Great...I'm a huge fuck up and have no future

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

A pitting of myself, what fun!

I applied to grad school what seems like an eternity ago. The school took FOREVER in getting back to me, so I called them today to see what was up. Well, what was up is that I was not accepted, and I know exactly why.

Because last fall I was in a different grad school, but because I am a fucking MORON and couldn’t even understand the first few weeks worth of material, I just decided the best course of action was to stop going to school. No, not officially drop out (at least not until Spring semester came and I had two F’s,) just stop going entirely. So what WAS a decent grad school GPA of a 3.8, suddenly dropped down to below a 3.

So now I can’t get a job, and I can guarantee that no other grad school would take me (I figured RPI would because I did my undergrad there so they would have sympathy for me, or something…guess not.) I’m just so mad at myself right now. I’m sure that if I just did the proper thing and dropped out in the fall before it was too late, I would have been accepted. But no, I had to fucking dick around and not do it, for absolutely no reason! There was nothing stopping me from walking down to the fucking admission office and saying “I’m done now, bye!”

I just don’t know what I’m going to do anymore.

2

Can you go back and retake those classes to save your GPA?

Can you apply for a grad school without showing the units from your brief foray into grad school?

Good luck on the job hunt, regardless. Just show your undergrad work on the resume.

3

Can’t you get a medical deferral or something? That’s what all my friends did during that semester everyone has when you just stop going to class because you think you’ve got syphilis/skin cancer/a broken heart/gastroenteritis/schizophrenia/a new PlayStation.

4

This was my first thought. They only know what you tell them.

If that somehow doesn’t work, you can appeal to have your Fs changed to Ws. Most college faculty want to help those who want to help themselves, and they value persistence.

You’re not a huge fuck up or a loser because of this. It’s a tiny blip that can probably be fixed very easily.

5

In theory, yes. In practice…well, first I’d have to pay back that $3500 I owe the school. You see, because I failed those classes, now I have to pay back a substantial part of the loans I got right now. And THEN, even if I could pay that money back (which I can’t, BTW,) I would actually have to, you know…pass the classes. I was too much of a dumbass ass to do it the first time around, a year later I don’t see myself suddenly “getting” it.

6

I’m guessing (hoping) that no one is going to want to join in calling you a fuck up, but instead will offer constructive advice and sympathy, so I’ll move this thread to MPSIMS.

7

You have a great deal more faith in humanity than I do. I can think of all sorts of people on this board who would merrily join in calling the OP a fuckup.

8

Well, now we can’t. Damn you Giraffe! waves fist

smiles sweetly at bouv

9

That school is even giving you a transcript if you owe $3500? Nice of them.

Anyway, the only thing to do is get those F’s turned to W’s. I assure you, it won’t kill you to try. It might require some legwork, but it’s what needs to be done.

10

What on earth is a W, and why would **bouv ** want one? I know why an F is undesirable. Is a W like an incomplete?

11

{{{bouv}}}

You did a dumb thing, but there’s two kinds of people: those who have done dumb things, and liars who say they haven’t.

The worst they can say is “no”, and if they do, you’re no worse off than you are now.

I take it your field, whatever it is, requires a graduate degree to get a job? Do you have skills that might apply to some other field?

At my college, at least, it meant you withdrew from the class. Classes you had withdrawn from didn’t count in your GPA.

12

I got the transcript before they realized I owed them the money. And I can try to get them into W’s, but how do I do that? Should I go to the registrar’s office, or contact the professors from that class? Of course, this is assuming I can even change my grades, because I do have a hold. So Hell, even if they change them, I still can’t apply to other grad schools and USE my transcript, because of the fucking hold. Speaking of, I just got back from the student finances office and have a (paltry) payment plan set up. I can swing $150 a month…at that rate, it will only take me two years to pay them.

And yes, it’s practically required to have a master’s in my field (biomoedical engineering.) If you want to see what I mean, go peruse careerbuilder.com or monster.com and see how many jobs for biomedical engineer’s DON’T say they require a master’s or 3-5 years experience (I have neither.)

13

I’d try the professors first.

14

W is for a withdrawal. Like an incomplete, but without the expectation that you’ll finish the coursework at a later date. It pretty much says “I started the class, but backed out of it because I was in over my head/it was a waste of my time”. I’ve had one, for a writing class that I didn’t realize was in practice for people who spoke English as a second language. I wish I had withdrawn from a few other classes (thermochemistry, I’m looking at you…), rather than struggle along and still not pass.

On edit: Try looking for technician level positions in research labs. I was searching for that sort of thing recently (I’m finishing undergrad any minute now). In particular, I noticed that the Cleveland Clinic has biomedical engineering research labs, along with a few tech positions. The pay will be a big drop, but it beats the hell out of working a godawful job in retail.

15

Apply for the jobs that ask for 3-5 years experience anyways. Apply to every last one of them. They would like someone with a master’s degree, but trust me, that is NOT an absolute requirement in a lot of fields. HR understands the catch-22 of “need experience-can’t get a job” and even companies that say they want employees with higher degrees have entry level positions for those people that don’t have those degrees (yet).

I had a job where the requested degree level was MSc or PhD, and I only had a BSc, but it turned out to be a job a trained monkey could do, and I was better at it than a lot of my higher-educated co-workers! Trust me. Sell yourself well in a cover letter, get recommendations from whoever you can, network like crazy and apply anyways. Forget monster and career builder - apply directly via they company websites. Reapply to grad school for the winter… or next fall, or next summer, or the winter after that, etc if you want to, and mention in in your cv. Work experience can help make that crappy GPA go away. Look for technician jobs… they might not be quite what you want, but they can give you that 3-5 years of experience very quickly, and will be good enough for many careers, even in engineering.

