ND has great guidance and counseling. Please utilize both. My daughter is a civil engineering major who found the counseling center very help. ND is very challenging academically. She found it hard to accept being a B+/A- student when she was use to being a perfect A+ student in high school.
ND has so many opportunities that will allow you to become more than your GPA. Please take advantage of all of them from research to service opportunities. ND will help you define your self-worth beyond your GPA and allow you
to change the world which we live in for the better.
You need to get help to reprogram that thinking! You are not your grades! You can fail and retake a class. It truly is not the end of the world.
Utilize the supports you will find at ND. It’s a very supportive community!
@QB18ND23 - I got better by speaking to a therapist actually. And it wasn’t something that took months of therapy…more of a lightbulb moment for me to realize. However, working on moving past that took time, and I still have to work through those feelings. I would practice recognizing the physical sensation of that belief (face going red, blood pressure, overall sense of panic) and then think “ok, I’m feeling this because of ‘x’ reason”. I would spend time reflecting on why I felt that way, was it real, or the pressure I was placing on myself. Then, a lot of practice with reminding myself that my value as a person wasn’t based on whatever was causing that immediate response. Once I got better at this, it was so freeing. I wasn’t waking up at 2am panicking because I forgot to reply to an email. I wasn’t feeling like a failure because something I worked on wasn’t the best. And because of this, my confidence and success in my profession actually improved greatly. Anyway- my advice is to not just read my post and try to do it on your own. 
explore what options you have to work with a professional. Talk to your parent or a trusted adult about how you are struggling and let them know you are asking for help. Also- it is easy for everyone to tell you “don’t feel that way”, but a much bigger challenge to actually change that mindset. That is why a number of people in this thread are suggesting you work through this using the support of people who have experience in this type of thing. I’m happy to ‘chat’ more if you want to DM.
Thank you for the advice, everyone. Please feel free to add more. I’ll be gone from here for about a week, since we’re moving to a new country and probably won’t have wifi for a while.
Come to think of it, this panic of mine may have been triggered by the stress of moving in addition to already-existing anxieties.
Alright, I’ve cleared my head a bit over the past few weeks. As suggested, I’m doing what I can to hit the ground running and to give myself confidence. I’m learning calculus 2 and 3 material, and reading up a lot on study strategies, time management, study groups, office hours, etc.
Is there anything else I should be doing over the summer?
Look at the physics class from MIT on their ocw website. Try to “take” the class to prepare yourself.
Since you like physics, major in physics.
(Do you need to take chemical principles right your first semester?)
Don’t you ave core Humanities classes?
Hey, a Russian mom here.
This is the problem right here. I wouldn’t say grades aren’t important, they are, but only as a means to an end, never the end in themselves. Do you have friends? What do you do in your spare time? I would spend your summer trying to find your self-worth outside of grades and academics in general. If you need to talk to a therapist for this, I hope your parents will help. Volunteering might be another way. This is the time in your life when you are discovering yourself, and you are so much more than your grades.
@MYOS1634
I do have a core curriculum with liberal arts requirements (university seminars, philosophy, theology, history, etc.) in addition to a required introductory chemistry course.
Funnily enough, I suspect it will the chemistry that will be the hardest since I have next to no preparation in it, unlike math, physics, and writing.
Yes, I’d be very hesitant to be taking both physics and chemistry and on top of it Calculus your first semester. What does your adviser think?
I understand Calculus is going to be an in-depth review, but the two science courses are going to be really tough each on their own.
Perhaps you should check out the ocw for intro to chem too (and it you’ve never taken chem, use Khan academy for the chemistry- AP chem courses).
Ideally you’d have the special 1st year seminar, math, one science, one core Humanities, another core class. Then second semester, once you’re used to the system, two sciences and 1 math + 1 or 2 core classes.
I’m all for easing your way into college. It’ll be challenging regardless.
In high school, academics defined you. I’m guessing they made you stand out. They made you special.
At Notre Dame all students will be like you academically. You’ll find other ways to define yourself: through your house and your friends, through your activities. It could even be through your passion for and achievements in Physics! It’s still possible to love learning and be focused on academics.
