Academic advice needed

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I am a freshman in college, and my grades have slipped. I got two Fs this past term, and one of them was in chemistry. I am very good at chemistry, but I missed several days of the class, and some of the days I missed were test days, which resulted in my failing. I did not go to the teacher or academic support center after I missed the tests. I am fortunate because my school is giving me another chance to keep my scholarship, but I clearly do not want this to happen again. Has anyone here had this happen to them, and if so, how did you deal with it?

ALWAYS contact the teacher if you are not going to be in class, and let them know if you are sick. It is my experience that almost all of them will make arrangements with you to make up the missed work.

Good luck - chemistry was hard for me. I always got the right answers, but by feel. I could never explain the math behind the experiments at all.

I'm in grad school.

One thing I learned from undergrad is that if you simply go to every class and take notes, and sumbit all the assignments on time, you WILL pass the class. No studying or cramming needed - just those simple things will do.

So just make sure in the future you don't miss classes. I can't imagine missing test dates, though, perhaps you have some other issues that need to be addressed.

Frankly, you might not be ready to be in school right now. The problem here is the scholarship; leaving might lose it for you. But, bad grades can significantly hinder your chances. If you don't think that you can buckle down at this point - it's just not worth going, even if it is paid for. Perhaps you can get a leave of absence, while still keeping the scholarship option open. These don't tend to last as long as this poor fool needed to become a good student though (and I seem to be falling again - I'll make it out with this next degree, but that's probably as far as I can go).

Showing up for class is important, especially for notes and announcements. What I personally find to be the most hard is motivating myself to type long research papers. Cramming for tests is quite easy in comparison.

Yeah, a leave of absence isn't an option with private colleges.

No? That seems really odd. I mean, what do they do if there is a death in the family, or something?

A leave of absence wouldn't be necessary. In that situation, you just let the professors know what's going on (small class sizes at my school. The biggest class was only 50 students). I went in to meet with my adviser about two hours ago, and we both think that this is just one rough patch that should smooth out with this next term.

Never miss a day of class. Even if you are sick.

Here's my advice- Make sure you always know what will be done or discussed on the next class day, this way you don't miss any tests or quizzes if you -have- to be out. By -have- I mean, you are three states away and can't physically make it, or you have broken your leg and it's bleeding. If there's no danger of puking on the floor or bleeding all over your test then go. It's only a few hours, and most sick people can spend a few hours sitting up without purging their breakfast. Nine times out of ten if you're truely sick the professor will probably send you home anyway. A good tip to make your point and to avoid contageon? Wear a sterile face mask.

Time to play devil's advocate a bit.

I disagree with the blanket statement that you need to make every class. You may need to, you may not. What you need to do is at least start the semester right. Try to make every class up to the first test. Get a feel for the class, the material, and the professor. Then get your grade back from the exam. Figure out your average.

For the amount of work put in, is your grade higher or lower than expected?

If it is lower, you're going to have to work harder outside of class, which means going to class is absolutely a necessity.

If you're doing amazing, and feel like you've done nothing at all, then you might be able to take a couple leave of absences when necessary. I'm not saying skip whenever you feel like it, but if you feel like you can't be in class on a given day, for a good reason, then you can be confident that it won't be all that serious.

I go to most of my classes, skipping once every other month or so if I need. I don't get too bothered by it because while I'm in class, well, I'm usually crawling the forums.

This depends on several things I haven't mentioned. If there's homework, you gotta show up on the due dates to turn them in (unless you get it in early). If there's attendance checks, as silly as that seems for the college level, showing up is a good idea. Etc, etc, ymmv.

I've got some sort of auto-pilot that kicks in that makes me do exactly what is necessary to get in the C+ -> A- range. There's some fluctuation, depending on my interest in the class among other things, but my grades usually lie within that, more often in the B- -> B+ range. I'm not sure if that's a good thing in the long term, but it has kept me in college. It may be the reason I've yet to have a positive response from graduate schools though....

I spent a year at a college in upstate NY feeling miserable and conflicted, thinking I had to stay because I had a scholarship. During one memorable period I lost 15 pounds in 10 days despite sleeping almost constantly and eating everything in sight when I was awake. I went to classes only because the dining hall was next to the classroom building.

Midway through the second semester I decided that perhaps it was that particular college that wasn't right for me, not the idea of college in general. I also decided no scholarship was worth the misery I felt and accepted the idea of being in debt for a decade after graduation, opening my mind to student loans. I got catalogs from schools that attracted geeks like me - Reed, Marlboro, and St. John's, the latter with a campus in both Annapolis and Santa Fe, so if one campus didn't fit I could transfer to the other.

Transferring schools saved my life. 10 years of student loan payments was a small price to pay.

Best of luck with whatever you decide to do.

No. But for someone like myself, there is no way that I could start missing classes for the heck of it, without falling into the bad habits that got me my poor GPA philosophy degree - which turned out to be worth nothing at all. But, I had a lot of fun in school. That's worth something. Likewise with the work itself - it just has to be done. One nice thing about going to classes, is that the instructors are more likely to recognize you. This is almost always to your advantage. I know that I don't give a lot of leeway to students who don't make the effort.

Most people do sh***y in their first year. Your grades will improve as you go on with your degree.