Alhamdulillah - From Probation to Honors

Assalamu alaikum. Freshman year my GPA was 2.1. I remember opening the academic probation email in my dorm and feeling like my soul left my body. Had to call my parents. My mom started crying. My dad went quiet, which felt even worse. If you’ve been there you know that weight. What really got to me was the drowning feeling. Constant stress, always “busy,” surviving on 5 hours of sleep, practically living in the library. I kept thinking: how am I failing when I’m working so hard? Second semester I changed my approach and treated studying like a job with a timecard. Clock in, clock out, track the real totals, and share them with my study buddies for accountability. First week’s real study time: 7 hours. SEVEN. I had been physically in the library for like 40 hours that week but only studied for 7 of them. The rest was anxiety, scrolling my phone, “resting my eyes,” chatting, getting food, or just staring at notes and dissociating about how stressed I was. Once I had actual numbers I could fix it. I stopped sitting around performing stress for eight hours and instead did 3–4 focused hours of study, then left to pray, rest, and live. It felt revolutionary. GPA went 2.1 → 2.9 → 3.4 → 3.7. Graduated with honors, alhamdulillah. I still keep that probation email in my inbox and open it sometimes when I need a reminder of how far I’ve come.