Course Withdrawal

[docholliday]

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....

Edited November 19, 2013 by docholliday

[Arrowfletch]

Ask.  Send an email saying that you're concerned about the class and would like to speak to them about it, get a meeting, go in and try to have a conversation about what's going on.  Take the form with you so if they agree you can get it all done.  The longer you put it off, the less likely it will work out--you'll want to check right away anyway to see if there's a drop deadline that has already passed, since often after midterms it is no longer possible to drop a class without penalty.  If you feel you can articulate well what's going on to the professor, you might be able to ask for incomplete instead so that you can take the course again at a later time and delay the grade.  You'll need to find a good way to phrase things, though, because honestly, going to them at this point in the semester and telling them for the first time that you're struggling is not going to earn any sympathy from them if they would have to make a special arrangement to help you.  

[Lisa44201]

And ask quickly. Some schools have a deadline for withdrawal forms, after which time you cannot withdraw from a class.