So in answer to your main question: have you failed uni? No! We all give ourselves very high expectations in life (I do this myself a lot so I get where you’re coming from) and when we don’t meet them, we beat ourselves up. However, I think there are a lot of positives in your story that you need to focus on more than the negatives. If you averaged 45% to begin with, and then got more in your second semester, that’s really great! Hey, it’s better than going backwards isn’t it? So this likely means your second year average grade is higher than your first year grade. So, my point is, you’re going forwards rather than backwards. In addition to this, you need find out how much your dissertation is worth in the final year because really, that’s your big determinant. My advice with a dissertation is create a word document immediately, whack a title in and do the front cover page straight away. Just making the word doc gives you a sense of starting. Therefore, in answer to the question “have you started your dissertation?” You can say “yeah I have”. This makes you feel a lot more confident and helps you to continue to add to your dissertation. Anyway, I hope this helps!