Well I know this is not a gun thread but it was first talked about here so here it is.
Most of you properly read my post about my teacher giving me a crap grade on my pro gun paper. I read most of what you all said and thought it through real hard before emailing her. My first thought was tell her to screw off and take the F in the class. Then I thought if i do that there goes my financial aid cause my GPA will be to low. I took alot of your advice to heart and sent her a nice email. I told her I understood I made a few to many mistakes and my citations should have been alot better. I told her I did not want her to regrade it. I told her I understood why I got a F though I thought alittle of it was my topic. I asked If I could make up a big assignment we did that I missed because the book pages where wrong and I did not find the article we had to read. She said even though she told me no before I could. She even told me to do what ever I could that was undone. I did got everything done but one thing that I total did not understand. She graded everything and I was 4% into having a F well I thought I did. When I saw my finial grade on the schools site it says D credit hours 3 credit hours reserved 3. She either gave me the points to hit a F or took the missed essay exam off so I had the D. Either way I am very glad she did.
Honestly I am glad it all happen. Sure a 95% on the paper and B would have been nice but it has made me really think about making sure I get my work done good and on time. All in all I think it was a good thing to have happen.

I mean no offense at all. But you have just started college and getting C's, D's and F's already? I hate to tell ya, but first two years are usually the easiest. It only gets harder after this.

My advice to you would be to pay attention to grammar and spelling with everything that you write. You're not graded on what you write here on HNI, but you can't write as sloppy as you do on a daily basis and then expect to write on a professional level while writing a paper. It's like going to the range and practicing with your rifle, you can't expect to hit a deer at 400 yards without practice, and you can't expect to write an A+ paper without practice. You have to make it second nature, try writing your posts in microsoft word, then paste them here. The spelling and grammar check feature will do a fairly good job of teaching you proper grammar.

Having a few years as an Assistant Professor and Advisor included in my resume, it's not always the case that lower-level, common-core courses are "easy".

Quite to the contrary, lower-level content-area courses tend to be easier, while the common-core courses are often more difficult to obtain high grades in. Particularly problematic is English. Many students arrive on campus fully prepared for high school English Comp and within weeks find their practiced writing style not in agreement with an instructor's preferences. Once the student adapts, they generally recover by semester's end. However, they're often forced into a second-semester course with another instructor and the exercise in frustration begins again. Often, the only positive outcome may be the ability to adapt quickly.

There's a reason we often considered Freshman Science, Math, and English as "weed-out" courses. Some students inevitably fall into the probation-suspension cycle and are gone before they attain Sophomore status. In the 1990s, it was relatively common for 50% of a Freshman cohort to be gone from campus within three semesters.

"Weed-out" or not, these classes do become indicators of later academic success. Someone who's scraping through these lower-level classes often does so because of inefficient or absent study habits. Dedicated study - obviously - is essential to passing more difficult, upper-level, content-area courses.

Your obviously not into science, math, or anything to do with engineering. If a student can't handle english 101 or precalc he sure won't be able to handle diffiential equations, process controls, advance signal processing or inorganic chemistry.

I guess your and my idea of higher education are two completely different things.

Dude? So you missed a bunch of assignments? Couldn't find an article?
No excuse, hoss. If your habits are already late and missing assignments, it's going to be hell getting through school.

I'm sure they are different. Your perspective is that of simply having been a student.

Lower-division coursework is more often than not a determinant of who can study, and who can not. There are plenty of students who fight their way through their first four or five semesters to emerge not so much a genius in their content area, but someone who can grasp and apply advanced concepts. I'm also familiar with a great many "gifted" students who breezed through or tested out of or recieved transfer credit for many lower-division courses only to find themselves unprepared for the discipline required to learn upper-division material.

And, truth be known, I am (or was) an Engineer until I found something more exciting to do. So, maybe things aren't so "obvious" as you think they are? As a former Engineer, I was often aghast at the poor writing skills of my peers. While many of them were fantastic math minds, they couldn't convey an idea to a group of Kindergarteners on paper. Maybe they graduated from one of those schools where the lower-division English courses were easy?

I go to a school that is a laptop university, basically you lease a laptop for two years, give it back and get a brand new one at the end of two years.

One of the things that I have discovered is that if you bring your computer to class, even for the purpose of taking notes, you will more often than not end up distracted from the class. My first year I didn't do so hot because of this. I would attend classes and sit on my laptop doing nothing, then come homework and tests, I wouldn't know what was goin on and would be behind.

I stopped bringing my laptop to class, went oldschool with notebooks and assignment notebooks instead of taking notes in word. This past semester I got a 4.0 and earned a scholarship equal to Instate tuition because of it.

In my experience gettin off facebook and partying less will help you ou the most. Also what was said about adapting is completely true. I took two English classes for gen eds last year during the same semester and each professor had a different way of writing for each class.

Good for you that school is improving. It's too expensive not to give it your full attention.

Here's some SIMPLE tips that I guarantee will raise your grades. Do them and enjoy the benefits. Don't do these and you'll not improve as much as is possible.

1. Take notes in every class. You should have a sore wrist and a dent in your finger from taking notes. It's hard NOT to pay attention when you're hanging on the instructors every word.

2. Go over your notes from each class with a hi-lighter before you begin the homework for said class. Hi-lite the important stuff as you remember it.

3. Do your homework in REVERSE order of your preference. Do you favorite class LAST, your least favorite class FIRST. Front-load your pain, in everything.

4. You must do all assignments. No excuses. If college was important enough to drop good money to attend then don't waste your money. It's a terrible investment to do so. If you are not up to doing all assignments then you are not up to college. Change your priorities to do all assignments or quit school and get a job. Priorities should allow you to get this done. If not, you'll continually have lower grades than is necessary, and you'll still pay full price for the tuition. Does that make sense?

5. When doing your homework work no longer than 1/2 hour before taking a short break. The key word here is short. 30 minutes of work with a short 5 minute break is good for your brain chemistry. Get a drink of water, check you e-mail, but after 5 minutes go back to the task at hand.


The above recommendations are easier said than done, but not very hard in reality. It is merely a mind-set that allows it.

And as far as partying, .... if you get the above steps ingrained you'll find you have more time to relax.

I wish you luck in your quest to do better in school and hope you keep improving.

BTW, most colleges, universities and community colleges have Academic Support labs to help students with assignments and study sessions. Take advantage of this at your school if available.

This is a tough love thread. Treat school like a job. Schedule everything.

Consider: plan = schedule = > follow through

"Failing to plan is planning to fail"

Don't know who's quote this is but it's a good one.

Tom