Quote:
Originally Posted by REDVAN
Is it bad if I fail?
Did that question actually get asked?
|
TBQH it is a legit question.
There are a lot of misconceptions about university and how things work. There seems to be this idea that if you don't have a flawless GPA and amazing transcripts you may as well drop out because you are screwed. While there are situtations where that is true it is by no means a standard.
At the end of the day having an F or W won't kill you. Having a few probably won't kill you either. What is important is that you don't have too many and they basically need to be explainable. If you just have one F/W per semester it is going to become obvious that you can't handle your workload and quit easily.
If you have a few spread out over a few years it isn't great but everyone hits a rough patch.
The "best" (and I put that in quotes because no F or W is good) is to have a few early on and then preferably have very few to none as you go into your final semesters. This shows that you hit a rough patch and moved on.
As someone mentioned earlier, the amount of info and knowledge you can get from speaking to your academic advisor (about grades, classes, requirements etc) is almost a must. It also helps to develop relationships with profs, join clubs for your faculty, research profs, classes, co-op opportunities etc.
One of the biggest areas that HS doesn't teach you is how to be independent and realize that getting through university with more than the bare minimum is YOUR responsibility and no one is going to do it for you. You may actually have to be proactive and stick your neck out a bit to get your #### together.
Sadly I think I learned this way too far along. Now I try and offer advice to any of my Uni friends as much as I can. Don't like your degree? Talk to someone about switching. Want a minor? Talk to someone about what it'll take to do that.
It is really too bad that so much of your life decisions will be made at the age of 18 or 19 but that's the way it is. Lots of people even end up going back to school b/w the ages of 24-35 (or later) because they finally know what they want to do in life and they simply didn't have the life experience to make that decision at 18.
There are sooooo many resources at your disposal to help you get a good degree, take the right classes, set yourself up for a job/career after Uni. But you and you alone need to find out what it takes to utilize those resources to help you make informed decisions and set yourself up for post-grad. When I say you alone I mean that you have to seek out those resources. You don't have to go it alone but the answers won't fall into your lap. You need to seek them out.
