprising that there was no academic probation.</p>
<p>Okay, I know that you probably stopped reading this awhile ago, but for every one else that is reading this…
This happens to many many people.
I had a terrible first semester and so did many of my friends.
I wound up getting straight A’s during my second semester and I haven’t gotten a grade below a B since.
Whereas, I had a very good friend fail out recently who started as a honors student and had a 3.7 GPA after her first semester.
If you can appeal, it is not too late to turn it around.
If you cannot appeal then you can always start over at another college.
It will be okay. Don’t give up on school.</p>
<p>Colorado Mom - Thank you for the pm! I am not allowed to reply to you because I have not posted the minimum yet, so this public response will have to do. I appreciated your words!</p>
<p>Please know that you are in a safe place here. Many have walked this path previously. </p>
<p>Our S transferred out of his 4 year to do a year or two at CC, to see which direction he wants to head. </p>
<p>I now realize that our S would have been better off at a different, smaller school. It has been a challenging road so far, and it isn’t over yet!</p>
<p>But, in the scheme of things, this is not the worst that could happen, although it certainly seems so at the time!</p>
<p>An old Chinese saying, “Failure is the Mother of Success” :). If you do not fail, you won’t learn your lesson. I failed miserably in my high school years, I barely graduated from high school. But in this third rated college, I grew up and start work myself out of the bottom.</p>
<p>If you think failing of a college is bad, when you get to the society and made a mistake, it will hurt you more. At that time, your parents may or may not be with you, you will only have yourself to be blamed. It will give you much worse consequences than just academic failure. Consider yourself lucky, your first lesson into the society was only a wasted school year, not a bankruptcy of some kind.</p>
<p>When I was in grad school, one of my fellow students had actually earned a 0.0 GPA his first semester of college. He went on to get his PhD.</p>
<p>This is an opportunity to re-evaluate, readjust, and move forward in a stronger fashion. Best wishes to the OP. May your parents be as understanding as those on CC.</p>
<p>“When I was in grad school, one of my fellow students had actually earned a 0.0 GPA his first semester of college. He went on to get his PhD.”</p>
<p>Isn’t that John Blutarsky?</p>
<p>To the OP, keep your chin up, be honest with your folks, and learn from your mistakes. I failed a class my last semester in college (too much time working to pay for school and my senior year spring break trip). I started to date my wife when I took a makeup class at a local college later (she was a full time student there). Some good advice here.</p>
<p>I am a community college transfer instructor and adviser. Roughly 65% of my students are “reverse transfers”. Like you, they had a terrible first semester (or two or three). Some simply aren’t ready to be in college-we talk and many of them will leave us, go to work, serve in Americorp, etc. Others rebuild themselves academically and ofter transfer to a more prestigious college than the one they flunked out of. Some have psychological issues-depression, undiagnosed learning problems; these concerns should be addressed once home.</p>
<p>Talk openly and honestly with your parents. If now is not a good time to be in college, there is nothing wrong with that. My best students are typically a little older (21-25) as they are clearer about what they want to do. My husband was one of these. He flunked out of engineering school at age 18, spent several years working and traveling. He returned to engineering school and graduated with honors several years later.</p>
<p>I do not encourage appealing the expulsion. Most of the time (based on my little corner of the world), the student continues to do poorly-very expensive as well as emotionally exhausting for both the parents and the student.</p>
<p>My ancedote from earlier in the thread about my college BF who started as a CS major, but appealed and changed his major to English after having academic issues, was also to point out that some students may just not have chosen the right major.</p>
<p>Some students go to college intent on majoring in a field like engineering, but with little to no actual experience in such courses. Others major in something they found they really enjoyed in high school, only to find that the college courses are not at all similar.</p>
<p>Sometimes you need to step back and look at the areas you are excelling in in college and consider the classes you actually enjoy being in, instead of trying to ‘power through’ because you feel committed to the major you chose.</p>
<p>If you change the path you are on, then you may be able to find success in the future and not continue to stumble. But if you decide to stay on your current path and that you are just going to try harder and that you are just going to be more dedicated and you are just going to become a better student, then as others have noted you may find that you will continue to struggle because you may be experiencing problems because of lack of effort, but you may be experiencing problems because your mind just isn’t wired for the tasks you’re trying to get it to do. None of us are good at everying, we each need to discover our own strengths and pursue them even though they may not be what we initially thought (or hoped) they were.</p>
<p>If you have learned from your mistakes, then you will take earlier advice- go to school first, scour all avenues at the school to see what can be done.
