Throw away account lmao, I just get a huge amount of anxiety and dread every time the subject is even broached. Going to college is the end of it all, the true beginning of being tossed into the American world of exploitation and privatized idiocy. Am I just being childish? I need to do this, I kind of want to do this, but I need to make something of myself. I just keep running into a wall and going :cri:, freezing until I put it off in some way.
I'm slacking in my work, and my theory as well, senioritis is hitting hard, and it isn't even the end of the fucking year! I keep missing fucking assignments, and I know they are there, that I need to do them, I just put them off and read something else. I'm royally fucked. In the head.
Like, am I even going to be alive long enough for this devotion to college to be useful? Will I even learn anything worthwhile other than overall demeaning social experiences with american liberals who are already enough of a hassle to deal with on their own. I can't even interact right with the ML I know IRL!! I could be something! Or nothing! god just let me die! Or let me live! I don't even know where I'm at! I'm being dramatic.
I may not even want to go. Does that even matter? I'm more scared of being a worthless chump, with no special skills people may want, or no way to truly contribute. I want to be useful, but I'm so fucking scared! I feel like I'm ripping apart my own mind! I can't fucking sleep anymore! I can't even work on assignments correctly!
AND I ACCIDENTALLY SUBMITTED MY HALF FINISHED APPLICATION :kitty-cri-screm:
Im so fucked
You don't have to go right away. Figure out what you want to do first. Take a little time. It'll still be there.
Travel abroad if you can get the money together, or go help people with the peace corps or something like that.
My parents are urging me to go, its more of that "college will immediately get you somewhere" ideology.
Maybe travel, I could try to improve my language knowledge, but being in a place that is infected with tourists and vacationers, especially american ones, it just ruins the thought of travel as a whole.
For what it's worth, I took a year off after high school to go back packing in South America and it was one of the best experiences of my life. I met amazing people (very few typical tourists/American vacationers), had once-in-a-lifetime experiences, got into plenty of trouble and somehow managed to get back home in one piece.
It sounds like you're under a lot of pressure, so maybe you need to take a step back and live life a bit. I did go to college when I returned and am now gainfully employed, so tell that to your parents if they freak out lol.
LonelyPlanet has great "travel to _________ on a shoestring" guide books if money is tight.
Anyway, I'm just a random stranger on the internet, so what do I know. You do you! I'm sure you'll figure it out, comrade :fidel-salute:
You're totally not fucked. Not any more than everyone else is, anyway. College is some daunting shit at your age, but it's not a big deal once you're there doing it all. It's just one of the first major life changes you'll go through so it feels more significant right now than it really is.
You're right, college is part of being thrown into the world of exploitation, but the good news is it's not actually the beginning of that. You're already in it. You're already managing it, and simply by recognizing that it exists you already have a leg up on a bunch of your peers. The fact that you want to be useful seems to suggest that you'll find a way to be.
College isn't for everyone. I wasn't sure if it was for me so I went to community college for a few years before I went to a university. It's way cheaper and it gave me time to think about what I was actually interested in. If you're feeling too much anxiety about the whole thing that's not a bad option. College can be pretty fun if you play your cards right. If you poke around long enough at most schools, you'll find like-minded people. I know we make a lot of jokes about American colleges just being lib factories but I know a lot of people, myself included, who started that way and shifted further and further left during those years.
I guess the last thing I'd say is that, in my opinion, an education is never a waste of time. It might be a waste of money, but that's a different story. Learn as much as you can.
If your parents are paying your application fees, you'll appreciate not having to pay them yourself later. Aside from the time it takes to apply and so on, there's no big downside: you can always choose to not go even if you're accepted.
Not that you have to go right away, or go at all, but I would say that if this is temporary anxiety, your future self will be happy that your current self fired off 4 decent applications, at least 2 being [your state] universities (I'm assuming you're in the US).
But also, this advice may not really matter compared to how you're feeling and trying to deal right now. If you have a good relationship with your parents, I think you should ask them (or just one of them) for help. Just normal stuff: say that you're feeling overwhelmed, by the world, by your immediate backlog of tasks, whatever is true for you. If they're good parents, they'll help you. Help can come in a lot of forms, not just helping you with applications or homework. Help can mean helping you wake up in the morning, helping you go to bed on time, giving you a hug.
Finally, regardless of whether talking to your parents is an option, you should consider talking to a therapist. They'll be a neutral third party that it's safe to share with, to talk to about things you wouldn't want to tell anyone in your life right now. And they're usually very good at helping with anxiety and depression and panic attacks, which I'm guessing are similar to what you're trying to handle right now.
