I hope that you're living a perfect life with no surprises and an unchanging schedule because the school doesn't recognize extenuating circumstances and has no policy addressing such. During my time at PVCC I had to deal with military complications (FYI PVCC is NOT veteran friendly! No one even told me that there was a veteran's lounge until my last semester there and most professors acted like my training dates conflicting with assignments was a problem of my own devising), divorcing a cheating wife who "attempted" to use the inadequacies of the virginia social/legal system against me (props to albemarle county for being puppets), and then after I started dating again, the suicide of my girlfriend, a fellow PVCC student who felt like calling me up while I was in class and sharing the damage of that moment with me as she freed herself of her own. These events took me away from my studies and resultingly, in order to meet my requirements, I had to repeat many of the classes that circumstance, during these troubled times, left me wanting in. And, by the time I graduated, I had repaired all but one class which were affected by the evils in my life. This remaining class was from the same semester in which I had to bear audible witness to my girlfriend's voluntary departure from this world, and the class was not offered again while I was there. When discussing this with Dean Renshaw, I was informed that there was nothing to be done about it because the only policy the school had in that regard was their "Blank Slate" in which a student must start from scratch. So I swallowed the hit to my gpa and held on to the fact that I was finally done with my four programs which ranged in-between a 3.25 and a 3.4, but discovered that this was the gift that keeps giving, when VCU denied me the virginia in-state transfer grant based on that one class!
Not only did I find PVCC to be severely lacking in policy, but also in institutional structure. They had no Office of Academic Integrity/Honesty and when I felt obligated to report a pair of students who were discussing a way to cheat the Blackboard system, there was no one with that direct responsibility to receive such a complaint! After being bounced around, I was finally advised to email Dean Walsh, but nothing became of it. I even made the point to inquire of my professors at the time if an email with the pertaining content were pushed out, to which all emphatically answered no, while stating that it would have been nice to hear! On this, and other occasions, I would attempt to email the school president, but received no reply. Not even an automated response or a follow-up from his secretary. By the time that I left PVCC, it became painfully obvious that he only ever came out of his office for a photo-op.
The financial aid office was a true gem as well! For each year that I was there, I had to fight with them as though the money were coming out of their accounts. The worst thing was that they were in the habit of passing your paperwork around and didn't maintain similar work schedules or a common filing system. So, you might be told by an individual that they need a particular document from you before they can further process your Financial Aid Request, meanwhile it's lying on the desk of a coworker, behind the locked door of an adjacent office. And, don't even attempt to ask the front desk employee about the state of anything! They're clueless and like to give you the runaround.
I would not have ever been able to stomach my time at PVCC if it were not for the passion and investment of key staff and faculty members who were able to remind me in every class, that WE were working towards something better!
If your grades justify it, transfer to a university...
Read more
Learn more insights from Wanderboat AI.
