About to fail out of college in my senior year again :( (degree, high school)

[Lenya]

Hi guys,

Thank you to anyone who takes the time to read this thread you didn't have to, but you took the time to which means a lot to me. Not sure if this should be posted in the mental health section or the college section but I'll just start the thread here and try to be brief. I first started university in 2007 in the asian Asian Pacific majoring in Corporate Law. I was an A student winning awards for academic performance until my final year. Due to personal problems which I will go into later I failed two of my final courses twice and was suspended from my University with the option of coming back at a future time. Since you're only allowed to attempt a course twice that meant I would never be able to go back as a Corporate Law major and would have to start a new major as a sophomore. I was already 100k deep in my parents money since they supported me and did not want to keep wasting their money, so I gave up and never went back just shy of completion.

The next 2 years was spent in depression. I decided to return to school and ended up applying to universities in North America for finance programs (although I never enjoyed finance I really excelled in it and would seem like a stable career). I got accepted with a conditional offer to meet a certain GPA my 1st year. I got two years worth of transfer credits mostly for second year and third year classes. 25% of my transfer credits were for classes I took in high school. Only a year worth of those actually applied to my major though this is an important point (as it led to my undoing). First year went okay, but 2nd year is when things started to fall apart. I have this problem of not being able to do one thing at a time for example I will have 10 tabs open even right now or watch 4 different movies at the same time pausing from on to the other. But my main problem is that I have social anxiety disorder. All my second year courses had assignments and presentations worth 35-40% of my final grade. But when giving a presentation things start happening which I can't seem to control the pitch of my voice, excessive sweating, stuttering, trembling, blushing, excessive blinking and not even being able to speak. To make it worse uncontrollable tears started coming out and the whole class explode with laughter at my expensive. I've never been so embarrassed. To make a long story short I failed most of my presentations while doing exceptionally well in written exams. I stopped leaving my apartment and basically became a hermit. I did poorly that semester and got put on probation. I went to seek help for my disorder but my private insurance did not cover therapy and meds. So had to pay out of my own pocket. This soon became too expensive and after my dad lost his job assistance from them stopped and was limited to self help books.

On probation I did well during the fall but right before the winter semester started something unfortunate happened to me health wise and needed major surgery. I should've took the whole semester off but I made a bad decision and came back to early. I hadn't recovered and was sleeping almost 16 hours a day. To make it worse I had got transfer credits in stats 1 and calculus 2 and was taking stats 2 and calculus 3. Non of the material was the same as what I had studied at my previous university in another country. I spent most of my time trying to study stats 1 and calculus 2 so that I could understand the courses I was now studying. I was way behind and ended the semester with 2 A's and 2 F's. After this I got kicked out of business school in my senior year again. It was at this point that I got told all credits counted toward my degree including the other 30 transfer credits from high school that were not part of my degree. So that added a years worth of credits most of which had nothing to do with any degree I would ever attempt. (I hope this somehow makes sense it pretty confusing even typing it). They gave me a conditional offer into a BA program which overlapped with some of the courses I had taken. It was conditional because I was way over the amount of credits required to graduate with a BA 5 years worth to be exact. But my gpa wasn't high enough to graduate. I would need to get an A or better in calculus 3 (which I had failed) to be admitted in the BA program. After that would need 9 credits to graduate with the BA.

Even though calculus was extremely hard I worked really hard at it. I had very little margin for error. The course weighting had 4 tests in total which I had to pretty much Ace. The night before my first test I got the news that my dad was hospitalized and was in critical condition. I wasn't mentally there and should never had gone to the exam but I was afraid because at the time I didn't have an documentation to prove this. My professor had been really clear about missing exams and his no re-sit policy. I had a panic attack during the exam in which I just blanked out. I failed the test. No amount of explaining or begging to try and get the weight moved to the other tests would help. What really depressed me is some students just skipped the exam and didn't have documentation or anything and got the weight of the first test moved to the other tests. It wasn't lack of understanding of the concepts after my dad was better my grades for the other tests were 98%, 97%, and 98% all class highs. But the bad decision I made of attempting the first test was the final nail in my coffin. I fell 1% short of the required 'A'.

How does one make so many bad decisions in life? 26 years old and 200k in education with absolutely nothing to show for it. I feel like jumping off the nearest bridge but my family doesn't deserve to hurt because of a loser like me who has been given so many chances. How do I face them? Anyway just needed to share this with someone. Thanks for taking the time to read.

[schmidty223]

I'll tell you one thing that is obvious: Don't try to get a BA for the third time.

It's tragic that your social anxiety disorder got in the way.

College isn't always the answer. Plus, I think your parents overpaid for your education. 100k per attempt at a BA? I think it's partially on them for paying so much.

You can probably get a decent job just for almost completing your BA. You'll have to lie about failing the last courses though.

[intelfan11315]

I'm going to assume this is real.

You'll be just fine, make correct decisions from here and just do what you can. Everyone gets to where they're going different ways.. you've got a more difficult road than some and an easier road than others. Work hard and you'll get there.