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What to Do When Life Gets in the Way of School

Fitting life into your school schedule isn't always easy

A well-earned education requires discipline and focus. Students have to have the restraint to ignore outside distractions and remember that their studies come first. But what happens when life gets in the way? How do students handle keeping up with their studies while they have to deal with other unavoidable life-changing experiences that are bound to come in the middle of the semester?

In special circumstances, schools and teachers are expected to be understanding and lenient. A little time off is expected if a family or friend has passed away.  However, a student still has to catch up on homework, which was skipped that week. And sometimes a week off is not enough when a person has just had a baby or is preparing for a wedding. Unfortunately, there are just some distractions in life that make it impossible to avoid messing up your grades or even causing you to drop your class. In special cases like these, it seems that there should be better ways to handle these awkward circumstances.

Since weddings are planned in advance, teachers cannot be expected to show leniency to a student who wants to take a couple of weeks off for a honeymoon. Taking time off during the middle of the semester is really at a student’s own risk. Although it seems strange to plan a wedding around your school semesters, you may not have any other choice while you are still a student.

Pregnancies are another matter that require some planning in advance. I’ve seen fellow students who start the semester and are obviously far along in their pregnancy. Everyone always asks them, “Are you going to make it to the final?” Some women are smart enough to take a class that ends at least a month before they are due to give birth. However, I have known several women who are due only a couple weeks after the final, which is not a smart move since there are plenty of cases of early births. If you are pregnant, I highly recommend comparing your school schedule and birth schedule very closely. It would be a horrible waste of time to complete nearly a full semester of work and then have it all wasted because you went into labor before you could take the final.

Deaths seem to be the trickiest and most common matter to deal with when it comes to taking legitimate time off of school. When my grandfather passed away, all of my teachers were reasonable and understood that I needed to take a week or two to be with my family and grieve. Nevertheless, when a person loses someone that they love, two weeks away from the daily regimen of life is hardly enough time to heal and come back to school with the same focus. Though I was able to sit through class and listen to lecture, I could not provide the same attention and it was extremely difficult keeping up with the extra homework I had accrued from the time off I took.

Students may not have to be present in class, but they still have to complete all of the homework assigned. Though I tried doing my homework while I was away from school, it was not easy to focus with my heavy heart after the passing of my grandfather, but I knew that if I didn’t do my homework then, it would have piled up and I would have double the homework to complete the next week – completing the last and current week’s worth of school work.

There is no nice way to put this, but in cases like these, students have to expect their grades will go down. Of course, ask for extensions with whatever teachers you can, but do not be surprised if there are certain classes that will be impossible to have extensions for. In classes like calculus or grammar, where everything you learn is built on the previous chapter, it is tricky if you fall behind. Be sure to use whatever concentration you have left on those classes.

I also recommend shifting your effort from the classes that matter less towards your major to the ones that matter more towards your degree. Although I would never recommend slacking off with homework, in the case of an emergency, just focus on the one or two important classes. If worse comes to worst, drop the class or two that matter less. Do not drop the important ones. Be sure to check which classes will be available again, or which ones act as a prerequisite that you need to complete before next semester.

And double check your syllabus. There is always a portion that stipulates the amount of days missed that is accessible to students during the semester. Three to four days allowance seems to be standard, which can amount to two weeks. These days are set aside for emergencies, though I have known too many students who squander these free days on vacations or just because they don’t feel like going to class. In reality, this is not a smart move because these happen to be the same students who have an emergency that keeps them from coming to school. Taking five or six weeks of a break during the semester gets students dropped. At times like these, I can honestly say it is a student’s own fault for not planning ahead.

Students have to take in consideration that life will throw unexpected circumstances their way and force them to deal with more than schoolwork. It may involve extending their graduation day, or it may involve extra effort on their part to make things work. If anyone has any experiences or recommendations for these special circumstances, we would all be happy to hear them.