This is mostly me ranting but any advice would be great. And please tell me how YOU are doing this semester.
It’s my first year in my school’s 5-year Master’s in Accounting program, so we have some classes taken at graduate level while some are still undergrad. It’s not too different, just more work. But it’s becoming a lot to balance. I think I know what the problems are, I just need to figure out what to do about them…
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I started commuting for the first time ever and I HAAAAAATE IT. I live about an hour from campus. Luckily, my beloved best friend lets me crash at his place some days of the week. I work MWF and my job is only about 20 min from my school so at least I’m already in the area for my evening/night classes.
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Also, night classes suck so, so bad. I can’t pay attention the whole time for the life of me and everyone’s dead by the time they come around so no one talks. I have 3. Monday and Tuesday from 6:30-9 and Wednesday from 5-7:30.
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These classes have me needing to study more than I’ve ever had to study before. And I STILL feel like I’m doing poorly:
a)I only got a 74 on a test in one class (and that’s WITH a 10-point curve…) and now I want to drop it. It’s an elective that came highly recommended if you plan to take the CPA exam but I don’t want to sink my GPA or study a crapton for an elective.
b) In two of my other classes, neither me nor any of my friends/classmates know what the heck is going on. We got lucky in one class and got a takehome midterm since our professor was out of town. But for the other, I feel pretty confident that I failed the exam. And additionally, I’m predicting a B (maybe even lower) on my Tuesday night exam and a C on my Wednesday night class exam. I’ll find out all the grades soon. I CAN’T WAIT -_-
I literally sit at work or in class all day, get home, study until midnight or 1 in the morning, wake up at 5 in the morning, and then rinse and repeat. And it’s draining the little energy I already had. I’m tired, y’all. It’s like my body is trying to go into senioritis mode but my brain knows it can’t or I’ll fail out.
Feels bad. But alas, my rant is over.
Well, this sounds like a hard situation to be in, but I have a few questions in regards to your situation:
- Why can't you live on campus? It would be a lot easier for you IMO.
- Are the classes online or in a classroom? If they're online, then you can just do it from the seat of your couch at home.
- Can you choose to go to somewhere else (possibly closer to home) if other colleges offer the same program(s)? If this is possible, then you can also get another job closer to where you are.
My Situation:
My semester is going well so far. Although, I do have a midterm or two coming up and I’m trying to study for them to the best of my ability. I don’t have the strongest studying skills. Even back in high school, I didn’t study very much at all and I still graduated being a part of the National Honor Society. I never got a 4.0 GPA while in high school. I was just stuck in the 3.4 - 3.9 GPA range coming close once or twice. Even then, it still isn’t easy for me if I don’t have a proper study guide to study off of. I have to rely on slide shows and a textbook from one of my classes. Also, there’s a lot of information for one of my midterms and if I only had an organized list of things that will be on the test, then I’ll do good on it. Trying to study from 8 different slide shows ranging between 15 (minimum) to 50 (maximum) slides of information can be challenging.
Overall, I’m hoping to get better grades than last year (my freshman year), so I don’t get put on academic probation. I only party on Friday and Saturday nights. I have time between 12 pm after my classes on Friday until Sunday evening to work and study. Although, my grades most likely won’t fall below a 2.0 GPA, even if I have some problems along the way. I got a 2.6 combined GPA last year and I made some mistakes that affected my grades during the 2nd semester. Even if I don’t meet my goal of getting a 3.0 or higher this semester, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but I’m trying to make my parents happy at the same time. Studying for midterms and finals is difficult, but by taking out all forms of testing in college, then we’d obviously do a whole lot better, just saying.
Being in college is hard. Being in college and needing to work to feed yourself is hard. I remember wondering why I couldn’t be satisfied doing something “less.” The reality is that if you want a certain degree, certain job, etc, you have to decide if the temporary pain and sacrifices are worth it. It is temporary, but over the course of a long lifetime the pay off can be huge.