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Disappointment is ubiquitous. Learners are disappointed about shattered dreams, unmet expectations, lost employment opportunities, and much more. Likewise, learners may become disappointed about grades, academic probation, and many more academic disappointments can debilitate them from achieving their academic goals. But, working through and not over disappointment can present opportunities for becoming doctoral. How do you begin dissolving disappointment?
 
Examining the prepositions over and through will illuminate the way toward dissolving disappointment. Over emphasizes getting past disappointment; it may lead to repressing, to denying, or to ignoring disappointment. Like the streaming of YouTube videos, learners’ stream of consciousness play the disappointing events, rewinding and pausing the scenes of what did or didn’t happen to or for them. In contrast, working through disappointment unifies the past, present, future and enables learners to grow through their disappointment.

Dissolving Disappointment with Grades

How do learners work through disappointment about grades? Receiving a grade less than expected can evoke disappointment that results in anger, depression, self-doubt, and siphon the energy out of learners. Work through these emotions. What is the source of the anger? Why is this so important? While working through these emotions contact the faculty and ask them for a rationale for the assigned grade. If learners want advice about communicating with their instructors, they can contact academic advisors. Academic advisors can help learners explore questions and ways to effectively communicate with their faculty. After learners work through these areas, they may want to ask themselves what they learned from working through their disappointment.

Dissolving Disappointment with Academic Probation

How do learners work through disappointment about academic probation? When doctoral learners’ grade point averages (GPA) fall below 3.0, they are placed on academic probation. Many factors can contribute toward probation such as financial issues, life issues, personal emergencies, and poor study habits. Academic probation can cause learners to doubt their self-worth and ability to do doctoral work. However, probation doesn’t need to defeat learners. First, learners can gain personal insight from their disappointment. Second, learners can reflect on the reasons they have been placed on probation, and create a plan to be removed from it.  Learners will want to contact academic advisors about a plan to get off of probation because advisors are skilled in helping learners through this process. How can you begin to work through and not over your disappointment?