Failing Undergrad

[ThePotato]

I'm in the middle of getting my Bachelors degree and quite frankly, I'm failing undergrad, hard, very hard. I have extreme anxiety and it affects me very badly. As for my grades, I believe I will get a D or an F in General Chemistry I, as for a basic math class, I'm standing on the C- , D zone and General Biology a C- , D. At this point, I don't know what to do. I always wanted to be in the medical field, but with the grades I have now, I don't even think any school would want to take me. What should I do now? How can I improve myself? What can I do to make myself stand out like crazy at this point?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Eskibot]

Well the bad news is tha what has passed has already passed, and theres nothing you can do about it.

The good news is that you can ultimately make a choice. Are you ganna learn from this semesters mistakes or are you ganna go into next semester and just hope for the best.

Ask yourself what is causing these bad grades (i know you said you have extreme anxiety, but can it also be something else)? Do you need to change your study habits? Get tutors? Are you asking for help when you are not understanding the material? Recognize that you are not doing well in school and seek help from others, theres no shame in that.

Let me know if I might be able to help in any way

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Are you getting treatment for your anxiety? I know asking for help can feel like failing, but anxiety is very real and very hard to control on your own. If it is affecting you that much, you should seek help. There's no shame in it, and you'll perform closer to your actual potential.

 

[ThePotato]

Are you getting treatment for your anxiety? I know asking for help can feel like failing, but anxiety is very real and very hard to control on your own. If it is affecting you that much, you should seek help. There's no shame in it, and you'll perform closer to your actual potential.

No, I am not receiving treatment for anxiety. I do not feel comfortable admitting that I have anxiety to my doctor. However, I want to believe that I can somehow manage it myself.

 

[ThePotato]

Well the bad news is tha what has passed has already passed, and theres nothing you can do about it.

The good news is that you can ultimately make a choice. Are you ganna learn from this semesters mistakes or are you ganna go into next semester and just hope for the best.

Ask yourself what is causing these bad grades (i know you said you have extreme anxiety, but can it also be something else)? Do you need to change your study habits? Get tutors? Are you asking for help when you are not understanding the material? Recognize that you are not doing well in school and seek help from others, theres no shame in that.

Let me know if I might be able to help in any way

I have learned from this semester and I will certainly do better in my next semester. As for my grades, I in fact have 3 chemistry tutors (all which have been no help by the way, because I was taught wrong things according to my professor), and it's hard for me to approach my professor because he's very intimidating to me. I just don't know how I can pick my grades and GPA up to get into grad school let alone med school.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

No, I am not receiving treatment for anxiety. I do not feel comfortable admitting that I have anxiety to my doctor. However, I want to believe that I can somehow manage it myself.

Clearly you are having trouble managing it yourself. That's what doctors are for. If your anxiety is so bad that you cannot get decent grades in undergrad, you will not suddenly be able to overcome it in med school where the stress level is ramped up. See someone now before you blow your chances at med school because you were too proud to ask for help.

 

[ThePotato]

Clearly you are having trouble managing it yourself. That's what doctors are for. If your anxiety is so bad that you cannot get decent grades in undergrad, you will not suddenly be able to overcome it in med school where the stress level is ramped up. See someone now before you blow your chances at med school because you were too proud to ask for help.

It's not that I'm too proud to ask for help but a fear, however I do intend on seeking help because it's clearly affecting my grades. I just don't know what to do or go at this point because I have failed the most basic pre-reqs there are for grad/med school. Starting to lose hope on Med school.

 

[Eskibot]

I have learned from this semester and I will certainly do better in my next semester. As for my grades, I in fact have 3 chemistry tutors (all which have been no help by the way, because I was taught wrong things according to my professor), and it's hard for me to approach my professor because he's very intimidating to me. I just don't know how I can pick my grades and GPA up to get into grad school let alone med school.

