G P A

I was never one to believe that my GPA correlated with my intelligence but I didn’t do as well as I wanted to this first semester of college. I know, it’s my first semester of college and doing poorly first semester is okay. It won’t haunt me for life. Thank Goodness.

And while I know this and I know that other Freshmen are in my same predicament, the reasons behind why I did so poorly are different and it makes me feel a bit worse.

In my school, Biology is such a popular major that the introductory Biology class is designed to weed the incoming Biology majors out of the major. A few of my college friends are Biology majors and most barely passed the course-it’s a real gpa killer.

I would be okay with a low gpa had I taken the Bio course but I didn’t. Many of my friends did, and did horribly so now they have a low gpa that they can blame entirely on fucking Bio. Others just took hard ass courses and…I didn’t take courses that were seemingly difficult to pass. 16 credits is a lot for a first semester student according to my advisor but none of the classes-at first-seemed outstandingly hard. I didn’t get a lot of homework either which was new for me since I always had a lot of homework but not getting homework made me think that my classes were easy. Wrong!

Final grades depended entirely on test grades. I’m not a bad test taker but all my tests were reliant on memorization. I also underestimated the difficulty of the tests since I hadn’t taken a test in almost half a year! I had two hard professors for level 100 classes. That’s just poor luck and I ended up with a B- in both classes

When Midterm grades came out and I was shocked…most of my midterm grades were around the C grade area and I freaked out. Things went downhill from there on…

I went to the library. I rewrote notes. I took notes when reading. I started shedding  my hair. My acne came back!!! I gained weight. I was sleep-deprived. I looked frumpy everyday!

I was stressed out bitches!

My grades caused me a lot of distress. A before-college and after-college photo can prove it all. My body and mind got beat. And what for? A 2.9. This part stings the most since I stressed out and worked hard-fruitlessly-to get gpa. I guess that’s just an adjusting to college issue-or is it? I don’t like using that whole “I need time to adjust to college” as an excuse. But then again I had no idea how to study for big finals like the ones I had. It was daunting and scary and I was just tirelessly- and almost literally-barking up the wrong tree.

Actually another part stings more- those that didn’t fucking care about their grades and probably have the same sub 3.0 gpa. I should’ve told myself to chillax during finals week. Not to put my body through so much stress-yet I did. Ugh. To think I actually trucked through having a whooping cough, my period, and some boy drama for a 2.9. I am ashamed.

The shit that went down during Finals week was unfortunate but sadly, it can’t excuse my poor academic performance. I have no excuses really. Others do. What to do next semester…