How bad is it to take another year for my undergraduate degree? Complex analysis (or more particularly contour integrals) is kicking me downhill (again), and I may need to drop it (again). If I do, I would only have to take a single course in my 5th undergraduate math degree, another 3rd year math course like complex analysis (3rd times a charm???). If I don't drop it, I risk getting a low enough GPA to not get into graduate school. I already applied. So how bad is taking another year?
Did anyone else do this? How many of you were able to get into graduate school even after taking another year? Is there a bias? What are the pros versus the cons?
People have mentioned this to me before in the past, like it was inevitable, but I never really considered it until now. When I ask others if they would do it, they act like it's unthinkable for them. Like they are inherently better than me so course they wouldn't need to do this.
If you have a really good relationship with one (or more) of your math profs then you could make  a fifth year work to your advantage. Ask them what research opportunities you have with them, perhaps as an independent study. If you could put together a nice, but do-able, project to fill up the rest of the time for the additional year, then it could work out to be a plus.
But this assumes, for purposes of graduate study, that your GPA is good enough and you have some insight into one or more math subfields. You don't need (nor is it possible to have) universal insight, but something with which you can be clearly predicted to be a success by letter writers.
You are in a difficult place, I think, but is may still be possible to recover through hard work and faculty contacts.