To think I've massively fucked up and not know what to do?

[SeriousCreativeBlock]

LONG, sorry.
Okay so full disclosure I have anxiety, bipolar, and an autoimmune disease. I also have a 3.5 year old DD and study at university. My mental disorders mean that sometimes I struggle with speaking to people I deem to be authority figures, and I get panicky over important emails etc.

My personal tutor at university seems to not like me at all, so I'm reluctant to go to her over this. When I tried to inform her about my autoimmune disease, she stated that it was not an excuse for "lack of engagement" in lectures.

Exam results came out yesterday. I've done way better than expected (mostly high 2:1s) BUT the system is saying that I haven't handed in 3 pieces of coursework. In actual fact, it's one piece of coursework I haven't handed in and that's because my computer hard drive died right before I was due to hand it in. Took it to PC world and they've been useless and unable to retrieve any data. In any case, the university don't accept computer issues as a reason for non-submission.

It's not that essay I'm bothered about, as I know that it's my fault and I've learned the hard way now to back up my files. It''s the other two that I put weeks of work into, lost a ridiculous amount of sleep over, and 100% HANDED THEM IN.

Anyway, so despite doing really well in my exams, I can't pass this year. I know I need to email someone but every time I think of emailing my personal tutor, I have panic attacks.

So my aibu I guess is AIBU to not know what to do and to try to find someone other than my PT to contact?

My biggest fear is being told that I have to withdraw from the university, which would be terrible as I'm in the 3rd year of a 4 year course. Or that I can retake but I'd have to take a year out and I know student finance won't fund me to do that.

Yes, you should be able to get a support plan in place if you visit student services or whatever the equivalent is. This might mean that you can always ask for extensions and they're likely to be granted, for example.

If you're not looking for your marks until the end of the year, is it possible you might have missed emails asking about your earlier non-submission? I know it can be hard - I get the sense lots of students with anxiety find opening their inboxes as anxiety-inducing as I find checking my online balance - but it's really important that you check your email regularly.

The thing with learning support and mit circs though is that they don't usually mean you are exempt from the requirement to attend, so it is probably important that you discuss this with relevant tutors and your personal tutor.

If you're getting high 2:is, you could be working toward a first next year, so don't give up!

Disability not an excuse for non-attendance unless you have an appt?! Wtf

Right Retrieving lost submissions is one of the things I do. I'm assuming you are at Warwick University.

Tabula is your virtual learning environment right? I think, though I may need to check through my emails, that your university uses Turnitin via Tabula and Moodle for essay submissions. If this is the case, your essays still exist on the Turnitin server. The Tabula administrator should be able to retrieve them and, in any case, there should be a log of the submission on Tabula somewhere.

You need to do two things.

1. As suggested by everyone else, contact Student Services.

1. Contact the Tabula administrators. They are probably in the IT department. Make sure you have included your student ID and full name in the email (this is especially important if you are emailing from a non-university account) Tell them about the disputed essays. Quote the module name(s) and, if you know them, the module codes. Include the probable dates you submitted them. This makes tracking down the essays far easier. It's possible that you did submit the essays, but to the wrong module or that you submitted them to the same module and overwrote one with the other. I have dealt with both of these scenarios already this morning.

What the admins should be able to do is track down the essays if you've submitted them in the wrong place (incredibly common by the way) or if not, be able to prove from the logs that you did submit or attempt to submit the essays at the time you said you did. All of this can be included in mitigating circumstances declarations if necessary.

Feel free to PM if you want a bit more help

I think that if you cited a bad day with the disability in your email apologizing for non-attendance, it would be marked as authorized, Beyond - I can only speak for the way we'd do it, but if a student cited the disability informally at the beginning of the semester but there was no support plan, and subsequently little attendance or contact, this would still trigger a meeting which they'd be asked to attend - a meeting designed to be supportive at this stage, and to see what could be done to assist attendance - so in that sense, disability doesn't in a straightforward way cover non-attendance.

Lots of lovely helpful advice and hopefully you can take one step at a time.

You know you deserve to be on this course. You know you've worked hard to get those marks in the exams. You know you've completed the work. It's just time to take a deep breath and start step by step proving it. Good luck

Hiya.

Right I can speak about this as its my job!

Don't message your personal tutor, especially now it's summer - they are all over the world.

DO email/call/visit your departments administrative team, it's them that deals with this and in my experience it has nothing to do with academic staff. The boards will have sat now but start communications anyway.

Just updating:
I took some of your advice and went to student support. They were absolutely brilliant and helped to calm me down and get me thinking rationally. She also encouraged me to contact my PT and she's just emailed back to say that my average is sufficient so I'm allowed to go on to next year. Thank you to everyone who commented, I doubt I'd have had the presence of mind to sort this today without your encouragement!

Well done! One step at a time, with the power of mumsnet behind you!

That's great well done! Just remember to keep accessing support as you go and good luck with your studies

I've just come to the end of the thread - I'm so glad you're sorted. It's great your average is good enough, but are they going to look into whether you did in fact submit the work? If you did you should get the credit. Also, will the average affect your grade next year? Would you be better to resubmit for a capped 40% rather than presumably 0% currently, to push your average up?

Fab, OP! I know it takes a lot to tackle things head on when you suffer from anxiety so double well done for getting things sorted.

Definitely asking about resubmitting. I don't mind paying the fees or whatever, now I know I can nearly get firsts, I want to push further!

Great stuff!
Go for it OP

Great, glad you have got that sorted, that's a relief. Do make sure you get your IT issues sorted out too as you will make uni harder than it needs to be without having all these things in place and also, it sounds like it would be easy for IT to find the missing essays.