Dear Anita

The Genetics class often has quizzes and exams on similar days of the Organic Chemistry class. I am mostly struggling with the genetics lab class because I wish the professor explained things slower and that the classmates could help but they seem to be working independently and don’t really take time to explain things fully. My anxiety doesn’t really help things as well because even though I will be able to understand some parts of the experiments, sometimes I will shake during lab and then ask for help because I am having trouble. Most of the time I will try to work things out by myself and only ask when I really feel like I need to. However when I ask my lab classmates they sometimes get irritated with me because they don’t understand why I don’t understand the material when they do at times or why I’ll shake at times and that makes me more anxious. I did tell my professor that I was struggling and he did work on helping me with questions, but he explained them really briefly and quickly and I still felt confused. I decided to withdraw from genetics  because I was struggling a lot. Withdrawing from that class means that I only have Organic Chemistry now which is Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays along with a lab class on Tuesdays. The professor for Organic Chemistry is better at explaining things and gives students time to think and copy down the notes, and she will go over the material at a slower pace spreading out the topics evenly over a week which I find helpful. The Organic Chemistry lab class takes a lot of time to understand the experiments and also keep the lab notebook and I feel like I’m not doing well in lab because I’ve been missing lab reports and three lab classes because of my anxieties. I’m at the point where I want to drop out of Organic Chemistry as well because I’m really stressed about the lab grade that I have even though the lecture grade is good. The good thing about Organic Chemistry is that the students in both lab and lecture are helpful and the classmates help each other out and the professor is good at helping me work on catching up. I want to continue using the counseling services at Stockton and their mental health workshops, but I think that I have to be currently enrolled in classes in order to have access to counseling so I am trying to stay in Organic Chemistry. After withdrawing from my genetics class, I now have my classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays start from 12:45pm-2pm. I don’t have three back to back classes on Wednesdays like I used to when I was taking genetics because before I had three classes on Wednesdays and I got home late from school because my genetics lab ended at 5pm and I would drive two hours and be home at 7pm. Now that I have withdrawn from genetics I have a looser schedule with the only late class on Tuesday which is Organic Chemistry lab 2:25pm-5:05pm. I just feel really strained and not sure what to do lately.