Well what is your GPA right now? Retake those classes and build a good foundation. If it takes you an extra year to get into med school, so what

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

It's not that I'm too proud to ask for help but a fear, however I do intend on seeking help because it's clearly affecting my grades. I just don't know what to do or go at this point because I have failed the most basic pre-reqs there are for grad/med school. Starting to lose hope on Med school.

You're salvageable. Especially with grade replacement and DO schools. But you need to get a handle on the anxiety and move forward.

 

[ThePotato]

Well what is your GPA right now? Retake those classes and build a good foundation. If it takes you an extra year to get into med school, so what

As of right now, 3.10. However those grades will obviously lower my GPA. The thing is I don't know if I can get into med school anymore, even if I took retook those classes. I feel as if my application would just be tossed aside seeing I failed the first time and the fact that I retook those classes a second time seems very bad.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

As of right now, 3.10. However those grades will obviously lower my GPA. The thing is I don't know if I can get into med school anymore, even if I took retook those classes. I feel as if my application would just be tossed aside seeing I failed the first time and the fact that I retook those classes a second time seems very bad.

Check out the underdog threads on the pre-DO forum. Plenty of people with GPAs worse than yours have overcome a poor start.

 

[Jamie561]

I'm in the middle of getting my Bachelors degree and quite frankly, I'm failing undergrad, hard, very hard. I have extreme anxiety and it affects me very badly. As for my grades, I believe I will get a D or an F in General Chemistry I, as for a basic math class, I'm standing on the C- , D zone and General Biology a C- , D. At this point, I don't know what to do. I always wanted to be in the medical field, but with the grades I have now, I don't even think any school would want to take me. What should I do now? How can I improve myself? What can I do to make myself stand out like crazy at this point?

i think you should investigate other careers


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app

 

[Eskibot]

As of right now, 3.10. However those grades will obviously lower my GPA. The thing is I don't know if I can get into med school anymore, even if I took retook those classes. I feel as if my application would just be tossed aside seeing I failed the first time and the fact that I retook those classes a second time seems very bad.

Check out the underdog threads on the pre-DO forum. Plenty of people with GPAs worse than yours have overcome a poor start.

I agree with Matthew. My advisor said that he has gotten plenty of people with under a 3.0 into med school when I first met with him. You never know until you try. Just keep hammering at it.

 

[Goro]

1) You're not dead yet, academically.
2) You MUST get your anxiety under control. Med school is a furnace and I've seen it break even healthy students.
2') IF you continue to engage in the delusion that you can manage your anxiety yourself, you do not deserve to go to med school. We don't need students who make poor choices, who look at seeking help as a sign of weakness, or who have control issues. Just out of curiousity, if you were peeing blood, or lost the vision in one eye, would you try to control that by yourself???
3) Retake all F/D/C science coursework
4) If you can get Ws for this semester, do it. Do it now.
5) Take a LOA if needed and go heal.
6) Go seek out your school's learning or education center for help in the learning process.

 

[ThePotato]

1) You're not dead yet, academically.
2) You MUST get your anxiety under control. Med school is a furnace and I've seen it break even healthy students.
2') IF you continue to engage in the delusion that you can manage your anxiety yourself, you do not deserve to go to med school. We don't need students who make poor choices, who look at seeking help as a sign of weakness, or who have control issues. Just out of curiousity, if you were peeing blood, or lost the vision in one eye, would you try to control that by yourself???
3) Retake all F/D/C science coursework
4) If you can get Ws for this semester, do it. Do it now.
5) Take a LOA if needed and go heal.
6) Go seek out your school's learning or education center for help in the learning process.

Say if my professor offered me a UW or even an I should I take that or stick with my F? How much will a W, UW, or I affect my process in applying for grad/med school?

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

A W looks way better than an F. As long as it isn't a WF, it won't affect your GPA.

 

[mwsapphire]

A W looks way better than an F. As long as it isn't a WF, it won't affect your GPA.

