Talking to a peer mentor about missing an assignment

On Tuesday morning, I woke up thinking about a case competition presentation that I needed to practice. As usual, I also mentally planned for the day. It was not until then, I realized: I did not submit a Math assignment. I'd missed a deadline. I immediately jumped out of my bed and turned on my computer to double check.

I couldn’t believe that I did not submit something so important. I did poorly on the first assignment, so you probably would understand the pressure to do well this time. Oh well. The assignment had completely slipped out of my mind.  

That morning, I didn’t have time to emotionally process what happened. I guess it could be both a good and bad thing. Bad thing: I didn’t get to reflect on what went wrong in my study plans: my drive to troubleshoot decreased as time passed. Good thing: I didn’t panic. I had to get myself together quickly for the presentation later that day.

After my case competition, I wasn’t as panicked as I was in the morning, but I was still baffled at myself. How could I just not remember anything? I stayed back at Robarts Library to attend a few meetings and catch up with some work before going home feeling exhausted. After taking a few hours off for myself, I decided that I needed to re-organize myself because my usual routine seemed to be a mess.

I booked an appointment with a peer mentor. I wanted to have someone to talk about what went wrong and… basically, throw my thoughts somewhere. I know that we have peer mentors available, so I thought, why not?

If you want to find out about what peer mentors do, you can check out the Academic Success page about mentors.

After talking to a peer mentor, I felt like I had a clearer direction on how to move forward from this point onwards. I learnt that I didn’t have to build a new scheduling system just because of this one assignment. She shared some time management techniques that she uses daily and assured me that things can happen from time to time.

Even though I really didn’t have much else to discuss, my peer mentor was very open to just talking about organizing my thoughts for a moment, and by the end of the session, I felt a bit more assured and less worried for my whole course.

Since it was also reading week, I used the time the slow down a bit and go back to check my syllabus. Over the weekend, I also planned out what I need to do this week. I still have tons of things to catch up on.

It’s the last three weeks of my first semester before final exam season kicks in. I can’t believe that time went by so quickly…

P.S: A meme to describe my situation on that Tuesday morning