Sometimes, life throws you a curveball; a curveball that slams you in the face and causes you to have a near panic attack and reevaluate your entire future. Mine happened in the form of a core class under the command of a new professor. Here is the abridged version of my adventure through Part One of the course and the advice I’ve come up with now that I’m on the other side (hint: perseverance).

I won’t mention what class this was specifically, but my friends who were in the class know exactly what it was. It was information constantly being thrown at us, online quizzes that weren’t always relevant, and a breakneck pace that caused us all to basically throw in the towel and say, “Whatever. There’s no way I’m going to do well. He can’t fail all of us,” and hope for the best. I made do with the grades I got on the quizzes and hoped that a midterm (not taken online) would be a good test of my knowledge and something I can actually study for. I wrote angry letters to no one and contemplated withdrawing from the course. It was that bad. For someone like me, to be literally failing a class, it was just unheard of. The only thing that surprised me is that it took until I was a sophomore in college to meet a class that I couldn’t face. So like other challenges in the academic sense, I told this class “game on” and persevered through every online quiz I felt insulted my intelligence. I did better on the quizzes and argued some of my answers, getting points back. I continued to chronicle my struggles in case the midterm turned out poorly.

Then came the midterm. It was terrifying, but I studied hard, like for any other class, and did alright. I think by this point I had gotten a B in the class and was feeling a little better, but still up to the challenge. If I could get a B, why not aim for an A? And then something wonderful happened. The professor wanted to talk to me about what I thought about the class and what he could change. So I met with him, told him about my struggles and tried to remember every other thing I had talked to other students in the class about. And over the course of about three weeks, the class completely changed. Gone were the timed online quizzes that pulled obscure facts from the book. Now we had written quizzes on Mondays and Fridays based only on our lectures, full PowerPoints each class, a slower pace, a changed grading scale, and, most importantly, a curve set on all quizzes we had already taken so that everyone was guaranteed to pass. By the time the final came around, we were all so much more comfortable with the class and hey, I ended up getting an A. Next semester will be a lot less stressful, overall.

When you go to a school as small as Mercyhurst, there’s a wonderful thing about professor-student interaction. You can give feedback, they listen to your concerns. Persevere through your hardest classes, and only withdraw as a last resort and not as a rash decision. If you can’t talk to the professor directly, mention something to your department head or your advisor. They all want you to succeed. Don’t let one class get in the way of your academic success. Try everything you can in your power to make it a positive experience for yourself and others. You’ll be grateful on the other side.