I’ve had a terrible first semester of my first year of college. I took mostly science classes because I initially wanted to do pre-med. I enrolled in Bio, Chem, Calculus and English, then later withdrew from Calculus with a grade of W and dropped English. I then took Music which was the worst mistake of my life, because I ended up failing the course. So now, I finished my first semester of college with a C+ in Bio, C- in Chem, W in Calculus, F in Music and a B- in Choir (0.5 Credit) and a poor 1.44 GPA.
I’ve always been a hardworking, excellent student in high school. I never got C’s and definitely never ever failed a class before. I still don’t know what to major in, I don’t even know what I want to do anymore. I’ve never felt more lost with my life than I do now. I didn’t enjoy any of the classes I enrolled in, and I think that is what affected my performance. I had no interest in any of my classes, and it was just a depressing semester for me overall. I always thought medical school was my goal until I realized it wasn’t. And now with my bad grades and very low GPA, I don’t know if there’s any hope for me. I am a smart girl, and I know I have the potential to do something great. I just haven’t found my passion yet.
I want to be able to raise my GPA to a 3.5+ (out of 4) by the time I graduate. I know deep down that I can do it. I just want to know how. I need someone to tell me what to do in order to be able to achieve that. I’ve learned my lesson and I’ve gained experience from my bad first semester. I feel more prepared to take on the second semester with an optimistic mindset.
Does anyone have any advice for me? I want to feel better about myself and I need someone to reassure me that this is not the end of the world. Do you think a better option for me would be to transfer to another university for my next year of college? I am slightly not happy with the curriculum and courses offered at my current school.
I think it’s important to understand why you think you did terrible. Was it really mostly because you found the classes so uninteresting and unimportant that you couldn’t muster the motivation to succeed in them? Or, is there something else to consider? How was your social interaction and campus life? Have you spoken to on-campus academic counselors about this? Of course, HS and college are not necessarily identical in academic rigor, and sometimes individuals just aren’t ready for the transition. If you really have no idea what you want to do academically, not even the slightest inclining, then you may want to step back, breathe, and give thoughtful consideration to returning for the immediate next semester before you lose out on the opportunity cost of your time and money by paying for that semester. It’s perfectly okay for individuals to not go to college right after HS. Maybe you want to pursue interests outside the classroom to better figure out what you want to do with life or a career?
Or, if after thoughtful consideration, you determine that you really are motivated and are willing to put up the motivation in your future classes until you do find what interests you (in which case the motivation to succeed in those courses comes much more easily), then you can consider returning to college for the next semester. Do you have an adequate support network between friends, family, and on-campus services to be able to succeed? I wouldn’t advise transferring to a difference college with your current GPA, but you can consider community college (cheaper way to figure out what you’re really interested in) or trade schools.
Anything is possible, this forum alone is littered with anecdotes about coming back from your very situation and succeeding in an academic environment. Best of luck.
The short version is that you already know what you need to - get better grades. I think the actual question you’re asking is whether there’s some magic formula that will help you, and the unfortunate answer is that no, there’s not.
What could potentially help is finding something you’re actually interested in. Sometimes, students perform better in the classes they actually like. Don’t look for your “passion,” though. It doesn’t have to be something that you race out of bed every morning to do (because I think that’s pretty rare either way). It just has to be something you like well enough!
Part of this is just part of growing up, too. You thought you wanted to do something, and realized that you didn’t want to do it, and so you lost motivation. That can be a jarring feeling, but it’s not the end of the world. I think most pre-med students realize somewhere along the way that they actually don’t want to be doctors. Now you have the freedom to explore other majors and careers and ideas! Instead of feeling lost and scared, think about it as an enormous opportunity to reinvent yourself, explore and find out what you do like and what you’d like to be doing.
Another recommendation is to spread out the pain, as it were. Taking a bunch of difficult classes all in the same semester is a recipe for disaster. With some curricula (like pre-med) it’s hard to help it, but try your best - maybe take two difficult classes, two easier ones and one that’s just fun or interesting. (Sometimes it can be hard to predict ahead of time what will be hard, too.)
Transferring might be an option, if your university has nothing for you that you enjoy, or you otherwise aren’t enjoying the vibe of your school. But before you decide that, you need to decide what you actually do like.
And lastly, don’t focus on any particular GPA. Just resolve to do as well as you can. Lots of people (including me!) graduate with GPAs of less than a 3.5, and our lives go on and we are successful and productive citizens of the world. (Heck, many people graduate with less than a 3.0 and do that. Cs get degrees!)
The thing to do is to lower the difficulty. And it looks like you were seeking to do that by pulling out of the Calculus and English. Take lower level classes, with a view to moving up to more difficult ones when you’ve done well enough with the lesser ones. It should only be necessary to change colleges if your current one doesn’t have much in the way of lower level classes.
Also, material you’ve already had some exposure to, such as Calculus and the English course, will be easier when (again) attempted. A thing that can be done to emulate this process is pre-study of courses by getting the entailed books and syllabi and embarking on some self-teaching (and self-testing) of the material before enrolling in the courses. Tutoring by others, participation in study groups and spending more time studying (and, in math, chemistry and the like, working problems where afterward you can see the correct solutions) than you had to in high school are other ideas.
What you major in and what your career will be are secondary matters. The ability to do college at all is the fundamental immediate one.
It’s pretty much a combination of class difficulty for me as well as lack of time management. I took a Computer Science I class without taking the advisory prerequisite, and got a C-, which brought down my GPA along with a C in Linear Algebra due to failing the final for that class, which was back to back with the Computer Science final.
I’d recommend you scale back on your classes, maybe focus more on pre-reqs or retake an AP class in HS if it correlates to your major. Take some easy classes (I’m finally taking the Intro to Computers class, the advisory pre-req for Computer Science I, which is insanely easy, for a refresher and to bring up my GPA from a 2.7 to a 3.0 to maintain my scholarships and Scholars designation at my school) to bring up your GPA before you go ahead with your major plans.