spence33er
New member
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2014
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- English
- Home Country
- United States
- Current Location
- United States
Myname is _____________but I prefer to be called Kattie and Ihave received an e-mail regarding my academic progress. Thee-mail states that I am now eligible for separation. I'm writing thisletter in hopes that the university will reconsider my separation. Ihave just finished my second year at University. It has been somewhatof a bumpy road, but I can see that things are starting tolook better.
WhenI first received my letter stating that I was being put on academicprobation at the end of the Fall 2013 Semester, I knew that I had tomake some major changes in order for me to not only succeed but excelthrough the Spring 2014 Semester. I began the process by trying tounderstand which learning I succeeded best with. With that idea inmind, I tried to take a couple of online classes not for credit, butto see if the change in learning format would benefit or hurt me. Theonline classes didn’t go as planned and the different teachingformat did not help me. From that I learned that the best way for meto not only learn the material, but to also understand it was liveand in person. I have also learned from that experience that I ammore of a tactile learner regardless of the subject. I am stilltrying to find a way to make my heavily theory based classes morehands on, because for me, I can learn something in class and probablyreiterate it back to you but my problem always comes down toapplication. My counselor in the university counseling servicesadvised me to talk to Judith Olson-Hammer the Director forEducational Student Services (ESS) and try to figure out how I couldtackle this problem, I setup an appointment with her and will bemeeting her on Tuesday. This will greatly help me in figuring out howto study and the best way to approach this hump. I made severalappointments through tutortrac as a way for me to grasp the materialbut you can't grasp something you don't yet know. So, through theseappointments I was able to conclude that I needed much more helpbefore even seeking tutoring sessions. Alright, so I need more helpthat's fine. I was able to form small study groups with a couple offriends in my classes and we studied together and we tried to helpeach other understand that material. Through this I as able toconclude that everyone takes in the same material differently.
Nowthat I have finally identified my problems, I feel that a suspensionwould be very counter-productive. I know that there is no substitutefor hard work and that if I fail again, it will be because I didn’tdo what I needed to do again and I would deserve to be separated.It’s always been hard for me to ask for help honestly because Ihave always relied so heavily on myself to get me from point A to Bwithout faltering. I’m not going to lie, I always expect people todo the wrong thing, so I guess I inadvertently diminish my ownchances of success. Regardless of who the person is or what stage oftheir life there in, every time I have to approach someone I alwaysthink if I let this person see who I am and how much help I need howare they going to try to use that to hurt me. I hope to be able toenroll for the summer term so that I can retake my core Engineeringcourses such as Organic Chemistry 223 and Engineering 145 becausewithout a solid foundation in these courses I won’t be able to getto where I should be at academically. Then with the fall term Iintend to continue my study habits that I would have masteredthroughout the summer. One of the classes I am taking and lookingforward to is ENGL 181 - 100 Academic Skills Tutorial. I'm going totake ENGL 181 – 100 Academic Skills Tutorial class to improve mystudy skills and further improve my grades in future classes. Also,for the upcoming Fall semester, I want to try to reduce my load ofclasses. I want to take one less class than what I would normallytake to try to focus on the classes at hand. I will increase myclasses to the maximum allowable load once I feel that I canconfidently tackle the duties of that kind of academic challenge.
Inorder for me to succeed in the future, I need to do the exactopposite of what I didn’t do in the past. I and a classmate talkabout how college honestly isn’t that different from high school,the only difference is that accountability has more of a major roleand time management is the key to your success. I know that I causemy own problems by not acknowledging that I need help. My majorproblem lies in the field of time management. Regardless of howahead, I plan, nothing ever seems to get done when it’s supposed tounless, it needs to be. Besides setting up a study schedule andsetting up at least one tutoring appointment a week for every class,I intend to go to as many office hours as possible of course, but atleast visiting each professor at the beginning of the week and at theend of the week to recap the previous week and to make sure that Ihave a grasp of the current material covered. So, I setup a weeklyappointment with Jennifer L. DeSantis the Assistant Director ofAcademic Resources in Educational Student Services (ESS) and abi-weekly appointment with Genine Apidone the Director of StudentEngagement in the Division of Education and Student Program (DESP)department, just as a way for me to make sure that I get everythingdone, therefore having to hold me that much more accountable for myeducation and failure/success. I will also setup monthly meetingtimes with my academic advisor, Associate Dean Patrick Crago and myDean Gregory Harris the Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Studies. Thiswill fall again into accountability, just making sure that if I amnot performing at my best I will acknowledge and tackle the problemsooner than later. I have always been afraid of failing becausefailure equals inadequacy, but I know that the more pressure/ eyes Ihave on my academic success the less likely I will want to failbecause then I am going to have to look every single last one ofthese people in the eyes and tell that I am failing and I absolutelyrefuse to be inadequate.
