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You are here: Student Success Skills » Overcoming Challenges for Specific Types of Students » Dealing with a Personal Emergency

Student Success Skills

Dealing with a Personal Emergency

by jack
July 13, 2012

Sometime or other, every college student is likely to have a personal emergency that could impact their attendance or performance in classes. Typical examples include:

  • Death of a member of the family or close friend
  • A health issue requiring hospitalization
  • An injury restricting mobility or the ability to do academic work

Most universities have policies that support students through these tough times. Here’s what you should do when you are confronted with an emergency:

  1. Notify each of your teachers. Describe the emergency and ask for help. In most cases, your teachers will not count you absent. You may be given extra time on assignments. Whether you can make up a scheduled test is more problematic. Some faculty are very strict about missing tests.
  2. Inform your advisor or the campus student services office. In some cases, notes can be sent to your teachers to let them know of the situation. While this may be redundant with step (1) above, such notice generally is more accepted than your own notification.
  3. Identify a classmate in each course to get notes and assignments from. While faculty will generally be sympathetic to your emergency, they expect you to get caught up with the work.
  4. Develop a specific plan to get caught up. Put your plan on paper and share it with your teachers. This plan will help you stay focused, but it will also make it more likely that your teachers will support you.
  5. If you struggle with the emotional aftermath of the emergency, seek out help. Most campuses have grief counselors or others who can help you adjust.

The key to all of this is not to let one emergency lead to another: your failure in college..

← Dealing With Parents’ Divorce
Having a Family Member with a Severe Medical Problem →

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  • My biggest improvements this semester have been going to tutors, creating study groups in my dorm, and keeping a calendar of quizzes and tests.  Last semester I was reluctant to visit the tutors because I thought that no one in the tutoring center would be able to help me with high level math.  Being in Calc 3 it can be very hard to find tutors who can help.  Another thing that really has helped me is making a study group for my statistics class.  I found two other people in my dorm who were in my class, so we made a study group.  It has really helped me stay on top of my homework in the class.  Finally, making a calendar with all of my test and quiz dates has eliminated any chance of me being surprised by a test or quiz in any of my classes..

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