re: Your best 2nd chances while in school/college

Applied Technical Calculus. I'm not great at advanced math and I needed a 78 on the final to get a C in the course to keep financial aid because I was over my allowed hours because of a bullshite transfer.

Took the final and got at 54. Asked for a chance to retake it. Retook it, got a 64. I thought college was over for me one quarter before graduation. I explained the situation not expecting he'd care. He told me, "go enjoy your weekend, you got a C".

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Applied Technical Calculus. I'm not great at advanced math

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i literally went college of arts to avoid high level math. my lone 3 hours in math were called intro to contemporary mathematics and it was football/basketball players and me.

I probably should have been kicked out of grad school. I was there on a teaching assitantship and was teaching the lab for a graduate level class I had already taken so I was basically teaching people who were in my program, but a year behind me. I got involved with and started dating this chick in the program who also happened to be in the class. We decided to just not say anything and I let another GA who knew about our relationship grade all of her stuff.

Well.... one morning my major professor called me into her office livid... someone had slipped a note under her door complaining about us being in a relationship and how it was unfair, unethical, unprofessional etc etc.

Turns out my professor was more livid at the note than me.... we were thankfully pretty close by this point. I assured her I never graded anything of hers and she had sat in on a few classes and never would have known we were dating as I didn't treat her any different in class. She basically just said don;t worry about it then gave the class a tongue lashing saying if you have a problem with anything have the courage to come to her directly instead of hiding behind a note.

I laugh about the whole thing now, but for a second I thought my arse was grass.

I too woke up late for an exam once worth 25% of my overall grade. I made up an excuse to why I missed the test and got to retake the test in the professor's office a week later. The professor said the test would be written rather than multiple choice and would be much more difficult. My friend got his test back and had failed it, but all the correct answers were marked on the test and he gave it to me to help me study for the makeup exam.

I stayed up looking over the test with the correct marks on it and studied those points. The test the professor gave me was the exact same test as the one he gave the rest of the class and I ended up making a 100% on it. The class average on the exam was around 60%. I'm so glad I woke up late and missed that exam that day.

College professors are a lot more forgiving and accommodating than people in here act like. You just have to not be a total piece of shite and ask for the help and they will give it to you most of the time.

This isn't really a second change more than it was me saving my arse from failing a class.

I forgot the exact situation, I think I had an F in the class and there was no chance of me getting a D, I had to make a 98% on the final exam to get a C otherwise I would fail the class.

The final exam was 100 questions, obviously 1 point each. I went talk to my teacher about it to make sure and she was like "yeah, unfortunately you can not miss more than two questions. But don't give up, at least study and you never know".

I thought to myself "give up?" I am about to knock this bitch out the park. The week before dead week I started reading over my notes. We are talking about 100 questions from anything that was covered the whole semester.

I forgot how many pages of notes I had. This was the second biology. Anyway, I read the book in 2.5 days and then just kept reading over and over my notes. By the weekend of the start of dead week I was pretty much able to recite a good bit of the notes without even looking at them. During dead week I would read them once or twice a day.. And thankfully it was the last exam I had scheduled. I want to say I had two days between my 2nd to last exam and the last exam.

The exam was in the evening. The day of the exam I was pretty much able to recite my notes word for word. When I got the exam, it was as if I had a cheat sheet on my desk, I went through each question with no problem except one answer. There was one question on the test that was in my notes and that I read about in the book, but for whatever reason, whatever I had in my notes on it, it was vague so I had to take a guess. I was the first one to finish.

The next day the instructor emails me to congratulate me. I was in the front of class, she would have know if I were cheating, which I wasn't, but she told me that based on my previous exams in the class she didn't think I had much of a chance to score a 98%, but I had actually did one better.. I scored a 99% and she never seen someone do that before..

It was as if there was 5 seconds left in the 4th quarter, down by 8 and I was at my own 25 yard line.. So I needed a 75 yard play and a two point conversion to go into OT to have a shot to win the game.. And it happened.

