My freshman year was filled with high visibility, productive extracurricular activities (Student government and volunteering ) and I developed some friends and a good knowledge of the school I was at. At the same time I didn’t do academically well for personal reasons. Because I messed up a math placement test last summer I was behind on some prerequisite courses that impact next semester, which I am supposed to take starting tomorrow and continuing into mid-August. Now I need to get the courses approved from my advisor, because the ones that were offered at the college I originally signed up for were cancelled. So at the same time my parents are wondering if I should ever return to my school or go to a CC in the area, study CET, and transfer elsewhere, which has always been an unattractive close to home option for me. So what should I do? I don’t want to go back and start sinking, but I don’t want to stay home at the CC, which doesn’t offer the CE path I was on.
Maybe it’s just early, but I’m not sure I follow the problem.
You need to get your summer coursework approved by an advisor.
Be at the advisor’s office when it opens today. Get the approval, take the courses, cut down on the social live and get your grades up.
But start by getting the approval for those courses this morning.
Good luck.
Well I got the courses approved but my parents are hell bent on having me stay home, because of personal issues I am dealing with that they say “requires parental oversight.” My GPA was above a 2.0 but below a 2.5 for context. The classes I underperformed in was Calc I (not regular Calc) and an engineering science course, mainly because I would procrastinate.
Be that as it may, I still want to be a civil engineer because I know I have fixable issues, but I definitely don’t think transferring to the local CC will help at all, especially if they only offer courses designed to help attain an engineering technology degree (I wanted to be a civil engineer).
It’s hard to know what to say when we don’t know the situation. Are the personal issues something that hinders you from being at school/attending classes or is it more that your parents are upset about procrastination leading to low grades?
If it’s the former, maybe you could come up with a realistic plan for how to manage your issues (for example, if you’re struggling with your mental health, agree to start seeing a counselor). Agree to keep them updated with what’s going on and maybe give them the names of some friends whom you know you can trust and rely on if there are problems.
If it’s the latter, explain that you’re still committed to your goal even though you got off track and give them reasons for why this time will be different (for example, ways you plan to overcome procrastination). Maybe you could make a deal, something like agreeing to attend CC if you don’t do well in the summer course as long as you can stay and have one more chance. If they still won’t budge, you could also see about taking a class online through your current college.
As a prospective engineer, use your skills to completely diagnose what the root cause of your performance was, and develop a plan to fix those.
It isn’t enough to say to yourself “for personal issues” (and you don’t need to share them here). You recognize that “I don’t want to go back and start sinking” which is great to recognize. But now what? What was the root cause and what specific actions are you going to take to address them? Your parents proposed a solution, you need to “engineer” an alternate solution, from the ground up, backed by a plan.
If you don’t do that, how will you be able to convince your parents that you are on a different path? How would you even convince yourself?
Well, the root cause was me procrastinating when I started to get too much homework, and then rushing to complete them when I gained a sense of urgency. This started to hurt me towards the middle of the semester, because for a class like Calculus, everything builds on previous units, so problems became harder to solve and the procrastinating increased.
Unfortunately, I feel as though this is a problem I can solve over one summer, using the summer classes to help control the “video game addiction” that my parents feel I have. They still feel however that I have too many issues to take this Physics class (which just started Wednesday and I couldn’t attend due to a few reservation issues and a lack of a textbook). This course has an add/drop date which has approaching fast and they want me to drop the class ASAP.
I don’t know if I will be allowed to stay the course here.
Are you willing to give up video games and get rid of them for now? If so then move forward. It is better to do engineering at a 4 year. But many people have reported going down because of inability to manage game playing and unwillingness to give it up. If you won’t give it up stay home until you can manage school better. Your grades this early on will not get you through a CE program.
I’m willing to give up at this point. I realize my education is something I’ve taken for granted over the years, and I definitely have a lot of opportunities on the horizon.
However, I just had a major monkey wrench thrown in front of me. I passed an add/drop date for the physics course that my parents want me to drop so I can take a different route, and we are financially liable.
It looks like a plan is coming into place now. I can keep my major, but I will have to spend a semester at home and go to a CC or other college. The liability issue seems to be wrong, as my class doesn’t fall under it.