So here’s my situation right now. I’m a first semester freshman and I have a 16 credit semester, including a difficult 5 credit accelerated General Chemistry Course (Chem 109 at UW-Madison). I’ve suffered through the class and currently have a BC. I’ll probably be getting A’s in two of my other classes and an AB in the last one. I was planning on followed a pre-med path to be a Psychiatrist but I just don’t think I’m interested in the sciences to be able to make it through the 8 years before residency. The reason I’ve done so poorly in the class is that my previous issues with focus/motivation became exacerbated when I came to college, especially with this Chemistry class since it requires so much more effort than my other classes, which I’ve been able to float along in. I’ve been going to the university counseling services and we’ve established that I have depression which is causing the symptoms. I have ample documentation to grant me a late drop for the course, but I don’t know whether I should or not.
On one hand, it makes no sense to me to keep a grade like that on my transcript if I don’t intend to do anything Chemistry related. Also, I’m going to transfer to another college after a year abroad next year, and I’d like to aim for Northwestern, Columbia, UCLA, and UCB, so keeping a high GPA is important. On the other hand, I’ve already done the entire semester of work, so it would suck to get nothing out of it in the end, and I suppose there’s a small chance I could change my mind about pre-med, and then I’d end up having to take Chemistry all over again. Also, I would be dropping to half time attendance, if that matters.
Regardless, when I transfer, I would probably include in the additional comments an explanation for my poor grade in Chemistry, because I know I’m capable of better and medication should help with my symptoms. Would it speak better of my character to say that I suffered through the class and tried my best or to have the sense to drop it when I knew I was going to earn a bad grade?
If you can finish the term with a B/C, I would not recommend dropping your chemistry class at this point. You have already put in most of the semester and must be bumping up against finals week as we write here. If you drop the class now, you are basically throwing away 5 hard earned credits and the money that paid for them, and start the process of falling behind in the possibility of getting finished with a degree in four years, which then costs you more time and money to go with it.
A B/C is a perfectly respectable grade for Chemistry, especially in light of everything you have had to deal with. You have to adjust your high school mindset about grades to a college mindset. One B or C isn’t going to prevent you from being able to transfer, while withdrawing from classes whenever the going gets a little tough might have more of an effect on your ability to transfer.
Regardless of what you major in or where you attend college, the whole point of undergraduate education is to actually finish a degree–that matters way more than grades over the course of a career and lifetime.
@NorthernMom61 I’m not worried about falling behind since I came in with 17 AP + dual enrollment credits, and I’ll be getting 12 retro credits on top of the 4 that I earn from Spanish 4. I hear your point though, I just hate the idea of choosing a career path that has nothing to do with Chemistry but still having that on my transcript. I wouldn’t be nearly as worried if I wasn’t planning on transferring, but I know I can’t survive another year where I am right now.
I already have scheduled a meeting at the dean’s office tomorrow so I suppose I should at least see what they say.
@bopper The dean’s office can grant a late/retroactive drop if you have justified reasoning. One of the permissible reasons is mental health which I fall under for depression/counseling. There’s no guarantee that I’ll be granted a drop but the person my advisor talked to seemed fairly confident.
That’s good to know! congrats! What part of the class was hard? I’m taking General Chem and I’m a little shacking. Tho I did really good in the intro to chem
@NASA2014 It was just very fast paced (since 109 is two semesters condensed into one) and I couldn’t keep up with all of the practice and outside work that was required to do well on the exams. I also hadn’t had Chemistry since my junior year of high school, so I forgot a lot of the basic concepts. I probably could’ve gotten an A if I had motivation to practice more because none of the concepts seemed incredibly hard to grasp, but I needed the practice to know how to apply them.