In reality…it’ll likely be through several of these means.
Perhaps you’ll join the Renaissance club, the reading club, and the physics society; and you’ll start singing in a Gospel choir, you’ll try archery, you’ll volunteer at a nearby elementary school… All while finding a lab in which you’ll show reliability by doing grunt work at first, then you’ll help for real.
We are never just one thing.
@MYOS1634
I don’t have much choice as far as those STEM courses are concerned. I’m required to have a physics, calculus, and chemistry class for each semester my first year. My hope is that I can lighten the burden by starting from the bottom in physics and calculus even though I have AP background and self-study in both. This should give me time to catch up in chemistry.
Ok, that’s a good plan. And you can prepare by reviewing online.
All students will be in the same boat then. You’ll all find it hard together :).
Highly selective colleges know what they’re doing. They selected you because you can succeed.
Focus on what you are learning, on your growth as a person and a scholar.
You’re a Notre Dame student now. Sooner than you think, you’ll be a Notre Dame graduate.
Honestly your course selection seems to be perfect for engineering. My son did this same course load at Michigan. It’s pretty typical but not easy. With both sciences you should also have one lab each. It’s just time consuming. He also had multivariate Calc in high school and restarted Calc 1-3 in college then linear algebra etc. It wasn’t easy BTW… As I told him that high school was about getting into college. College is about learning. At Tip Top schools like ND and Michigan sometimes it’s hard to have stellar grades in engineering or physics. Use the above advice. Use “all” the resources right off the bat like study groups, Professor hours etc. FYI - he is not into programming and in a C++ class “one” problem took him and his partner 11 hours over 2 days to complete and they were one of the first in their group to get it correct! Point of story… Especially in physics you will struggle with others. Or as you said, maybe Chemistry. My son found Chemistry easy but had a hard time with physics and he’s in engineering. But it’s OK… Like he told me you all struggle together. Heh, this is Not easy stuff and if it was everyone would be doing it.
Also try to find a way to combine your two interest. Just start googling and when you get to college take with some professors. Maybe there is the physics of language or something like that. Create your own major and future. Develop a niche that you are the expert in???
You have managed an insightful analysis and presentation of the challenge you’re facing but might need help modifying your concept of self-worth. Everyone has to do some form of this work with or without assistance. Beautiful writing - intelligent, honest, and warm.
@agreatstory
I’m sorry, is it my writing you refer to as beautiful, or someone else’s?
@QB18ND23
It is your writing.
I went to school in Moscow in the 70s and 80s. The schools have changed a lot since then so I wouldn’t really know but I think they’re still tougher on kids than American elementary schools. Don’t let yourself be defined by your earlier experience. You’ll do just fine in ND and you’ll grow and change in many different ways. Hugs and feel free to PM me if you’d like.
@agreatstory
Why thank you.
It’s quite common for engineering to have a very fixed set of courses that ideally you start with freshman year. If you think that might be of interest you might want to start there, but do talk to your advisor about what makes sense for YOU. College can be hard on straight A kids who suddenly get thrown in with a lot of other straight A kids. You aren’t all going to end up in the top 10% of the class. My oldest (who majored in CS and minored in physics at a demanding program) was in the top 1% of his class in high school and didn’t even get any kind of honors in college. But he is in his dream job anyway.
I agree with others that you might see if you can talk to a therapist about your feeling that too much of your self-worth is invested in getting good grades. I think just the fact that you recognize that this is a problem, means that you are on the way to figuring it out.
Finally, enjoy your freshman year. Take some courses in things you know nothing about. The best course I took in college was called “Chinese Landscape Painting of the Sung Dynasty”, a small graduate seminar. The second best course was a well-known easy-A course with a prof who was well known for giving fabulous lectures. It was on Greek Lit. (Translated into English.) Neither had anything to do with my major.
@mathmom
Out of curiosity, what was your son’s dream job? I must say, the prospect of having my college performance differ so greatly from that of high school as you have described is at the core of my fears.