Thinking The Unthinkable: Should Or Should You Not Drop That Class?

For some, school has already started, while for others, it just began this week. Either way, you’ve already had a chance to get a feel for some of your classes. You got to see what the professor was like, what was expected of you, how many other students are in the class, what kind of students are in the class, and other valuable information. You might find yourself outright excited about some of your classes, eager for the semester or quarter lying ahead and ready to get to work, while others might make you sigh with the knowledge that you might have to expend more time and effort than you might have anticipated. But these are not the classes we’ll be discussing in this article. No, we’re going to talk about that one class.

Maybe the syllabus indicated the workload would be way more intense than you had expected, getting in the way of your other coursework. Perhaps the class wasn’t what you thought it would be after reading the course description for it. Or maybe, God forbid, the instructor struck you (or for that matter, struck the entire class) the wrong way. Did they demand a lot more than you believed the course would require of you, or did they simply seem to make too many snide remarks, even when going by the generous standards granted to professors for such remarks? That’s up for the reader to determine on their own, but regardless of the cause, students in such a situation usually reach one conclusion: they have to get out of the class. To do that, however, they have to do something unfathomable to many: drop the course.

Drop the course? Why that’s downright irresponsible, encouraging students to drop classes! Well, it would be, if I was saying you should drop a class two weeks before finals, which I am not. What I am saying is not only quite different, but also sensible as well. If you drop a course within the first week, you have plenty of time to find a replacement course, carry out enrollment procedures, get the textbook, and integrate yourself into your new class before you fall too far behind. In addition to being able to stay on top of your studies, you also avoid the problem of other courses filling up, leaving you trapped in your nightmare class or, if you belatedly drop it, short several units, jeopardizing your financial aid status. This is why it’s important to not only decide whether or not to drop a class your first week, but also to find a suitable replacement and enroll in it as soon as possible.

As befits such a serious decision, one must weigh all the facts before they make a choice. Is the professor really so menacing that their demeanor alone will negatively influence your performance in the class, or do they just have high-but-reasonable expectations of their students? It’s possible that what you at first glance perceive to be a nasty personality is in actuality a dry sense of humor that might see you ending up as the butt of jokes but with no real malice behind it, so it would behoove you to ask other students in the class if they get the same feeling from the instructor as you do. Furthermore, you should determine if you need the class or not, and if so, what exactly for. Is it for your major, or were you planning to satisfy a general education requirement with it? Figure that out and then see if there are other available courses that fulfill the same requirements. If there isn’t, try to see if you can take a course that satisfies a different requirement: you can always complete the original one next quarter.

Again, dropping a class is not a get-out-of-work card. If you withdraw without paying due diligence, you might very well find yourself out of the frying pan and in the fire. But if you set aside time to check and consider your options, you’ll have an invaluable escape hatch that will both ensure your studies continue at a normal pace and steer you away from a potential bad grade. Your GPA will appreciate it almost as much as you do.