Overthe course of my first two years, I have changed my major focus ofwhat I want to do with the rest of my life a few times. I know thatpeople don't really know what they want to do until they start doingit, but not having a set direction was hurting my motivation. Lookingat my transcript it is evident that I have stuck to the BiomedicalEngineering (Biomaterials track) curriculum and that's due vastly tothe fact that after pursuing the Occupational Therapy field I intendto someday start a non-for-profit organization designed to giveprosthetic's to those who not only need but also cannot obtain thefunds to purchase them ranging from children to the homeless(everyone deserves an opportunity to not be looked down upon for yetanother reason). Through this I intend to be heavily active on bothends of the work necessary be it the business side and the medicalengineering side.
Besideslack of motivation and direction, influencing my poor grades, I'vealso had problems concentrating in class. I decided to do somethingabout my concentration problems and trying to understand why I havesuch difficulty seeking the help that I desperately need. I saw apsychologist and was later diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder(ADD) and Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) which is almost alwaysdiagnosed with Avoidant Personality Disorder (APD). I have beenreading up on the student disability services and have talked toseveral students about the process, I know that everyone’sexperiences are different, but I always find it more informative toget it from a student’s perspective personally. I have begun theregistration with student disability services by filling out thedisability disclosure form and I am now awaiting the next stage ofthe process. Earlier this year my grandmother was diagnosed withcancer and because my grandmother lived with us and helped to lookafter my four younger siblings while my mom was at work it becamemore and more apparent that extra help would be needed back home. Andthat's just what I did for about four weekends I would take theMegabus home every Friday as early as my class schedule allowed andcome back every Monday as late as my class schedule allowed. Needlessto say, the 6 hour-long drive each way cut into my study time, as didthe matters I needed to attend to at home. I tried to get in somereading on the Megabus, but they were always too noisy and crowdedfor me to study successfully, I can't study in anything other thansilence. But even when I was at school, I was very distracted withthe home situation and was unable to focus on my schoolwork. Iunderstand now that I should have communicated with my professors(instead of avoiding them), or even taken a leave of absence. Ithought I could handle these burdens, and I tried my best, but I waswrong. Thankfully the Oncologist were able to successfully terminatethe problem and my grandmother is now in remission. In Late March myuncle passed away due to a horrible hit and run car accident, hisinjuries were severe and we were told he wasn’t going to make itbut we never stopped hoping for the best but it wasn't enough.
Sincerely,
Kattie
WhenI first received my letter stating that I was being put on academicprobation at the end of the Fall 2013 Semester, I knew that I had tomake some major changes in order for me to not only succeed but excelthrough the Spring 2014 Semester. I began the process by trying tounderstand which learning I succeeded best with. With that idea inmind, I tried to take a couple of online classes not for credit, butto see if the change in learning format would benefit or hurt me. Theonline classes didn’t go as planned and the different teachingformat did not help me. From that I learned that the best way for meto not only learn the material, but to also understand it was liveand in person. I have also learned from that experience that I ammore of a tactile learner regardless of the subject. I am stilltrying to find a way to make my heavily theory based classes morehands on, because for me, I can learn something in class and probablyreiterate it back to you but my problem always comes down toapplication. My counselor in the university counseling servicesadvised me to talk to Judith Olson-Hammer the Director forEducational Student Services (ESS) and try to figure out how I couldtackle this problem, I setup an appointment with her and will bemeeting her on Tuesday. This will greatly help me in figuring out howto study and the best way to approach this hump. I made severalappointments through tutortrac as a way for me to grasp the materialbut you can't grasp something you don't yet know. So, through theseappointments I was able to conclude that I needed much more helpbefore even seeking tutoring sessions. Alright, so I need more helpthat's fine. I was able to form small study groups with a couple offriends in my classes and we studied together and we tried to helpeach other understand that material. Through this I as able toconclude that everyone takes in the same material differently.
Nowthat I have finally identified my problems, I feel that a suspensionwould be very counter-productive. I know that there is no substitutefor hard work and that if I fail again, it will be because I didn’tdo what I needed to do again and I would deserve to be separated.It’s always been hard for me to ask for help honestly because Ihave always relied so heavily on myself to get me from point A to Bwithout faltering. I’m not going to lie, I always expect people todo the wrong thing, so I guess I inadvertently diminish my ownchances of success. Regardless of who the person is or what stage oftheir life there in, every time I have to approach someone I alwaysthink if I let this person see who I am and how much help I need howare they going to try to use that to hurt me. I hope to be able toenroll for the summer term so that I can retake my core Engineeringcourses such as Organic Chemistry 223 and Engineering 145 becausewithout a solid foundation in these courses I won’t be able to getto where I should be at academically. Then with the fall term Iintend to continue my study habits that I would have masteredthroughout the summer. One of the classes I am taking and lookingforward to is ENGL 181 - 100 Academic Skills Tutorial. I'm going totake ENGL 181 – 100 Academic Skills Tutorial class to improve mystudy skills and further improve my grades in future classes. Also,for the upcoming Fall semester, I want to try to reduce my load ofclasses. I want to take one less class than what I would normallytake to try to focus on the classes at hand. I will increase myclasses to the maximum allowable load once I feel that I canconfidently tackle the duties of that kind of academic challenge.
