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Failure!

Thanatos
edited April 2010 in General
Has anyone here ever had a super shitty semester and just failed (N, F, D, whatever) one or more courses?
I'm maintained all A's and B's for the last three semesters but this semester I had a whole crapload of personal problems and decided I hate my major anyway so I'm going to drop BSc and switch to BA in Psych.
Anyway I missed the second calculus midterm and stopped going to the lectures so I thought it was stupid to even attempt the final and since it was on the same day as my Psych final I decided to just try and go for the A in Psych and take an N (converting to an F) in Calculus.
I have Physics tomorrow and although I've done okay in the course so far (85% on the midterm, 80% or so on the assignments, well it all tallied up to 42% of the total course grade in the end) I've really missed most of what happened in the second half of the course and I'm dreading the exam.
But all of that is a tangent.. my question is just, out of all of you brainiacs here (because I know most of the posters in this forum are just ridiuculous straight A overachievers), has anyone ever just had a crap semester?

Comments

  • Ether
    edited April 2010
    Yeah. I failed a course once.

    It was a math course, and I was pretty angry at myself and the prof. I could have passed it with a C- or C, if I'd done the homework assignments, or at least pulled off a D if I'd copied my friends' work at the last minute and turned something in. Instead, I insisted that I either do it myself or not do it at all - which usually ended up the latter. I considered it "failure due to integrity", but really I should have just worked harder and gotten a better mark.

    There was a thread about failure over on the CSSS forums a while ago:
    Some Norwegian guy" said:
    The main purpose of higher education and making all the smartest kids from one school come together with all the smartest kids from other schools, recursively, is to show every smart kid everywhere that they are not the smartest kid around, that no matter how smart they are, they are not equally smart at everything even though they were just that to begin with, and there will therefore always be smarter kids, if nothing else, than at something other than they are smart at.
    and
    danly" said:
    IMHO, there's nothing quite as effective as the complete failure of a course to generate humility. What's more, it forces you to adapt to such failure and move forward.
    ...
    Failing a course is shattering. Absolutely, completely shocking for those used to gliding through. It reflects what is bound to occur throughout life: utter disappointment and recurring tragedy. Learning to cope with an emotionally jarring event of the long-term sort is quite a boon.
    .. but maybe that's just the cognitive dissonance talking.
  • BSang
    edited April 2010
    I got a D once, in BISC 102 (I didn't go to a majority of the labs). I basically got stuck in a bad cycle, which started with skipping a single lab and ended with failing the lab final (in which a passing grade is required in order to pass the course). As long as you did well in previous semesters, and you do well in future semesters, you could just repeat the courses (even if you hate the material), just to bring your GPA back up.

    If your personal problems were serious enough, you could request a withdrawal under extenuating circumstances:
    http://students.sfu.ca/advising/academic/withdrawal_extenuating/index.html
  • EricJ
    edited April 2010
    my worst semester was 3 courses, B F F. far worse than anything else i've ever done.
    I can't quite explain what happened there either.
    courses were CMPT310 (B) and MATH 232 and 152 (F's)

    I retook 232 and 152 the following semester along with STAT 270 and something else (after a semester off), and got a B+ and a C+ in those. (also, even the second time, I went into the 152 final with like 42%)
  • nicole
    edited April 2010
    I'm kind of in the same situation. I'm doing co-op in a time-demanding position, and I decided to take two courses during the Spring. I've done really well in one, but totally failed another. I'll re-take the failed course before I graduate, but it's really disappointing...
  • NukeChem
    edited April 2010
    It always is disappointing when you think you're doing OK, and then whammo. :omg:

    The best strategy is to know what mistakes you made, and make sure not to repeat them.
  • Thanatos
    edited April 2010
    Well it's good to know that even the supersmart elite students fail sometimes, lol. At least for me the good side of it was it didn't hit me all of a sudden. I knew from the outset I would find Math 154 ridiculously hard and that I would have to put a tremendous amount of effort into it just to get a C+ or a B-. So once I started going through a rough patch with personal problems, I decided not to fill myself with any illusions and just concentrate on doing really well in the courses that actually mattered to me instead.
    I think one of the hardest things for me about uni has been deciding between the following two options:
    - Studying a field that I find interesting, has more career opportunities, more money in it and I find incredibly challenging and difficult and will probably only be mediocre in
    or
    - Studying a field that I find really interesting but doesn't have as many career opportunities or as much money in it but I find more easy and fun and I really excel at.

    I picked the first option to begin with and consequently it made me stressed out and miserable. So I think I've learned from that and I'm going with the second one.
  • polarbear
    edited April 2010
    Thanatos;64108 said:
    .... the following two options:
    - Studying a field that I find interesting, has more career opportunities, more money in it and I find incredibly challenging and difficult and will probably only be mediocre in
    or
    - Studying a field that I find really interesting but doesn't have as many career opportunities or as much money in it but I find more easy and fun and I really excel at.

    I picked the first option to begin with and consequently it made me stressed out and miserable. So I think I've learned from that and I'm going with the second one.
    You're lucky that you can succeed in the field in which you're interested mostly. It's not always the case, and I'm the example.

    Don't think this field doesn't provide as many career opportunities or money as others. The point is that you never know.

    Wish you the best.

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