Am I Failing University?!

Am I failing University?

No, but I’m taking a bloody long time to complete it.

I mean, there’s been a few hiccups along the way. Surgeries, health conditions, pregnancy, a baby, some (aka a LOT) of family drama, a global pandemic or two (jks… only one of those). So honestly I’m kind of surprised I’m still going.

And I’m proud of myself. Because I’m actually still going okay, despite everything that happened. It’s taken me a long time to figure out how I best learn, and I sort of wish I didn’t try to conform to a full study load at the very beginning like we are told to do, and instead took my time to truly learn each subject and learn it well. But we make mistakes, and I’ll just have to keep building on my knowledge and revising the stuff I’m not overly familiar with.

And let’s just say I definitely fluked a couple of tests along the way. I also rocked a couple too.

But what’s happening now? Wasn’t I meant to (finally) graduate this year? Yet somehow I’ve got yet another long year of my course ahead of me.

I don’t really know the answer.

Basically, Uni is laid out so that you’re meant to do units in a specific order. And when you don’t, well that makes it a whole lot of confusing. Of course, I didn’t… so I got thrown off at the very beginning (it started when I needed my first surgery, and has been a domino effect from there). So a whole pile of confuddlement and some very unusual choices later, this is where I’m at.

I have 5 units left, which should be easily doable within a year. Wrong. I thought I was down to four units, but then I found out that apparently (and this is another story I will get into shortly) I had withdrawn from VET272 last year when I sat it. And 3 of my other 4 units require VET272 to be completed and passed before you can even enrol for them. And my other one unit requires 8 weeks of practical experience, of which I only have 4 (again, pregnancy, baby and a global pandemic meant I couldn’t find work when I needed it so it’s been pushed out a fair bit).

I was planning on doing that unit last. It MUST be done as a second semester unit, so I was saving it for my last semester. Which gives me as much time as possible to complete 4 more weeks of practical, since I need to take some time between those weeks now I have a little monkey to look after as well (unfortunately you have to earn a large profit to qualify as a productive farm, so breeding babies doesn’t cut it… they always seem to lose you money). So I can’t do that this year (2021) even though it’s the only unit I can do without having done VET272 first.

Now why did I withdraw from VET272 last year then? Honestly, I have no idea. I’m not even sure I did. Background: Semester 1, 2020, and the global Covid-19 pandemic has just started to spread chaos everywhere. Uni is shut down and attendance is non-existent. We move to 100% online learning wherever possible. And due to the difficulties a lot of the students faced (both due to economic crisis, personal circumstances and the fact that a lot of our students are international and could no longer get into or leave the country) the Uni announced that any fails this semester would not count negatively on your record. Which meant I had absolutely no reason to withdraw.

Yet when I went to enroll for this year, I got the notice that I needed to do VET272 before I could… and I tried to look into what had happened and why I hadn’t already completed it. All I know is that I remember sitting some exams (but this unit has a lot, so maybe I didn’t sit all of them, I can’t remember). I also have no memory of withdrawing. I also have no record of it, which is the truly suspicious thing. Because we weren’t allowed to go into uni, so all correspondence would have had to have been through email and online services… yet I have no email correspondence regarding withdrawal from the unit. The last email about the unit was a reminder for changed exam times for the final exam (which according to the uni, I withdrew from the unit on that date).

So I don’t know what was going through my mind, whether or not I withdrew and why the hell I would have done it. I had a theory that maybe I had actually failed, and it had been recorded as a withdrawal due to the strange rules that put on marks and results that semester. According to student services that isn’t the case, so I’m almost out of ideas. The only other thing I can think of is if I was in lockdown and couldn’t get anyone to look after Hayden for the exam, and I panicked being unable to sit it. I do remember a previous exam I had to request to sit at a separate time so Luke could entertain Hayden and I got slammed by the unit coordinator.

That really frustrated me. He pointed out that if the pandemic hadn’t occurred, I would have had to have someone babysit while I attended an inclass examination so why couldn’t I do the exam at home? I almost went off, wanting explain that I couldn’t get anyone to look after my son BECAUSE there was a GLOBAL PANDEMIC and we were ISOLATING and therefore I didn’t have the childcare options I would have had had the pandemic not been around. But I held my tongue…

And perhaps that correspondence made me too terrified to deal with the fact that I had an exam at 3:30pm on a day that Luke was working and I had no one to look after Hayden. So I’m thinking perhaps that is the reason I withdrew. I guess we’ll never know for sure, since I’ve no memory of it.

So, I’m sitting VET272 this semester, on it’s boring lonesome. Then I will sit my other classes spread nice and evenly over the remainder of 2021 and 2022. And then I will graduate.

I’m happy with this. It’s not the way I wanted it to be, it’s taken longer than anticipated, and I feel like people around me are growing frustrated with the fact that I’m STILL in uni and still yet to graduate. But I love slowing down and taking the units in a relaxed, one or two at a time manner. I feel so much more confident, I get such better grades, and I actually feel like I’m retaining the information. Whereas when I have a full study load, I just scrape by, memorizing and learning whatever I need to pass the exams since those are what matter, and as soon as the exam is over my brain is focused on learning the next subject in time for that exam. There’s no time to properly soak in everything.

That’s what is happening with Uni. Assuming I don’t fail anything, which I’m fairly confident I won’t (but with all that’s happened, it wouldn’t surprise me if some other huge life event got in the way, I won’t rule it out) I’m all set to graduate at the end of 2022. Or maybe the beginning of 2023, since I think they hold the ceremony early the following year.

Let’s do this!