I have two examples.

1st one is the bad one. “Theory and design of Mexhanical Conytol Systems” (AKA Controls). I had an F average because I was just a horrible student. Didn’t turn in any homework. Was absent for a lot of quizzes. Just had a C average on the tests. (I can only assume it was a C average because the teacher didn’t curve the grade till the end of the year so you had to guess as to where you stood in the class. He would give us the average score on the tests and they hovered around 50-60% which is what I usually got so I assumed “C” going into the final. Well, I overslept for the final.

Even after all of my shitty conduct in this class, the prof said he would pass me if I could answer one question of his choosing but I had to get the entire thing correct.

It was 1 question, 5 parts. I got every single part of that question correct so he said I had at least retained the most important parts of the class.



2nd example: I overslept for the Fluid Dynamics 2 final but I had a B going into the final. I showed up to the final with an hour already elapsed. The teacher knew I was a good student in that class so he said chill out and he would give the final to me right after he finished with the rest of the class. I smoked that final and got a B. I’m pretty sure I was really close to an A. Always loved fluids.

I was a screw up my first run at college. Went to LSU and failed out after 4 semesters. Never got higher than a 1.8, but never lower than a 1.6. I did get my shite together after taking the year off and graduated from UNO with good grades.

I never went to class. In a 15 hour week, I would make maybe 2 or 3 classes on average. Not a good plan. I would just cram for exams and hope for the best.


First story was intro accounting. Walked into class and saw that literally 2/3 of the students were athletes. Figured this was easy and never went to class. It was a MWF class. I was cramming for the first exam on a Thursday night when I looked closer at the syllabus. Yep, everybody that took that Accounting (regardless what time or day) was given the exam at the same time...and it had started an hour ago. There were only 3 exams all year so each test was a third of the grade.

Went to the professor and gave a sob story of how my grandfather had a stroke and I had to be with him. I even used a Sprite bottle to trace a couple fake tears. The professor was very understanding and said my second exam would just count twice. I'm sure he knew I was a screw up. Didn't show up for classes and tried to cram again. I was so lost I got a 40 on the exam. Didn't even bother showing up for the final as I was mathematically eliminated from a D.


Second story is a redemption. Had a religion class at LSU on Tues/Thurs. Grew up Catholic and knew that subject matter like the back of my hand. We had to write a one page paper every week (or maybe every class?) as homework. The teacher would select 2 or 3 papers at random when they were turned in and have the student read them. The papers were worth 10% of our total grade.

I was getting 90% plus on our frequent exams. In my mind I could easily get a B in the class without really studying or doing the work. At the end of the semester, the teacher said because the papers were so much work, they should count as 25% of the grade.

What? That would take me from a B to a probable D. So I gave him a story of how I was petrified of public speaking. It was worth taking the B to not have to deal with it. In this case, I did go to the class most of the time and was doing great on the tests. So he let me write a 5 or 6 page paper to make up for everything. And that's how I got my only A at LSU.


My last story was an Econ class at UNO. It was taught by a first year teacher who would just ramble on and get sidetracked horribly. We were supposed to have 3 tests evenly spaced through the semester. It was halfway through the year before we got to the first one. 80% of the class (at least and I'm not exaggerating) failed the test horribly. Nothing made much sense.

The grades were posted and there were two ladies that did well. They were probably in their 30s and taking their second chance at life seriously. The teacher continued to suck and ended up giving us the second exam and final on the last day of class. The students were livid and didn't know what was going to happen.

As luck would have it, I was sitting to the right and one desk back from one of the geniuses. The tests were each 25 multiple choice questions and I literally copied at least 45 of her 50 answers. Then I made up scratch work. Got a B in the class. Not sure what happened for the other students. They couldn't have done well based on the first exam. Never talked to anyone about it and the teacher was gone the next semester.

Which establishment did you work at? I bet we know each other. I also worked at one of those fine establishments during that time period.

JLs here