I’m a business student who is having serious trouble in calculus. Part of it is I just didn’t study hard enough, but a lot of it is a very poor professor. The average on the midterm hovered around a 40% in my class, he rarely teaches and has a serious tendency to spend the class talking about how much better students where when he started teaching in the early 1970’s, and how terrible this generation is now. Be it the mountain of complaints he has received or his age, he’s retiring at the end of this year. My final is in a week, and to pass the class I will need an 80%. Since calculus is something I will actually need, and this is a pass/fail course so it won’t affect my GPA, I’m considering failing it so that I can retake it next year with a different teacher and focus on my other two finals that do go towards my GPA. I think this is a good decision, I’ll hopefully actually learn it next time and will potentially get boost my GPA, since I would need to devote almost all of my time to studying this class to even have a hope of getting an 80%, lowering my grade in the other two, but I want to know if there’s any huge reason I shouldn’t.
Fs look very bad indeed if you intend to pursue a post-grad degree. I think you need to get tutoring, meet with the prof and do all you can to get a very good score and pass.
NONONONO…an F is very bad for your GPA!!!
Get a tutor.
Go to professor’s office hours.
Look at Khan Academy videos on line.
Get a book and do many many problems.