Student Emergencies/What to do in a Crisis?
WHAT SHOULD YOU DO IF YOU ARE IN SERIOUS TROUBLE?
If you are in the middle of a bona fide crisis, the first thing you should do is to stabilize any
emergency physical or personal conditions. See the useful list of phone numbers and emails at
Emergency Services & Crisis Intervention.
Most personal crises interfere with school work. If you are having an external problem, you do not
want the additional issues of your coursework deadlines interfering with your ability to deal with the
problem at hand.
As soon as your situation stabilizes, it is good idea to contact the Office of Student Life
(CAIN Hall 979-845-3111). If you have a legitimate external problem, the Office of Student Life has
the ability to send a form to all of your professors putting a temporary hold on your academic deadlines.
This hold is "voluntary" and not "mandatory" on the part of your professor. That said, most professors
will accept the request as genuine and work with you.
The Office of Student Life understands that some things need to be handled confidentially. If you do not
want your professors to know the exact nature of what is going on in your private life, the Office of
Student Life will keep all of that information off of the request. The request for work deferral will refer
to "personal matters" or "confidential matters". If your current situation is too painful to talk about even
to the Office of Student Life, you can ask for the deferral and explain that the situation is difficult to
discuss at the present moment. They will respect your privacy and confidentiality in your hour of need.
If you are under stress, it is much better to get a blanket hold on your courses - than have to negotiate
seven different deals with five professors and two TAs.
If you are under stress, it is much better to negotiate a deferral of your work, than to bomb your exams
and your papers and then have to try to get your grade changed with your professor. After you get the bad
grade, the assumption is that you were perfectly fine at test time or paper time, and you are trying to
weasel out of a justly deserved lousy grade. If you clear things before hand, all of those conflicts are avoided.
When you can really start thinking about academic and administrative life again, it is a wise idea to have
a conversation with the advisors in Liberal Arts Student Services on the first floor of the Coke building.
They are the experts in rebuilding student academic careers after personal crises. They have a lot of useful
ways to preserve your GPA in the face of difficult life obstacles. They also have a lot of useful ways to
preserve your legal rights to return if it appears that leaving Texas A & M may be a possibility.
If you don't have a crisis in your personal life - but you are in deep academic trouble, seeing the advisors
in Liberal Arts Student Services is still a good idea. They have a huge number of ways to help - and it is
always better to get help earlier rather than later in a problematic situation.
| 