Inorder for me to succeed in the future, I need to do the exactopposite of what I didn’t do in the past. I and a classmate talkabout how college honestly isn’t that different from high school,the only difference is that accountability has more of a major roleand time management is the key to your success. I know that I causemy own problems by not acknowledging that I need help. My majorproblem lies in the field of time management. Regardless of howahead, I plan, nothing ever seems to get done when it’s supposed tounless, it needs to be. Besides setting up a study schedule andsetting up at least one tutoring appointment a week for every class,I intend to go to as many office hours as possible of course, but atleast visiting each professor at the beginning of the week and at theend of the week to recap the previous week and to make sure that Ihave a grasp of the current material covered. So, I setup a weeklyappointment with Jennifer L. DeSantis the Assistant Director ofAcademic Resources in Educational Student Services (ESS) and abi-weekly appointment with Genine Apidone the Director of StudentEngagement in the Division of Education and Student Program (DESP)department, just as a way for me to make sure that I get everythingdone, therefore having to hold me that much more accountable for myeducation and failure/success. I will also setup monthly meetingtimes with my academic advisor, Associate Dean Patrick Crago and myDean Gregory Harris the Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Studies. Thiswill fall again into accountability, just making sure that if I amnot performing at my best I will acknowledge and tackle the problemsooner than later. I have always been afraid of failing becausefailure equals inadequacy, but I know that the more pressure/ eyes Ihave on my academic success the less likely I will want to failbecause then I am going to have to look every single last one ofthese people in the eyes and tell that I am failing and I absolutelyrefuse to be inadequate.
Overthe course of my first two years, I have changed my major focus ofwhat I want to do with the rest of my life a few times. I know thatpeople don't really know what they want to do until they start doingit, but not having a set direction was hurting my motivation. Lookingat my transcript it is evident that I have stuck to the BiomedicalEngineering (Biomaterials track) curriculum and that's due vastly tothe fact that after pursuing the Occupational Therapy field I intendto someday start a non-for-profit organization designed to giveprosthetic's to those who not only need but also cannot obtain thefunds to purchase them ranging from children to the homeless(everyone deserves an opportunity to not be looked down upon for yetanother reason). Through this I intend to be heavily active on bothends of the work necessary be it the business side and the medicalengineering side.
Besideslack of motivation and direction, influencing my poor grades, I'vealso had problems concentrating in class. I decided to do somethingabout my concentration problems and trying to understand why I havesuch difficulty seeking the help that I desperately need. I saw apsychologist and was later diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder(ADD) and Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) which is almost alwaysdiagnosed with Avoidant Personality Disorder (APD). I have beenreading up on the student disability services and have talked toseveral students about the process, I know that everyone’sexperiences are different, but I always find it more informative toget it from a student’s perspective personally. I have begun theregistration with student disability services by filling out thedisability disclosure form and I am now awaiting the next stage ofthe process. Earlier this year my grandmother was diagnosed withcancer and because my grandmother lived with us and helped to lookafter my four younger siblings while my mom was at work it becamemore and more apparent that extra help would be needed back home. Andthat's just what I did for about four weekends I would take theMegabus home every Friday as early as my class schedule allowed andcome back every Monday as late as my class schedule allowed. Needlessto say, the 6 hour-long drive each way cut into my study time, as didthe matters I needed to attend to at home. I tried to get in somereading on the Megabus, but they were always too noisy and crowdedfor me to study successfully, I can't study in anything other thansilence. But even when I was at school, I was very distracted withthe home situation and was unable to focus on my schoolwork. Iunderstand now that I should have communicated with my professors(instead of avoiding them), or even taken a leave of absence. Ithought I could handle these burdens, and I tried my best, but I waswrong. Thankfully the Oncologist were able to successfully terminatethe problem and my grandmother is now in remission. In Late March myuncle passed away due to a horrible hit and run car accident, hisinjuries were severe and we were told he wasn’t going to make itbut we never stopped hoping for the best but it wasn't enough.
Sincerely,
Kattie