As a parent, if I were to find out my S had been deceiving me about his grades all semester, but had flunked, I’d be mighty disappointed. BUT if that student had already implemented a school approved plan to fix it, that would take the edge off. If the student only claimed he had learned his lesson, but had taken no action, I’d be even further disappointed. His claim without action would sound (to me) like a little kid finding any excuse he could to deflect blame, and likely I’d feel he wasn’t ready for college, at least not on my dime. If the student told me the result, I’d ask what had he done about it? If his answer was nothing, yet, then likely I’d be sure he wasn’t ready for college.
Have a demonstrable plan when you talk to parents, not just hopes for a better future performance.</p>
<p>Yes, collegeflunkie, please know we are in your corner and please do let us know how it goes. We are pulling for you. </p>
<p>I would try to appeal the expulsion even if you do not roll right in to a second term before getting clear about what you want to do, what you are capable of doing and what your parents are willing to support. We worked with our daughter’s school to get failed classes as mental health withdraws-legitimately, not gaming the system-and then she still has had to earn her way back and did not get any credit for other false starts (and there have been several). We have been firm but on her side ultimately. She respects herself now and is on her way to valuing her education and the opportunities it will provide for her.</p>
<p>You will get there, wherever “there” is for you.</p>
<p>Another resource may be your college counsellng center where you can discuss this issue, and also the issues involved in your difficulties, with a confidential counselor. Don’t despair because this is a very common situation for college students. Your parents may be more understanding than you think. You can also ask your parents to see a counselor over the break and work on it there. Good luck!</p>
<p>Just an FYI, Marquette is probably closed for the holidays already. If the OP has been dismissed and asked not to return next semester the option to go “discuss” is a non issue or at least nothing would happen until the college reopens mid-January and then it would be a “long distance” conversation.</p>
<p>I recall a post years ago from a student at Guilford that also had such a policy…if you fell below a certain GPA you were dismissed.</p>
<p>collegeflunkie: I too walked in these well worn shoes of an academic tsunami when I was a freshman - back in the days when the Earth’s Crust was still cooling. I did not learn how to study in high school and spent much of my time on diversions aside from academics. Grades came home in the mail back in the day and then came the “come to Jesus”.</p>
<p>What I needed to do was determine what daily routine worked for me to properly grasp the material taught and the underlying concepts. My action plan was:
Make sure I always attended class (I was always good about thos)
Prior to the class, read the text being discussed ahead of time so I knew what was being discussed (hint, hint - this really really helped).
Take good notes in class.
Review my class notes the evening after class was done that day to refresh myself.
Come mid-term/finals - start studying 7-10 days prior to exams. This way I had enough time grasp and remember what was taught.</p>
<p>I went from a very mediocre student to graduating with Honors by the time I was done and went on for additional education. Frankly, once I learned what worked for me school was very enjoyable.</p>
<p>Don’t let Marquette off the hook here. They are being paid to prepare you for college and it’s absolutely unacceptable for a school to take your money, let a freshman flounder and then just notify you that you’re not to return for the next semester. Unless there’s a lot more communication here that you haven’t told us about, I would definitely feel as a parent that the school is negligent.</p>
<p>My S flunked out of Marquette last May so I have a little knowledge about the process, at least how it was with him. He was put on academic probation after a poor 1st semester, given one semester to pull his grades up to a 2.0. He was assigned a special academic advisor to oversee him. He was not allowed to work more than so many hours per week and was suppose to meet with his special advisor on a regular basis. My S did not pull up his grades. He did not take advantage of tutoring or help available to all students. He did not meet regularly with his advisor but he did do work study as a receptionist in that dept so I am thinking the advisor would ask him how things were going and S would tell her great. </p>
<p>You need to figure out if the major is not for you. Either you are not prepared for college level science classes or you are not putting the work in. Perhaps you need to consider another major or you need to rethink how you study. My S hated studying in groups and would end up studying the wrong stuff. We pushed hard to get him to meet with others in his classes in the library once a week. We told him to just ask around and see if anyone wanted to get together and study. Part of S’s problem is he had so many AP credits he was in classes with soph and didn’t know anyone. We told him to go out of his comfort zone and reach out to the prof and other students. Unfortunately, it was too little too late, if it happened at all.</p>
<p>I think you have another semester to recover, but it is up to you. Take advantage of office hours, reach out to other students and spend the time studying efficiently. </p>