Without going into too much detail...
- 21
- Dropped out of Uni (ie. I've started falling behind 'the pack')
- Still living with my parents (have lived alone for periods)
- Frustrated, have been repeating the same mistakes and life is currently going in a loop.
- Not fully settled on a specific career
- Thinking of a couple of nuclear options I could try to move things on.
I want to know if I have reason to stress or if I should just give it time and enjoy the ride. Seeing as any sort of renewed degree-pursuing will eat up another several years starting anew from square one.
Edit: Thanks for all of this life advice everyone. It is genuinely really reassuring
- 23 y/o
- Graduated 2022 with CS with shitty grades
- Unskilled, struggling to learn tech-stack
- Still jobless, stopped applying about a year ago
- Still living with parents
- No friends, no partners
- Quit all social media, except Lemmy, where I'm anonymous
- Have a bunch of medical issues, but can't afford
- Stuck in the world's most populous country, where employers are disposable and paid shitty wages
- No insurance, no security, no land, no place to call home
I have been struggling with my career for about 4-5 years now. I am already 33. Life takes a while to settle. There is no rush and definitely no need to stress about it. Loops are pretty common. You are not too old. 21 is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
I dropped out of my university in my first year. I was a music major, and my orchestra director set up a gofundme so that family and friends and teachers from my old high school could all get together to purchase an instrument for me I can use in school because my family was broke and couldn't afford it. But I stayed at home instead of living on campus, and since my family life was so chaotic, the stress of everything happening at home on top of taking on a huge course load made me lose my academic scholarship, and the thought of taking out student loans to be a gigging musician seemed like a guaranteed way to never escape poverty. I didn't know what to do. So I did nothing. The deadline passed, and I fell into a deep depression that took years to get out of.
I had to start working in various blue collar environments until I had enough money to move out with my partner, who turned out to be really shitty once we started living together so then I had to find a place by myself, then I went back to a technical college to get some IT certs, and eventually stumbled into my first "big boy" job doing IT for a large warehouse. Since then, I've doubled my salary by hopping between a few different tech jobs, and I even get to play in a local symphony with the same instrument that was given to me for school.
It took about 5 years of wafting around after dropping out of college, and my mental health was in the shitter for most of that, but going through that stress made me the person I am today, and for the first time in my life, I kind of like who I am. With that said, I didn't have the time to enjoy life with how much I was working and am trying to make up for lost time now. But it's so much easier to do that now that I have disposable income and a comfortable place to sleep every night.
TL;DR Your early 20s suck and there's going to be a lot of stress -- thats unavoidable unless you're a nepo baby. Just roll with it and don't forget to have fun every now and then. You'll figure it out.
I didn't stress. I avoided stress. When my classes got too stressful I stopped going. When paying for school got too stressful I dropped out. When working my shitty computer tech job got too stressful I went down to part-time and started falling behind on rent. When I lost the apartment, telling my family was too stressful so I just became homeless for a while.
That was the crisis. That was the lowest point.
Maybe tolerating just a little more stress would have been good for me.
I can relate to this. I have (as of yet) uncured ADHD and back when I was living alone, I didn't manage to find a flat in time when the contract on my old one finished, because apparently searching for flats online isn't a simulating activity. Welp, if you ever do find yourself spending a night in a disabled restroom, a coat does not make a good blanket.
Thought I was having a quarter life crisis then at 40 realised - "Oh no, that's just life".
It's just bullshit and downhil all the way form birth til death.
Get used to it.
You're welcome. My wisdom normally costs money but you can have that for free.
You'll be fine. You are incredibly young. I just started over with a new career at 45. I have friends my age who are back in school. Maybe try not to have kids since that will make this all harder. But then again, have em if you want em.
