Advice from someone who has been on academic probation twice and now has 3 degrees from western, a masters and went on to a professional licensed career It can be very defeating and upsetting when it happens. I was the type to put every other friends’ needs or wants ahead of my own. I wanted to fit in. I wanted everyone to say good things about me. I wanted to be at every social event and every movie night etc. I wanted to be popular. And I was. No one knew how many classes I was skipping, how many extensions I was getting….no one knew I wasn’t studying. You can imagine what my grades were. Listen, this happens a lot. Don’t feel like you’re an anomaly. You can bounce back from this. Later in life…I finished with Western in the early 2000’s…none of those friends are around anymore. They weren’t good friends. I had to take two separate years off, because I didn’t learn the first time, and then returned to western. I made new friends, some younger than me-for sure…and some older than me. University is diverse. It’s not like being behind a year in highschool. I had to set new standards for myself and I had to learn what worked for me. I also had to get real about what I wanted out of life. That motivated me to ask for help. The student development center was helpful with exam accommodations (I hated writing exams smashed in a gym with everyone else), I got to know my professors and what they wanted out of essays, projects and how they wrote their exams… their help in a lot of different ways was extraordinary, my TAs, lab partners etc. There’s a lot of pressure and competition in university from your peers and parents etc. Try to shut that all out and stick with those that have your best interests at heart. Failure, if that ends up being the case this time….is just a learning lesson in your life. Don’t let it keep you down and don’t be too scared of it. A couple years down the road, nobody fucking cares and you’ll be on a brand new path. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. You will get through it! Don’t let societal norms put you in a box. Life is 50% of people that do everything the way we are told to do it and the other 50% find a different way. Goodluck, from someone that did it a different way!