I am a first year PhD student and am failing a course. The course was too advanced for me to be honest. In the third week of the course, I was just understanding what happened the first week. Right now, I have only covered probably fifty percent of the material. One primary reason is because I didn't have enough background. I should have taken the graduate Intro Stats course but I skipped it thinking my undergrad stats would be enough. During the beginning of the week, I got distracted by family issues for 2 weeks, and this really put me even more behind.
Every week we have assignments, and I have been reading the book to no avail. However, I have not been able to complete any of them on time. No late homework allowed so I haven't turned in a single assignment after the first one. In retrospect, it seems like I should have attended office hours, but I didn't even know what to ask because I was so lost. I kept thinking I just need to keep reading and I'll catch up. Now it's the end and I haven't caught up. All we have left is a final project which is 35 percent of the grade. I can manage to do the project, since I have been reading the book and I have tailored my project to cover to draw from the topics I know.
Out of 8 homeworks, I have done 2. The first one and the last one which was a project proposal. The midterm, I had no idea how to solve so I didn't turn in anything. This sounds so ridiculous, I don't know how I could do such a thing, but after looking at the homework I'm still pretty lost.
There's a course withdrawal form, but I have no idea how to even go about asking the professor if she would consider signing it. Every morning I wake up thinking I might just get kicked out of grad school and my life is doomed because I took the wrong course. I should have just taken the Intro Stats course. Any advice? This isn't a required course, but it will doom my GPA, since we need a minimum of 3.0
The course withdrawal form requires an instructor signature and the website says you can withdraw for a justified reason. Is it even worth asking her about this? I don't want to mention my personal reason for falling behind but maybe telling her I didn't have the background for the course would work....