Talk to your registrar about getting withdrawls on your transcript - it might not be too late. If they aren’t the right person to talk to, then they can tell you who you should see. Go see a doctor, if you haven’t already, if you think the issues you had/have are medical.

This is a tough situation, but it isn’t the end of the world. You can fix this. And showing you can fix it and get back on track will be good for grad applications/interviews!

16

bouv, the best advice I ever got about college - and it was my turning point from an occasional dabbler in part time classes to a full-time 4.0 student - was to just make it happen. That goes for finances mostly, but also for grades, classes you’re struggling with, professors you hate, etc. If you want the result, make the process happen. March into the main offices of your old school tomorrow and find out who you need to talk to to make those Fs Ws, and don’t leave until it’s done.

17

There’s the kicker. I can’t write a cover letter for shit, and I have maybe one person to get a letter of recommendations from, other than my current manager. And would an HR person in some engineering company give a rat’s ass what a restaurant manager has to say about me?

The thing is, I have been applying to these jobs. I go on almost every week and do searches, and send out resumes and cover letters by the ass load. Maybe 10% of them T even get a reply from. The reply is always the same (you suck, don’t bother,) but at least they’re nice enough to acknowledge that I applied.

18

Okay, this is the first time I’ve been tempted to agree with your claim about yourself in the OP (see how I got around that, Giraffe?), and it’s entirely within your own power to change this particular tune of yours here and now and change a whole lot about what happens next in your life. If you need money to buy your past educational pursuits out of hock and, you know, live on, then it’s probably not the time to go to school. What’s your field? What would you like your field to be? You don’t have to answer those questions, but it will allow the rest of us to write a cover letter by committee for you without having to make it a MadLib. Letters of recommendation have nothing to do with the early phases of a job hunt.

19

Yeah, with respect and as gently as I can, bouv, it sounds like the biggest problem you’re facing is your own attitude, and I don’t say that to minimize the other very difficult obstacles you face.

Look, it sounds like you can’t get the master’s in your current field anyway, because you can’t pass the classes. I make no judgment on that, not everyone is good at everything. And it sounds like you can’t get a job in your field without the advanced degree you can’t get. Is that right?

So what do you WANT to do? That’s the first thing you should probably determine. Where is it you want to go at this point? Are you looking to get into grad school in another field? Once you know where you’re going, then you can work on how to get there.

If you want to go back to school in another field and the grades in this attempt are going to dog you even though the field is different, I have a couple of suggestions:

  1. See if you can get the Fs to Ws. Do you talk to the professors or the registrar – How should we know? Call the registrar’s office, explain your problem, and ask them. Be frank about what occurred: You were overwhelmed and intimidated by your classes, became depressed and failed to take the steps necessary to withdraw. Maybe they’ll let you fix it, maybe they won’t; you won’t know if you don’t ask.

  2. Pay off the debt. If $150 a month is all you can swing, pay that. If it takes two years to pay off, so be it: That’s two years you can put into building a solid work history.

  3. Make yourself a desirable candidate for the next time. Take or audit a couple classes in whatever your new field is. Volunteer in a way that is related to that field. Write an article. Go to a conference. Think about how you can offset your misstep with your first attempt at graduate school. You want to be able to say, “that was me then, but I’ve different now.”

I’m not going to lie to you: You may have backed up your education and career by a couple of years. But at the end of the day, so what? You can’t change the past, you can only pick the best and most effective way to go forward. And the same amount of time passes either way: You’ll still be two years older in two years regardless of whether you’ve dug out of the hole or wallowed in it. The difference will be whether you’re ready to move on at that point, or whether you’re exactly where you are now.

The biggest problem I see is not that you fucked up your first attempt, but that you SOUND like a fuck-up. Not that you ARE, but that you let yourself SOUND that way: You messed up school. You can’t get your grades changed. You can’t get your transcript even if you could get your grades changed. You can’t even write a cover letter.

That’s where my BS detector goes off. Everyone can put together a decent cover letter! If you really can’t do it yourself, ask for help from someone whose writing you respect. Go to the library and check out a book on it. Go to the local Job Service and ask if they have a resume and cover letter workshop. Shit, people here on the Boards will help you if there’s no one else.

So: First, your attitude needs a serious adjustment and I say this with what I hope is tough love: You’d better get on that as Job One. No one is going to fix this situation for you, so you need to get to a place where you can decide how YOU can fix it and BELIEVE that you can. If you need to address underlying issues like depression – which I think I detect, though I could be wrong – get on that ASAP.

Second, you need to decide if moving forward in this field is even possible for you, much less what you want. Don’t throw good effort after bad. If you can’t pass the classes, don’t take them. Find something else to do, something that you are interested in that is also within your skill set.

Third, decide on a game plan. Having chosen a new goal, decide how you’re going to get there from here. Think little steps.

Fourth and most importantly, don’t be distracted by the enormity of the task so that you intimidate yourself again or lose hope. Set interim smaller goals and focus on them instead. All you can do today is the best you can do for today. Do something everyday to move your game plan forward, however small that may be. Anyone can eat a whole bear, you just have to eat it one bite at a time.

20

For work experience in bio engineering, look for lab rat gigs at the university. They don’t pay well, but you can start developing good contacts for later.