Bad Grades, NCAA probation, change major..start over elsewhere?

College Life
1

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>I’m a freshman going to school 5hrs+ away from my hometown. I was recruited to swim D1 at my university, but was not given a scholarship. I thought I knew what major I wanted and the path I wanted for the rest of my life. I am a Biochemistry major in the premed program as well as an athlete. I’ve always been a headstrong kid, I earned A’s and B’s in highschool, took AP classes, and earned an above average SAT score. I swam for 9 years on a prestigious club swim team as well. I had everything going for me, and this first semester of college I blew it. I was always tired from having 2 practices a day. I had an intense schedule from 6am practice to 9am classes until I had my evening practice. I took biology, chemistry, calculus 2, latin 2, and english all in my first semester. I wanted to originally go into nueroscience, but that wasn’t offered at my univerisity. Anyways, I recieved my grades over winter break and it is not pretty-- 2 F’s, a D, a B- and an A. I’m barely holding on to a 1.00 right now. I was NEVER this bad in highschool, I held almost a 4.00!! My parents are SOSOSO disappointed. They are worried I’ve really messed up and won’t be able to fix it. I can’t swim unless I have a 2.00, and that was one of the main reasons I went to my university. But my interest in swimming is slowly dieing anyway, I’ve been doing it since I was 4! Also, my school is very expensive, and my parents can’t afford to pay the whole thing, so I have taken out loans and I have a small academic scholarship that I will probably loose. I’m not sure I can thrive in the Spring 2012 semester at my school because I don’t know what to do differently. I have changed my major to general engineering–I know it sounds crazy, but my A was in lab and my B- was in math! I love math and I love computers so I’m kind of leaning toward computer science. I thought I loved chemistry and biology, but college level is HEAVY memorization and HEAVIER reading, while in those AP classes I mainly did labs and dissections which helped me ace those high school courses. I probably should’ve gone to more office hours and not skipped some early morning or late afternoon classes to catch up on sleep after and before swim practice, but I thought I was always out of time.</p>

<p>I’ve talked with my parents and I’ve come up with a plan. I think I want to stay closer to home and attend a community college for a 2 year computer science A.A. degree. Then, I could transfer to a state school for my last 2 years of undergraduate studies. I hope to get connected with a government company that recognizes my progress, after I attend CC, and they will pay my way through undergrad and maybe grad school if I promise to work for them for x amount of years. I know its farfetched just looking at my GPA, but I’m a determined 18 year old girl that really wants to learn! I taught myself pretty much all my courses my senior year of high school (and earned A’s) because my teachers weren’t doing an adequate enough job. Community college would be SO much less expensive and would give me a chance to regroup and start over since it is 2012. I would get a job at the gym right by my community college and I could easily pay my way for school.</p>

<p>I haven’t dropped out of univeristy yet because I am still on edge about what to do. If ANYONE has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate your input and take it to heart 150%!!</p>

2

<p>Go to CC. Save money and do well every semester. Then, go to best school you can get into in-state for your major. You can still turn everything around, but you may want to give up swimming to focus on your studies.</p>

3

<p>Thank you so much for your reply!
All the advice I can get will really help me. Any advice on study skills? Unless I study math, I don’t really know how to study at the college level.</p>

4

<p>Sounds like a decent plan. If you end up staying at the university, you might wanna consider club or intramural swimming. That way, you can still continue your hobby of swimming, and it will be a much smaller time commitment than NCAA.</p>

5

<p>i swam in high school. and i think you should give up swimming. just do it as a hobby. which school do you go to?</p>

6

<p>Your first mistake was your course load. Even for a biochemistry major, that’s heavy for your first semester. But I definitely second going to a CC. it’ll be cheaper, you can retake the classes you failed (usually with smaller class sizes) and work your way back up. And shake off whatever nonsense is floating around that tells you your HS GPA matters. It’s a completely different ball game.</p>

<p>It’s going to be hard to find a company to sponsor your education because of your GPA. There will be a requirement and you’re going to really work for a 3.0 for that and internships and graduate school.</p>

7

<p>swimming is fun I guess…but I don’t really enjoy the competition anymore</p>

<p>I go to Fairfield Univeristy in CT</p>

8

<p>hmm a similar thing happened to my friend but he ended up dropping swimming after his year & staying at the school – where he went on to get a 3.5 gpa as a biochem major. it turned out it was just the swimming that was killing him. so you can consider that maybe? </p>

<p>but your case it seems like the courseload itself is just too hard & the school is hard in general, so go CC i guess</p>

9

<p>If you decide not to continue at your current school, do the withdrawl paperwork rather than just drop out without saying anything. If you should ever decide to return to the same school, having withdrawn “cleanly” may make it easier to return than if you had dropped out without saying anything.</p>

10

<p>I am so sorry to hear this. You are obviously a very accomplished young woman, it sounds to me like you just bit off more than you can chew. Can you take a lighter class load? You are capable of doing the work where you are, but if going to a CC near home would boost your confidence back up, maybe that’s the right choice.</p>