[SheepBeast]

Ok, so I need a bit of help. I'm a student of astrophysics at the university of edinburgh. I started in september 2009 in 1st year, failed, resat in august 2010, and failed the resits. I then redid 1st year starting in september 2010, failed, resat in august 2011 and scraped through. 2nd year was sept 2011 until now, which I managed to fail again so I now have some upcoming resits to determine whether I progress to 3rd year or not.

The reasons for me repeatedly failing are many, and I'm not going to go into too much detail as they are personal and not really relavant to the topic. Suffice it to say that while I'm not claiming to be some kind of genius I am pretty clever, having gone through school with straight As including advanced highers with basically no effort - didn't do homework, skipped classes, no revision etc. Maths, physics and computing/programming were my strongest subjects and I enjoyed them. I just found the work incredibly easy.

Obviously the same didn't happen at uni. So now I am in a bit of a predicament. I have 5 resits to pass. This is out of a total of 6 courses I took in the year (3 each semester), to give you an idea of the volume of work it's basically 83% of an entire 2nd year of uni astrophysics crammed into less than 2 weeks of exams.

I've worked sporadically over the summer and I'm working flat out now but to be realistic there is absolutely no chance of me passing all 5 of the courses. I expect I can pass 3 at best.

My plan after uni (regardless of whether I pass or fail) is to go into visual effects for films/TV. I'm pretty decided on this as I find it fun and interesting. It also doesn't require a degree - the only thing you need to get a job in VFX is a great portfolio.

So basically I have a few choices (assuming I pass 3 out of my 5 resits):

1) redo 2nd year as a part time student, just doing the 2 courses I failed.
2) drop out and get a menial job while I meanwhile train myself up in VFX
3) try to change course or university, or both

Option 1 would be my preference as I do still want to get my astrophysics degree, partly because I'm interested in the field but also because it would be a good fallback in case VFX doesn't work out for me. I could also get a part time job, giving me some income and work experience, as well as experience of the outside "real" world which I very much feel I'm lacking. The workload of doing only 2 courses would also be relatively low and stress free, which I think would really benefit me. I'm confident I'd do well in this situation, and it'd give me a good base to go forward to 3rd year afterwards.

Option 2 would be ok, except my parents would be very disappointed and also annoyed. They would have to give me money while I job hunted and let's just say money is not something my family has in abundance, while stress is - the last thing they need is to have to worry about me.

Option 3 is unknown territory and I'd rather avoid it. I have my friends and flat here in edinburgh, it's close to my parents in dunblane and has easy access to my brother down in london. I don't feel I'd do any better in another course than I have done in astrophysics so it seems like a waste of time.

TL;DR Will my uni let me repeat 2nd year as a part time student - considering my godawful results so far, or will they simply kick me out if I don't pass every single one of my resits? What are peoples experiences with this?

Has anyone else had experience of being a part time student - what is it like and did it work as a good basis to go back to full time study the following year?

Given VFX is my chosen career, should I be as worried about uni as I currently am or should I just save myself the stress and drop out, and focus on VFX? (bearing in mind an astrophysics degree would be of minimal help and relevance to a career in VFX)

And finally, has anyone had any experience working in VFX and what path did you take in order to get a foothold in the industry?

Thanks in advance for any help and apologies for the (now that I look back) somewhat unnecessarily long post.

[pinda.college]

Knowing the reasons for why you failed will allow us to determine whether it's even worth carrying on your degree. You seem to have struggled with the first two years of your degree, and the fact that it took you a complete two years to pass at 40% is worrying. Are the personal problems something which is going to affect the rest of your education at university, if so perhaps consider taking a break and doing another degree in the future (after some of those problems have passed.) Also why did you choose to study astrophysics if it has no relevance to your career path? It seems as though you just rushed into a degree because it was what you were good at during school, thus the lack of passion for the subject resulted in those grades. I realise that you stated that the course interested you however, if you were that enthusiatic then you would not have scraped 40% in a first year repeat resit. If I were you I would consider throughly whether or not you should carry on uni for another two years with the second year resit. I personally would focus on obtaining experience in your chosen career field and then maybe try finding a better suited and relevant degree to study in a few years.

[poony]

Option 2 as you have wasted enough time already. Frankly, how many more resits are you palnning to do, you are hopeless at the subject so accept the fact. Are you the record holder for resits at your course ?

[hepplump]

If you are rich 3.)
If not 2.)

No point graduating with a crap degree in this economic climate. Unless you're in the top half of your class it will do precious little for your career anyway.

[StacFace]

I agree with option 2. You are clearly struggling with the course and are just going to be wasting more time and money by trying to push through with it anyway. It is nice to get a good degree but that's not where you're heading, you're heading for a failed degree and it's better to drop out now than have that. I had a similar experience with a college course that wasn't right for me and was actually more forced to leave than choosing to do so (they wouldn't enter me for any exams) but once I moved on to something else I realised how unhappy I was doing that and that I would have most likely failed if they had let me do the exams.

[Enigma7]

Depends on these options:

1. If you've failed 2 times for the first year due to being lazy, not doing research and revising.. Change course/find job

2. If you failed for personal reasons for each if those years (don't believe I'm saying this) then redo the year and hope that it doesn't come up again.

Reading the first paragraphs seems to me that you were either: too lazy, partied to much, wasted time, didn't go to lecturers, didn't take part in class, didn't do any projects and so on. Looks like you're not going to get a degree in anything that is remotely easy, you may think this is harsh but you've provided the evidence that you can't get 40% pass mark for the year TWICE.

Take a gap year, work for that year.. Look up careers, courses see what they teach, find a subject that you actually have a genuine interest so you will study and become good at it.