3.1 “It’s Not My Fault!”

Picture This:

You’ve always been a “good student,” earning top grades throughout high school with minimal effort. You remember how teachers would praise your work, even using your essays and projects as examples for future classes. Naturally, when you start your first year of college, you assume it will be more of the same. No need to make plans or set goals.

So, you stick to what has always worked. You skim through assigned readings, glance over lecture slides, attend every other class, and leave assignments until the night before they are due. Participating in class discussions? Not your thing. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? Right?

Then the semester ends, and you check your grades: one failed course and barely passing the others. You have been put on academic probation and are at risk of not continuing in your program. You stare at the screen, stunned. This cannot be your fault.

It must be the professors. Their lectures were dry and hard to follow, and the exams barely covered what they talked about in class. Remember that research paper? The instructions were so vague that you had no idea what they wanted. And the group project? No one took it seriously, and you did most of the work. How is that fair?

Your classmates did not exactly help, either. You noticed people forming study groups after class, but no one invited you. Shouldn’t they have thought to include you? I mean, it’s not like you are going to beg for help.

Then there is your mental health. The anxiety and stress this semester have been so overwhelming. Nobody can possibly understand how hard it was to get out of bed some days! Why didn’t the professors check in after midterms when your grades started slipping? Shouldn’t they have noticed something was wrong? If they had reached out, maybe this whole situation could have been avoided. It’s like they aren’t even trying to understand what you are going through.

It’s clear now: the system is rigged against you. It’s not about how hard you work or the effort you put in; after all, you did work hard this semester. It’s all about who the professors like. Maybe it’s about the students who speak up in class or suck up during office hours. Either way, it’s completely out of your control. So, you stay stuck, frustrated, discouraged, resentful, and convinced that no matter what you do, things will not get better.