At Risk of Losing My Engineering Degree Over WIL – Need Urgent Advice

I'm at a loss for words for what I was told to choose recently, the QUT Engineering Faculty sent me a deadline of my section of WIL of my Research Project in EGH400.

I have been a combination of both unlucky and negligent as I have not applied to as many jobs as I would've wanted to but I have still applied for 20+ every year since 2023, with no luck securing a placement.

My final year was supposed to be 2024(but I failed and dropped a few units along the way so I'll take an extra year to finish, end of 2025). I decided to finish the Research Project units all throughout 2024, and basically got a 7 on both semesters. And finish the rest of my honour units in 2025. In semester 1 of 2025, I had 4 units to complete so I couldn't work this semester(they are EE units and a lot of studying needs to be put in them), so my best bet was to find placement later in the year. The idea was to find a placement that could hopefully give me the hours in between now and December (since I have 2 units left so it's much more manageable to do). 

Obviously, the sense of urgency to find a placement is palpable in the final year, and the learned helplessness that not being able to find one placement has been soul-crushing. But I was under the impression that the marks would be withheld UNTIL I completed the placement, no fixed deadline set but a requirement to be met BY THE END of my degree (december). They never explicitly told me it had a set timer deadline after the Research Project was completed.

To my surprise, unfortunately, the Faculty sent me an email in late May (the busiest period of the semester with all final assignments due) notifying me that I needed to contact them about the missing placement, I pinned it and as I had not secured a placement and was busy with all my assignments, I was intending to ask them further about this AFTER the exam period and the semester was over. 

The problem came with their follow up email, that they sent to me about 2 weeks ago, at mid June, in the middle of the exam period, explaining that if I basically didn't fill in the placement in InPlace I would receive a grade of 1 for both the Research Project units, essentially rendering all the work I did last year useless for something that was out of my control. Most importantly they offered me an "Alternative" which I really am scared of, about an "early exit award" consisting of getting a Bachelor of Engineering Studies, which is an award that does not allow me to work as a professional engineer (does this mean I am no longer able to graduate for the degree I intended to graduate from?). And I had to consider this BY 25 OF JUNE, so they gave me 2 weeks to consider this, not 1 month, not 3 months, 2 weeks, 1 of which I was fully studying and doing my exams until the 21st. 

Suffice to say I missed that email and only saw it today, after one week of holidays, the very day I had planned to follow up with them about the previous message. I can’t catch a break. But the point is that I cannot and would not accept this, I have worked so hard on my degree and missed so many opportunities just to graduate as an engineer. If I don’t graduate as an engineer, these years will become meaningless. Also, this will make my mother very sad.

I need to seek help from you on this, What can I do?, Who do I contact explicitly to help me with this?, There must be someone who can help me resolve this situation in the best way possible (Ideally letting the WIL understand that I am not graduating yet so they should withheld the marks for now as they have done so far), firstly, I just think it's unfair from the WIL team to just give me such a short deadline seemingly out of nowhere for something that isn't even inherently related to my Research Project, especially when my degree isn’t even finished yet.

Regarding placements, I cannot fathom that the Uni can't help Engineering students with cases like this. I am willing to work unpaid if necessary.

Now, I am at a point where I think they did fail me and gave me a 1 (It’s not being reflected yet though 2nd of July, 2025), which is less than ideal, but, I'd rather fail and do it again (or maybe do the EGH408 if they allow me to) if that means I don't actually lose my degree entirely which will literally destroy my life.

This is easily one of the most scary moments I've had in my entire life. I know I have been neglecting getting a placement but now because of it I can get barred from becoming an engineer? After all I've gone through? This is life shattering for me. It's even more infuriating because I have been doing a double degree in IT and their Capstone work placement had been handled by the QUT WIL faculty and I did work in industry so I don't know how they can't help me do it for Engineering. Help on this would be appreciated, you could DM me as well, Thank you for reading.