Fail of Your Day

Yeah I was a bit of a tit and followed the satnav too much. But it was a blind hill and you really couldn’t tell as you came over the top that it was a long set of stairs. Thankfully I was able to put some bricks under the wheels to give it some more leverage. My friend reversed the car and I lifted it up and over. Thank god it was a K-car and all but cut up my hands, blew out a knee and hurt my back. Just pissed at the paper work for a small bit of trim damage.

Due to having a 2.7 GPA When I needed a 2.8 I might actually have to sit this semester out. I’m going on campus to see if there’s anything I can do, but man this sucks.

Dude, that’s really rough. I’m sorry.

Yeah me too. Also have a hold from the Bursar for Summer semester, so unless I can come into some money tomorrow basically I’m out anyway.

Good news is A&S will probably accept me after I my appointment tomorrow.

FWIW, I had a rough time academically in college. Academic probation, I think twice, and very seriously almost got thrown out once. I basically had to convince the dept head to give me one more semester to get my grades up.

There’s a happy ending. For you I mean. There was for me and there will be for you.

At RIT freshman year I started with terrific grades. Then they went way downhill when I realized I just had to do the bare minimum.

I also got fucked this one semester. There was a basic chemistry class, my best science. The professor let you off by erasing your worst exam. The one day I accidentally skipped the class happened to be the day of the first and easiest exam.

I got on academic probation, but I clawed my way out of it without being kicked out. I went from not good enough to just barely good enough. Later on I failed calculus III 2 or 3 times. I finally took it during the summer and got a C. I didn’t learn the material, I think that’s just what happens in a summer class.

My last year I somehow got like As and dean’s list and whatever. The difficult classes were behind me.

Doesn’t matter. Got the same piece of paper as everyone else. Nobody ever checked my grades from college. Nobody ever cared. Nobody ever will care. It will never matter. Could have gotten all Cs. I make enough money to pay NYC rent. Other people with the same exact diploma, and better grades, are not as lucky as I am.

Just gotta graduate by any means necessary.

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I had a 4.0 until I joined the executive board of the anime club. That was more work than any of my classes, and I made my decision.

I had to maintain a cumulative GPA of 3.4 however, or I would have lost my scholarship and had to drop out.

I thus declined to exactly 3.4, which is what I graduated with.

Talk to your ombudsman, your academic adviser, etc… I new tons of people who slipped below an arbitrary line and were in danger of being kicked out, but were able to cut deals. It’s surprising how many students don’t just talk to the people at the school who decide these things: there’s usually very reasonable and accommodating.

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Oh, that’s much better than I was imagining! I thought it was all-the-way down dukes of hazard shit kinda drove down some steps. Thank fuck for that, then!

Yeah I was pretty lucky all things considered. Was those big old steps but was lucky over all. Small bit of trim damage but that was all. Back is a bit sore.

I’m waiting till I get the 86 then I’ll jump steps.

Well seeing as how we’re doing it. I started school much like Scott with excellent grades.

I failed the final of Calc || and convinced the prof to let me retake it after a brake and was able to actually go from failing to a C (final was worth 20% of the whole grade)

I failed Calc III and had to take it again.

What basically got me was complacency. Once I realized I could handle the workload (my freshman year proved that) secure in the knowledge that I could I casually didn’t anymore. The next three years were me failing, getting on probation, dragging my grades back up, getting off probation. Rinse and repeat.

Towards the end those high level CS classes started killing me, CS Theory II specifically was murder (fun fact, I was the only white guy in the class) It was that semester that I had to talk with a dept head to allow me another shot at the class in the form of not throwing me out. I convinced him on the condition that I had weekly meetings with him (which he often cancelled or delegated away)

I never made deans list or anything but I did graduate. I have a piece of paper identical to Scott’s with a different date and name. I basically agree, get the paper at all costs. Beg, bargain, lie, cheat and steal your way to a paper.

CS Theory was also rough. I didn’t learn shit. I don’t even know how I passed. I think I got a D?

For some reason Systems Programming, which I also don’t feel like I understand at all, I got an A? I was writing some VAX assembly in a lab with no Internet and VT100 terminals. I got up and walked out while everyone else was still in there working on their project.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

It’s been something like 5 or 6 years since I took Systems Programming, and I still have a fairly sincere fuck you for you on that. I would have been one of those people you left in that lab, quietly muttering curses and trying to figure out how to make a Y combinator as you casually submitted and left.

If it’s any comfort, I learned almost nothing. My fingers did almost all the work. I have never beaten a Zachtronics game, although I do enjoy them.

Honestly, not really. I’m about 100% sure I’ve devoted 10 minutes total thought to assembly since that class ended. So the fact that we learned nothing is kinda par for the course.

Add me to the list of “started promising and then discovered that I’m actually a shitty student.” No ragrets, except maybe I could’ve slacked more strategically.

Gainfully employed. I even have land and shit. Land!

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Yes indeed. IIRC you tried way way harder than we did.

I did well at the start and end of my college career. I went to a really boring but good school my first year and did nothing but homework and study. Then my next couple years I kinda just goofed around mostly because I thought the stuff being taught was interesting but ultimately kinda lame. Then my last year which was purely all the good CS classes I went back to doing well.

Yeah, my grades too continually slipped every kind of school I want up. I was an A+ student in grade school, an A student in middle school, and a C Student in High School. Even failed math a year. The school would still have advanced to the next year (in austria high school is organized by year, not by course) because all my other other grades were fine, but I actually went and corrected my grade to a C by performing well in the re-exam at the end of summer. Also made Matura (austrian equivalent of A-Level exam or high school diploma) with “outstanding success”.

And then it took me ten semester to get my bachelor in computer science because I was extremely lazy and just couldn’t get the hang of integrals and differentials in my math courses. It’s usually set for six semesters. Oh well, done is better than perfect.

Just hang in there.

I put a ton of effort into my non-IT classes, but phoned in my IT classes.

It’s interesting comparing undergrad, where your grades generally don’t matter, and just the diploma does, to law school, where grades DEFINITELY mattered. From getting onto journals, to applying for internships and jobs mid-semester and during the summer, grades were HUGELY important.

That being said, I think it also depends on which law school you went to. Someone who went to Harvard Law and had a shitty GPA will probably get a job over someone who went to Syracuse University and was on Dean’s List all three years, but not always. A lot of opportunities in law school come from clerking for judges, and they’re much more likely to dive deep into someone’s resume and GPA than a random law firm or government agency. I know a lot of government jobs require you to have a law school GPA above a certain number or be in a certain percentage of your graduating class.

I’m not sure about medical school or other “professional degrees.”