Chris Banyas
Editor-in-Chief
“Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears…in…rain. Time to die.”
Yeah, I typed that from memory, and who are you to say who is a human and who is a replicant?
[Insert Nexus 6 strength segue here]
Four-year degree plans are rapidly changing over to six year plans, as various reasons such as cost, schedules, and life in general cause students to extend their stays within the university system.
The spring 2016 semester will mark my 12th semester, and the end of my sixth year at ISU. I attended class part time for the first three years, and as anyone who has done this will tell you, it is not the quickest way to a degree.
I began class when I was 23 years old, due to equal parts lack of direction, and financial inability to pay for school at the rate that my FAFSA said I should be able to, considering my parents’ tax information. Please find my memoirs of some of my experiences and lessons-learned below.
To begin: attendance, attendance, attendance. Throughout my K-12 education I dreamed of many things, but chief among them was the promise of an educational experience in which role was not taken, required or even existed.
Imagine my chagrin when I read through every single syllabus I printed out and discovered that the promised land of lax attendance policies was not in my future.
As I see it, college is an institution that is largely aimed at adults, created by adults. So why then were these policies limiting the number of absences to six present on each and every class guideline?
Other than practicum courses, labs, and things like that, what does it matter if a student is present in class or not, if they are able to pass? If I am paying to attend the university, what do they care if I show up to class or not? It isn’t like I’m stealing lunch money out of the administrations’ pockets…
What I will tell you is this: those attendance guidelines are very real and very inflexible. I failed a class during one of my first semesters due to excessive absences, a class that up to that point had been one of the easiest courses I ever attempted. It consisted entirely of writing, something which has always been somewhat of a strength for me, so I figured, why worry about it when I can just do the work, get the grade, and get out?
Upon examining my mid-term grade and seeing an F, I nearly fell out of my chair, before heading in to see the professor teach a class that I had hardly been to.
Whether or not you agree with the attendance policy, they are the rules, like it or not, and he was correct when he, very dispassionately, directed my attention to the syllabus and explained that there was nothing he could do.
And he was absolutely in the right. I learned a valuable lesson at the price of having to take a course over which I would have easily passed.
I felt very much like Dr. Frankenstein, only the monster I had created was within myself, one which enjoyed sleeping instead of attending class.
“I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.”
That was a pretty hard pill to swallow.
The second point which I would like to address is ways in which dropping classes can come back to bite you.
Much like my issues with attendance, I had issues with dropping classes for the first few years. I would take three classes, stop going to one, which I would then usually withdraw from, taking a W grade, and then pass the other two.
This works great if you never want to graduate, and as long as you make sure you pass the other two.
Surprise! One semester I stopped going to a second class and ended up failing it, which put me behind the required two-thirds completion rate for academic standing. I soon found myself on the island of misfit toys, having to deal with a hold on my registration going forward.
I made the call and essentially received a parental talk detailing how the man on the other end of the phone wasn’t mad at me, but was just very disappointed, which honestly, seemed a light price to pay to get back into school.
If you are going to shuffle your classes around, do it within the first week of class so that you don’t end up with the dreaded W on your transcript.
I’ve spent too much time retaking classes to improve failing grades, or to replace the grades of those which I had withdrawn from.
Here’s something that will probably come as no surprise at this point: I did not speak with my adviser for the first three to four years of college, and I never utilized resources like Central Academic Advising.
