Let’s face it: this is college. We all screw up every now and then. What’s most important is how you bounce back. Luckily for us, there are many ways to aid yourself in these dire moments of the semester. Opportunities are practically handed on a silver, shining platter to students in this unfortunate, unstoppable circumstance. The system is designed less for clawing your way out of the abyss and more so for taking a casual ski lift out of it. If you need to preserve your nearly dead, soon-to-rot corpse of a grade point average before the end of term, look no further for your all-inclusive guide to resuscitating your slain GPA.
- The epitome of killing two birds with one stone is to be absolutely positive that you do all of your online shopping in class. You’ll get the items you need as well as managing your attendance grade (if you decide that’s important to you). Hopefully, your subconscious will be retaining some of the lecture information and you’ll learn in the process. If not, blame evolution. At least your yoga pants arrived on time.
- Don’t participate in class. Your professor is pretty likely to forget about your existence if you don’t contribute, and will probably forget to flunk you. *Bonus points for not going to class at all
- Never check your grade. If you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.
- Stay up all night catching up on your assignments. Don’t waste valuable time sleeping that you could be spending destroying your mental health.
- Study groups are an absolutely awful decision. Who would ever be able to concentrate while also having to talk to people for hours? There’s always that one person who insists that they’re right and everyone else is wrong. Don’t put yourself through additional struggles and just go at it on your own. In this world, we can only rely on ourselves.
- Office hours are pointless. No one even wants to go to class—who would go out of their way to a professor’s office? They’re all usually on the third floor anyway; too many stairs. All it’s going to do is cause you to stress more. Avoid it at any cost.
- Demand that your grade as it is is currently wrong. There’s no way a shining star like yourself would ever be failing a class; something must be inputted incorrectly in the system. Or, possibly, lectures are too hard to follow and the professor should take accountability for expecting too much of the students. It’s been years since they were in your position, and they are forgetting your perspective. Sit down with them and explain how much of an asshole they are for failing you. He or she will most likely come to realize that they’re at fault, and you can continue about your day unbothered.
- Be sure to ask your professors for extra credit work the week before finals. They always love when disassociated students come begging for chances to redeem their grade at the last second, especially when they said week one in the syllabus that there would be no such opportunity. If you beg, it shows that you care.
- It’s crunch time. Try to avoid wasting your time by cleaning up and getting things together. It’s more important to get things done—organization isn’t the biggest concern. Manage your time best by doing so accordingly.
- Absolutely, under no circumstance, do NOT attend your finals. In fact, don’t even study for them. If there’s no point of redemption, then what’s the point in studying anyways? You’ll only make life harder for yourself. Sleep in and treat yourself to a day of relaxation. You’ve earned it, big guy.
These are only a few strategies to take advantage of, but nothing beats personal creativity.
There are no limits on methods to boost yourself another letter grade during finals week. Or, if any of these solutions seem too difficult, maybe look within and self-reflect on how it got this far, and how your life arrived at this point. Lastly, remember: we all die and none of this matters in the end.
Just like Poster Cat says, hang in there baby, you got this. We are in this together, fellow comrade. Smoke weed and Godspeed.