Fall Break is over, and if you were lucky enough to not have hurricane Mathew interrupt your plans for midterms, you have probably received your grades on your assignments and have a pretty good idea of how you are performing academically. In a perfect world, we would all get As, but since the world is not perfect, sometimes we do not perform satisfactorily on assignments. When you receive your less than satisfactory grade, you will probably want to ball up your paper and crawl under a rock and that is okay, but once the anger and sadness have worn off, it is important to see how you can perform better on your next assignments.

One of the most important things to do if you fail an assignment is to look at the feedback your professor has given you and schedule an appointment to discuss your work with your professor. It could be that you are making simple mistakes, but if you received a failing grade, the problem could be a little more involved. At your meeting, ask for the professor’s opinions on how you could have prepared better or how you can better convey your knowledge for the next assignment.

After your meeting, have an honest conversation with yourself about the assignment. Think back to the weeks leading up to your exam. Did you skip a lot of the readings? Did you miss many lectures? Did you focus on other things instead of the assignment at hand? If this is a class for your major, do you still want to stay with this major?

Once you have had your conversation with your professor and yourself, it is time to realize that your bad grade is now water under the bridge, and that you must move on to better prepare for your next assignments. Look at your syllabus and see how many more assignments you still must complete and how many you have completed before this one. If you think there is a good chance that you will be successful on your upcoming assignments, stay in the class. If you do not have many more assignments before the final exam, have a meeting with your advisor and professor. At this meeting, discuss whether or not you can drop the course or take the course as pass or fail. If you think that you will be able to take the final and pass the course with at least a C, consider taking the course pass or fail. You will still receive credit for the course, but the grade will not effect your GPA. If you feel that you will not pass the course and do not wish to remain in the course and it is before the deadline to drop a course, meet with your professor and advisor. While a W on your transcript is not the best thing in the world, a Withdraw Failing (WF) or a failing grade on your transcript will look much worse.

If you do wish to stay in the class and are either taking it ungraded or for a letter grade, use your resources to ensure your greatest success in class. Go to office hours to review material that you do not understand. If you are writing essays for that class, see if your school offers a writing center where you can get feedback on your essays. If free tutoring is available, seek it out and get study help.

While it may be discouraging to realize you have not performed well on an assignment, your school has resources to help. as you have more experience doing upper level academic assignments and studying for exams, you will figure out what makes you successful.