How Do to Tell My Parents I Made a D in My Class?

You're going to have to retake the class and you should plan to 1. get a tutor and 2. pay for it yourself. And 3. Talk to your advisor to see when you should drop a class if you need to, how it will affect your schedule (can you be under 12 credits, for example?) and whether or not this particular field is right for you.

I would get all my ducks in a row and simply tell Mom and Dad the truth.

Lia, you can't really expect college teachers to be helpful in the way you'd like. Those teachers have many pupils to deal with and a lot of work to do. They can't "mother" their students, and they don't want to. For your professor to make the suggestions she did was more than you can expect generally.

You can't get out of this hole by digging deeper or crying harder. Tell your parents and take your medicine. If they react strongly, you can't blame them. It sounds nasty to say, but this is the way the world is. I believe it was Winston Churchill who wrote, "Courage is going from failure to failure without giving up," or something like that.

Do not tell your parents all this on Christmas Day! That would be cruel and selfish. Tell them right NOW and get it over with. Don't make any more excuses for yourself. Ever. (Adult excuse-making is always tacky.) In the "real world" (I put that in quotes because there's more to the *real* real world than people usually mean), best efforts don't count. Only results count. That's what the professor means by "Life is tests." Effort is only the road that leads to results. Don't talk about your efforts any more to get sympathy.

All that said, please listen to something else that is true:

Failure is an EVENT, not a PERSON.

If you can stay in school, do it. If you need to take your career in a different direction, do it. If you need to do it without your parents' support, you can find a way. This sort of experience is very hard to take, but it's not the end of your world.

You tell them the truth without excuses like it was your professor, it was this or that and don't say you did your best because you probably didn't.

I can tell you the most frustrating thing to parents is that balance, you don't want your kids to start out in life with student debt but then how do you get through to your kids the value of the money they are putting out. Making excuses scream I don't understand the value, it says I don't own my actions.

Come clean, offer to pay for retaking the class before they demand it. Show them you value the money they are putting into your future.

I agree with everything S.H. said.

Good for you for trying so hard. Your effort will ultimately pay off. Keep trying hard, and it will all work out for you. Life is all about effort.

And if next semester, your parents are paying for your classes, and you are having trouble in one of them, let them know ahead of time. Maybe you can do some tutoring or something.

Keep it up! The road to success is paved with failure.

I have to go a different direction then most of the responders. Yes, you have a responsibility to put in an effort in your classes, which you did, especially since your parents are paying. However, I am guessing you are 20ish and I feel like overall they don't have a right to get mad at you or chew you out if you failed a class. Although kids still need moral and sometimes financial support at your age, your old enough to be responsible for your own grades. You sound like you are very responsible and can deal with challenging courses on your own. As parents, if you chew out your adult children about things they do, your bring it on yourself to have information withheld. Although I think your welcome to tell them, I can't blame you if you keep them less in the loop about how school is going, whether or not they are financing it.

Time to grow up some, Lia. Letting your parents see you study is not the same as telling them that you are having trouble. It is your job to communicate with your parents how your studies are going if they are paying for them. The reason you are honest with them is to give them a heads up, even if there was nothing they could have done to help you. It's a matter of respect at the very least. Do you respect your parents? Yes? Then act like it and stop leading them down the garden path. They think with all that studying of yours that you should be making better grades.

It sounds like you need either a different professor or a tutor. Since you will have to retake the class, decide if you can do better then next go-round with her, or change professors, if there's another one. Next time you find yourself struggling, find a tutor to help you.

Your professor is right in what she said. That isn't blowing you off. This isn't high school. If you cannot do your job when you start your health career, whether it's putting in an IV or figuring medicine in milliliters, etc, you will get fired. Your nurse manager or manager of whatever health field job you are going into is not going to take you by the hand and walk you through stuff. And you must take responsibility and figure out HOW to learn what you study so that you don't end up harming someone later on.

You need to stop making excuses for not communicating with your parents. Tell them that you've got some good grades but that one class knocked you off your feet because you didn't do well enough on the final exam. Tell them at the dinner table. Don't assume they'll kick you out. Ask them if you can have a tutor.

This should be a wake up call for you, as your professor says. Make sure you listen to that call.

Dawn

In answer to your title question of how to tell your parents, this is what I would want to hear from my adult child in this circumstance:

1)Why it happened (what part of the subject do you not get)
2) What did you do to try to succeed (tutoring, etc)
3) What your plan is to fix the problem (take class again with tutor, study group, etc...whatever the options are)

I didn't read your entire post because it was kind of wordy for me, but I wanted to give you one little piece on insight that you didn't ask for that might help with college in general.

In elementary school through high school it is the teacher's job to be sure that you learn. It is the teacher's job to be sure that you have all the tools you need to learn each thing they are supposed to teach. The teacher gives the knowledge to you. A primary or secondary teacher is an expert in education.

In college it is the reverse. It is the students job to go after the learning. It is the student's job to find all the tools, resources, etc to get what they need to have the education. The teacher is there to be the expert in the subject, but not an expert in education.

Most people I have seen fail at college have not quite made this transition in their thinking. In college it isn't the teacher's job for you to learn, it is yours, and yours alone. I don't mean for that to sound harsh, I simply meant to explain the difference in approach for higher education.