WF's don't impact your gpa either. ( It just tells a school that you were , in fact, failing at the time of the W. The point of withdrawing that class is still to protect the GPA, it just removes ambiguity). Although, my school just has W's, no WP or WF.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

WF's don't impact your gpa either. ( It just tells a school that you were , in fact, failing at the time of the W. The point of withdrawing that class is still to protect the GPA, it just removes ambiguity). Although, my school just has W's, no WP or WF.

You're right. I was thinking of AACOMAS, which treats WFs as Fs for GPA calculation purposes.

 

[mwsapphire]

You're right. I was thinking of AACOMAS, which treats WFs as Fs for GPA calculation purposes.

Well...that's pretty stupid. Not all institutors even have WF's , most have just a W. That, and the fact that AACOMAS classifies classes based on the department and not the content ....so a physiology based Neuroscience class that a university happens to offer through the Psych department is not BCPM.

 

[astrostellar]

You sound like me back in 2009-2011. If you would like my advice, I'm going to start by saying it's fairly non-traditional.

PULL BACK FOR A BIT. If you don't have your anxiety under control, you're only going to rack up more bad grades. That was the part I didn't really get. I just kept trying over and over and kept getting more Fs and Ds and Cs. Do something different. Work for a little bit, maybe go part-time see a therapist if you can, maybe try a low dose of some meds to see if it tones down the anxiety (or you could just be insane like me and join the military to straighten yourself out... not recommended, though it worked). Make a plan. Take time off and try again. For me, it seemed like the end of the world to be a semester or a year or two years older than everybody else, but now, I realize that if I'd kept trying the way I was back then, I NEVER would have made any progress and I would have irreparably damaged my GPA.

You 100% have to sort yourself out before reattempting. It doesn't even necessarily mean taking time off; it could mean starting to figure something out over the summer. I couldn't really cope with the idea of "failing" by withdrawing for a semester or going part-time and seeking a therapist, so now I'm recovering from a <2 cGPA. It's gonna take years. I'm not saying "quit while you're ahead," but I'm saying "pause and reassess before you do any more damage." I messed up college from 18-21 by being basically crippled by anxiety and co-morbid depression and now that I've gotten treatment, I know what causes it, how to avoid it, and what to do when it's getting me down. It's still a struggle most days, but I've been getting As for over a year now part-time and plan on going back to full-time soon.

You CAN do it, you just have to be willing to be humble and realize when something isn't working. Your GPA isn't beyond repair, but it will be if this happens any more.

GOOD LUUUUUUUUUCK. seriously. I feel you.

 

[shouldigomd]

I failed out of college and am starting residency in july. Had to go get my AA from CC and all that good stuff. Lots of good advice here and you definitely need to reflect. A poor history of grades feels like a ball and chain ... I struggled with that for years. I couldn't escape it and it impacted my motivation every new semester. Forget about your GPA and focus on taking things one semester at a time. Today is a new day and a fresh slate. Only then can you escape. Med schools want to see you succeed in a rigorous curriculum over the course of a few semesters (obviously your last semesters) rather than your GPA simply as a number. My GPA was below 2.0. 3 semesters of A's and B+'s in hard sciences barely got me a 3.3 overall GPA. Some people do post grad training / masters / etc but the goal is the same.... to illustrate you can handle the rigors of med school. Don't blind yourself by becoming preoccupied with your GPA #.

 

[Ad2b]

2.195 checking in here (from the mid-80s)
3.86+ current w/prereqs

Would encourage you to STOP focusing on med school and focus on YOU - get help. Go see the counseling center at your school, get checked for anxiety, get help with study/test strategies. Until that's under control, med school IS out of the question.

Graduate with whatever your degree is. Work a few years, volunteer to help others. THEN and only then, decide... and if you need to take some more classes to get back into the swing of things, take UD courses like genetics, or whatever. Then the MCAT.

What you need is time between the @#$t GPA now... and what you are possibly capable of. Trying to increase a low GPA with worse grades and shove that into some near-future app cycle = failure.

Would also suggest you not take 20+ years between @#$t GPA and application either. It's not for the faint of heart