It’s that class that you’ve been dreading all semester. With each WebAssign that you’ve submitted and each test you’ve taken, you slipped further down into a hole where you keep getting lower and the C-wall keeps getting higher.

For some people, this happens in the “weed-out” class of their major. This is the class that determines if you have what it takes to continue on the path that you have chosen to study. The organic chemistry for science majors like me, the statics of engineering or the ANS-150 for animal science, to name a few. All of these classes I would assume are equally awful, but I have only had experience with one of them. What is additionally unfortunate about organic, or “orgo” as we call it, is that there are two semesters of it. This is where my experience comes in with the first time failing a class.

In high school, I was the person that got all A’s. If a subject challenged me, then often I would buckle down, run full speed ahead into it and work hard to learn it enough to do well on tests, and it paid off. Even in my first semesters here at State, classes were harder than I was used, to but I put the time in and ended up passing all of my classes with enough points to spare.

That was the case until CH-223, or Organic Chemistry 2. I managed to get through Orgo 1 because thankfully our teacher gave curves on the tests, and most of the class struggled with the concepts as well so it was usually quite large. But, in Organic II, there was no curve as I learned after scoring very low on the first test. So, I did what I always did, buckled down and tried my hardest. More so than ever before, I studied. I did all of the suggested practice assignments, went to tutoring sessions and stayed up till 2 a.m. each night in the library for over a week before the test, going over the material and trying to comprehend.

For those who are unfamiliar with the course, when put in the least science-y way possible, organic chemistry is a bunch of shapes (mainly hexagons), lines and dots coming together with other shapes, lines and dots to make new shapes, lines and dots, and your job is to remember which shapes make what (as I write this I can almost feel every organic teacher ever cringing at this simplification). It takes a special brain to appreciate organic chemistry, and I applaud those who can understand it and actually enjoy it. Good for you, but I’m not one of those people.

Long story short, even after trying my hardest, I still failed the test. And the next one. So it comes to final time, and I am calculating the lowest grade on the final that I can get to end up with a 70 in the class. Not much to my surprise, I would have to get more than a 100 percent to do so. I was going to fail the class.

Instinctively, I freaked out. I talked to my parents, apologized over and over, told them repetitively how much I tried and how hard I worked. I took the class over the summer too, so failing organic chemistry put me on academic warning from the university. I received the terrifying emails about submitting an advising report and making a plan for how to make this not happen again or else there would be even worse consequences in the future. On top of that, just the feeling of both failure and regret for every time that I didn’t study was enough to make me question my whole major and future career path.

Thankfully, grade exclusions are a thing. The university knows you aren’t likely going to be perfect the entire time you’re here. The wonderful people who work here know that there are hard classes that students are not likely to pass. That’s why the system is designed so that you can take the same class multiple times. Not that you should ever rely on this, obviously the first time is the best time to pass a class.

I thought initially when I got my academic warning that it would be a permanent mark on my record and jeopardize my future, but it’s not. It just is a not-so-great part of your overall college experience. You just have to sit through the class again, learn it all over and try even harder in what I’ve referred to my second semester of orgo as “Round 2.”

So if you’re like me and as the semester is coming to a close you realize you didn’t make the cut, then just know that it’s not the end of your college career. You’re not a failure just because you failed.