Everyone has had failures. Everyone. The difference between people who ultimately become successful and people who ultimately fail is that the people who succeed don't let the failures stop them. They get back up and try again.

That being said, what did you learn from this experience? Did this class require that you do a lot of textbook reading? Did you have to write research papers? Did you have to read original source materials and then extrapolate? I'd bet that whatever it was, it was the first time you had to do that. You were learning on the job, so to speak. That doesn't always come easily or quickly. Take some time to figure out what you did well, and what you didn't do well, in terms of skills.

I'll tell you a few things I didn't know my freshman year of college. I went to a college that was extremely competitive, and my first year I struggled! Here's what I finally realized:
1) Don't take 4 hard classes at once. Chances are, some classes are going to be easier than others. You know from talking to others in your major what the easy classes are. Load your schedule with mostly easy classes and 1 hard class. This isn't high school, where you could handle 8 hard classes at once. College professors expect a lot more. Pace yourself.
2) Talk to upperclassmen and figure out what kind of study groups exist, or what kind of "underground" references you might have access to. For instance, I was in a sorority. In the library of my sorority house was a wall of file cabinets, organized by major and then class number. Whenever people got an A on a test, they would file it there. You could go there and read people's papers or tests to find out what the professor wanted, and what kinds of questions they would ask on the tests. If you can focus your studying in this way, you will be much more effective. You can't memorize a textbook, and there's no point in doing so. You need to figure out what the important things are, and study only those things. You'll learn more in less time.

Now, once you've put a plan together where you've determined:
1) Where you succeeded, and where you failed, in terms of your skills
2) What your schedule should be next time around (remember mostly easy classes, 1 hard class)
3) Where the resources are that can help you (more advanced students)
Once you have this figured out, go to your parents and tell them. Tell them that you have a D in this class, you will have to re-take it, you will pay the tuition if need be, and lay out what your plan is for improvement.

Like I said, everyone fails at something sometime. It's figuring out how you're going to succeed next time that will get you through this, and show your parents that you mean business. Take responsibility. Don't give up. The hardest things to do are the ones worth fighting for!

Can I ask why you need to tell your parents? You didn't fail - you didn't do as well as you would have liked. Are you able to take the class again? If your parents choose to pay for your education, that is their choice. But I'm assuming you are 18 and your grades are your responsibility. If they ask, "I didn't do as well as I had hoped, but I'll do better next time." Take ownership within yourself for your grade, not the teacher, though she could very well be a terrible teacher. And then, take the responsibility to forge ahead.

A little soap box: each "failure" gets you closer to success.

I think your major screw up here was that you were not honest with your parents about how things were going...multiple times. You seem to have a history about hiding things until it is too late to do anything about it. That is not how a adult handles a problem.

Did they see the work that you were doing? Did they see that you tried your best? If not, then this will come as a complete shock to them and you will get chewed out.

Your professor is right...life is about tests. You are not going to ace all of them. Have you really considered your future career path here? Was this class just a fluke or have you been struggling like this with all of your classes? If it is all of your classes, then perhaps you are not looking at the right career field for your abilities.

I initially wanted to go into aerospace engineering (back in junior high). I quickly found out that I really was not good in math. Although I could get better, it was always going to be an unbearable struggle for me. I had to shift my goals to something that capitalized on my strengths. I now still work in a science-related field...just not one that requires knowledge of calculus.

Now the only thing you can do is fess up. They are going to be mad...you know that. You haven't handled this like the adult you are.

If I knew my child was trying her hardest and still failing, I would be supportive and help her find a different path. If I suspected my child was partying and blowing off work, I would feel very differently. Do your parents have a reason to believe you are not trying your best? Have you communicated with them all along?

Seems to me that you have a habit of holding information from your parents regarding school. I don't blame them for being upset. It also seems that you haven't learned from your past mistakes and I mean the communication part with your parents.

I have two kids, one just graduated from college and the other just finished his first year. My husband and I pay for their education. When they are struggling in classes, they call and let us know. My comment to them is "are you trying your best"? If they say yes, I ask. Generally speaking it has been because a. they are playing too much or b., have no clue about the material. If they have honestly given it their best shot, I don't get upset. Its the not giving me fair warning that really pisses me off and they learned that long before university.

My point is if they keep me in the loop during the semester, if they have a bad grade I'm not surprised. You didn't give your parents that courtesy.

To me it sounds like you are working hard, but the classes are very difficult?
Find a tutoring center on campus and get signed up, then show your parents how you signed up for tutoring and feel this will really help you. Maybe you could find a study skills course to take, that would really help as well, a good study skills class will teach you more about note taking, reading text books and test taking tips.

What AV said. Start working on these things. Even talk to your advisor about talking to your parents as well. The support will be helpful for you.

My dear Lia

My best friend is currently working on her nursing degree, she finally passed the LPN board, but let me tell you, she had some of the hardest and worst professors ever....like the one you described above one of her professors cared little to none about her students. As an educator, I apologize to you. The job of a teacher, professor, any type of educator is to help the student, and regardless if you are in college or middle school our job is the same. So, I would say move on, so you made a D. Now you know which professor not to sign up for!! Take other courses you need; use your new study habits and skills you have learned, and then take the course again. If this is the field or occupation that God has for you, then I have no doubt that you will succeed!! Best of Luck!!