The Wisdom of Dropping Classes Early

Back in the day when I was a freshman at college, I did not have nearly the wisdom that I have today. There are many facets to that wisdom, but one particularly timely facet is the wisdom of dropping classes early.

I was living away from home for the first time. I was 700 miles away from any friends and family. I was among the first in my circle of friends, family, and other acquaintances to be in this situation. I was proud and over-confident. I was under-discplined. I was a nearly ideal recipe for scholastic disaster.

I took 19 credit hours (units). Some of those were lab classes, which took much more time than their credit-hour count would indicate. I was treading water for a couple of weeks before I realized I was in over my head. My GPA plummeted to roughly one-third of what I was used to, and those grades were very evenly distributed across all 19 credit hours. I think every class got retaken in subsequent semesters.

There were many mistakes made, but I could have saved a few classes (and enjoyed them and done really well in them) if I had had the wisdom to drop some of the classes early. Instead, I tried to save them all and ended up losing them all. I had the mistaken impression that I had to finish my degree in 4 years. Keeping that heavy load through the end of the semester was done partly because of that mistaken impression. I didn’t finish in 4 years, and I managed to survive the experience quite well. Another mistaken impression was that dropping a class was the worst failure; clearly, I proved to myself that sticking with all my classes to a bitter end was a worse failure.

I once had a boss who would often say, “Bad news ages poorly”. In his context, he wanted to be told early if there was a problem. Applied to my schooling, this saying meant that I needed to tell myself early that the heavy load was not working. I didn’t. Bad things got worse. In somewhat of a gambler’s mentality, I also rationalized that I had put so much effort into a class that it would all be wasted if I dropped the class; that flawed rationale only reinforced itself as I got deeper into the semester.

As a parent, you always hope that your children can learn from your mistakes and not have to make such mistakes for themselves. I had that hope for this facet of wisdom, and it was fulfilled this weekend for one of my children. My daughter, after 4 days of college, realized she was in over her head. She took early and corrective action. I don’t think her choice made the semester easy — there is still a lot of effort that will be required (a good dose of which she put in this weekend) — but it did make it possible. There is no shame or failure here, only a display of wisdom — and far more of it than I had at her age. Already, this is proving to be a great college experience!