knox
Refugee
Well, not to toot my own horn, but I consider myself a pretty intelligent person. Unfortuantely, that has rarely transferred itself to school-related undertakings (except for tests, and especially the SAT and the various AP exams whose collective asses I kicked). This means that despite scoring very well on the achievement exams, my medicore GPA got me into Wisconsin and Purdue, and I chose to go to Purdue because I didn't like Wisconsin.
My folks wanted me to go to a school that cost less money, but the only school of the same caliber was the University of Illinois -- and they had rejected me. I decided I didn't want to go to a "lesser school" such as UI-Chicago, Southern Illinois, or Northern Illinois, like a lot of people I know did. So in August, I found myself at Purdue University.
Things started off fairly well, but right off the bat I could tell that I would hate going to classes. Hardly anything I was learning was interesting, with the exception of Italian. Even the upper-level math class I had talked my way into was boring, because I already knew what was being taught. As a result, I literally stopped going to classes in October.
I was taking 15 credit hours. I salvaged 8, and got C's in those. Three were for English (English teachers are notoriously flexible when it comes to making up work at the end of a semester), and the other five were for my MV Calc course (the professor didn't care when you handed in work, so long as it got handed in; the only reason I got a C was that I had missed a test and several quizzes). So, with my GPA barely above a 1, the University put me on academic probation.
I started the second semester determiend to do better. Of course, I had been making this promise to myself since elementary school. However, I was smarter about my classes: two of them were lectures that I wouldn't have to attend regularly. However, two of them were classes that I had to attend regularly, or face terrible grades: Italian (which I retook in the hope of erasing last semester's F) and Speech Communications (which was a requirement).
Sure enough, after about a month, I just quit going to classes. I've been screwed in Italian since mid-March: a combination of not doing any work for the class with the draconian attendance policy got me long ago. However, I'd been able to keep up with my work in the Speech class, and basically I was barely passing.
I should take this time to add that, under academic probation, if I fail six hours, I get dropped. Italian is three hours. So is Speech.
Well, the final project in Speech is a group project. I have to kick its ass to make sure I pass. Unfortunately, I also have to attend regular meetings with my group, and if I miss two, I get kicked out, and that's that. Well, the last week has been pretty bad on that front:
(1) I missed a class meeting before I knew about this policy that I missed through my own fault.
(2) They scheduled a meeting for a place that our meetings aren't usually held, so I showed up at the wrong room wondering where everybody was.
They decided to give me one last chance. Well, today I had the class. It starts at 7:30, is a 15 minute walk away, and if I miss more than half of it, it counts as an abscence. The class is 50 minutes long.
I woke up at 7:45. I had set my 7:00 alarm to be too quiet.
So that's that. I'm failing this course (even though I'm going to get good grades in my lectures), and the University is going to drop me.
In all honesty, I'm scared. I don't know what I'm going to do after this summer. I have a job working at a camp in the summer, so that's not going to be a problem. But I'll need to get a full time job in the fall, I guess, but I don't really think I'm ready to be on my own. I'm scared of trying to go back to school after a semester, because I'm afraid that this same thing will keep happening. I'm scared of trying to function without a college degree, because despite my intelligence, that piece of paper would open doors that are currently shut to me. I'm scared of the money I borrowed, because it's been basically wasted. I'm scared that I'm not going to succeed, ever, and I will spend my life doing something boring for very little money.
But I don't have a choice, really, do I?
Any advice on how to get on with and direct my life here would be appreciated. Anyone else fuck themselves up similarly?
I suppose the one saving grace here is that I don't see myself going into serious debt...and I always have my folks to fall back on. But that's seriously embarassing, I'd hate to need their financial support if I'm supposed to be doing this on my own.
My folks wanted me to go to a school that cost less money, but the only school of the same caliber was the University of Illinois -- and they had rejected me. I decided I didn't want to go to a "lesser school" such as UI-Chicago, Southern Illinois, or Northern Illinois, like a lot of people I know did. So in August, I found myself at Purdue University.
Things started off fairly well, but right off the bat I could tell that I would hate going to classes. Hardly anything I was learning was interesting, with the exception of Italian. Even the upper-level math class I had talked my way into was boring, because I already knew what was being taught. As a result, I literally stopped going to classes in October.
I was taking 15 credit hours. I salvaged 8, and got C's in those. Three were for English (English teachers are notoriously flexible when it comes to making up work at the end of a semester), and the other five were for my MV Calc course (the professor didn't care when you handed in work, so long as it got handed in; the only reason I got a C was that I had missed a test and several quizzes). So, with my GPA barely above a 1, the University put me on academic probation.
I started the second semester determiend to do better. Of course, I had been making this promise to myself since elementary school. However, I was smarter about my classes: two of them were lectures that I wouldn't have to attend regularly. However, two of them were classes that I had to attend regularly, or face terrible grades: Italian (which I retook in the hope of erasing last semester's F) and Speech Communications (which was a requirement).
Sure enough, after about a month, I just quit going to classes. I've been screwed in Italian since mid-March: a combination of not doing any work for the class with the draconian attendance policy got me long ago. However, I'd been able to keep up with my work in the Speech class, and basically I was barely passing.
I should take this time to add that, under academic probation, if I fail six hours, I get dropped. Italian is three hours. So is Speech.
Well, the final project in Speech is a group project. I have to kick its ass to make sure I pass. Unfortunately, I also have to attend regular meetings with my group, and if I miss two, I get kicked out, and that's that. Well, the last week has been pretty bad on that front:
(1) I missed a class meeting before I knew about this policy that I missed through my own fault.
(2) They scheduled a meeting for a place that our meetings aren't usually held, so I showed up at the wrong room wondering where everybody was.
They decided to give me one last chance. Well, today I had the class. It starts at 7:30, is a 15 minute walk away, and if I miss more than half of it, it counts as an abscence. The class is 50 minutes long.
I woke up at 7:45. I had set my 7:00 alarm to be too quiet.
So that's that. I'm failing this course (even though I'm going to get good grades in my lectures), and the University is going to drop me.
In all honesty, I'm scared. I don't know what I'm going to do after this summer. I have a job working at a camp in the summer, so that's not going to be a problem. But I'll need to get a full time job in the fall, I guess, but I don't really think I'm ready to be on my own. I'm scared of trying to go back to school after a semester, because I'm afraid that this same thing will keep happening. I'm scared of trying to function without a college degree, because despite my intelligence, that piece of paper would open doors that are currently shut to me. I'm scared of the money I borrowed, because it's been basically wasted. I'm scared that I'm not going to succeed, ever, and I will spend my life doing something boring for very little money.
But I don't have a choice, really, do I?
Any advice on how to get on with and direct my life here would be appreciated. Anyone else fuck themselves up similarly?
I suppose the one saving grace here is that I don't see myself going into serious debt...and I always have my folks to fall back on. But that's seriously embarassing, I'd hate to need their financial support if I'm supposed to be doing this on my own.