Also we are here for this kind of thing, comrade! :meow-hug:
Finally, regardless of whether talking to your parents is an option, you should consider talking to a therapist. They’ll be a neutral third party that it’s safe to share with, to talk to about things you wouldn’t want to tell anyone in your life right now. And they’re usually very good at helping with anxiety and depression and panic attacks, which I’m guessing are similar to what you’re trying to handle right now.
I used to have one
Then we ran out of money :cri:
Thank you comrades for the support! It helps to have like-minded people around.
That sucks, comrade. That shit should really be free.
Here's something kind of ironic: most universities will offer free therapy to undergraduates.
Here’s something kind of ironic: most universities will offer free therapy to undergraduates.
well isn't that funny! I'll look into it. See if my college has it.
This is some general advice that applies pretty well here, I think. It was a behavioral science prof actually, who told us the following:
"People probably spend 90% of their energy focused on making the "right" decision, and 10% of their energy after-the-fact on doing what they can to make it a good decision after it's made. These percentages should be flipped. We all tend to think of decisions in a binary "right/wrong decision", and the world is rarely that black and white. What we all don't realize is there's a lot you can do to make a "bad" decision the right one. Don't focus so much energy on making what you think is the right decision, but instead make a decision and then put that energy towards making that decision the right one, because you can do that with most decisions you make."
AND I ACCIDENTALLY SUBMITTED MY HALF FINISHED APPLICATION
You can definitely email the admissions office and ask to re-submit it. I think one shitty thing that high school teaches you is that you can't go back and fix up things like this... which isn't true, you can just ask people "hey, I fucked up the submission, can I re-do it?" and they'll usually say yes.
You need to figure out what you want and what is the best way to get achieve that.
I know groundbreaking advice. No one can make good decisions with their mind running wild. Take some time figure out what you want to do. As you get older you will probably notice life is just one big decision after another. Some will work out others will be terrible. But life goes on and there will be another big decision tomorrow. No need to stress out too much over any of them. Figure out YOUR goals and then do your best to achieve them.
What else can you do.
:shrug-outta-hecks:
my friend college was a GOOD time, even for me and I'm sooo goddamn weird.
I think young people should wait for college until they're old enough to appreciate it. I spent 2 years in community college and went to university at 21. I still regret every moment I spent anxious.
You know what I miss about college, spaces. I love the idea of a quad, of a giant brick building, and I can sit at any of them and it wouldn't be weird. I literally never had a friend but I sat all over the place. It was great.
After a disappointing high school experience, college was the best time of my life. Yeah, there are a ton of rich liberals. But unless you already live in a big city college is one of the only places where you will find like minded left people of all varieties and have discussions and organize with them.
My advice to you? Take a deep breath, go for a walk, and then finish your applications. Figuring out "what you want to do" is a lifelong process that you never really finish, the goal is just to get closer and closer and closer as time goes on. Deciding NOT to do things has lead me to the biggest sources of my personal regret.
Addendum: you will not always feel okay, but that does not mean you are not or will not be "okay". Even if the world implodes, bombs go off everywhere, etc etc guess what? You'll still have to go to school, go to work, raise your kids, water your garden, call your grandma, all that stuff. Don't plan for tragedy by using it as an excuse to languish!!!
You can do it :meow-hug: ! And you aren't being childish at all it is scary!
oh i had the same feeling before joining college, the extreme anxiety isn't forever, once you are in it'll just become the new normal after a few weeks, just the same thing every day with regular anxiety i've always had.
Are you being childish? No. Plenty of “successful” adults get froze up trying to make big decisions. It’s not because of a lack of emotional development.
Like, am I even going to be alive long enough for this devotion to college to be useful? Absolutely. While you will not be made into an engineer/writer/whatever by the process, the importance of college for education is a continuation of the more open ended learning process you may have experienced as high school winds down. The importance of college for job placement cannot be overstated. If you want to work a job that requires a college degree, only smaller places will hire you without one. Someone will chime in and naysay this next part, but they’re literally wrong (medicine is the exception because it’s literally job training from the jump): it doesn’t matter what the degree is in. Unless you want to be placed in a critical engineering position straight out of college (which is unrealistic and fucking stupid), just get through the four years, get the piece of paper and get out. Undergraduate programs are babysitting for the people in them and serve to demarcate class membership as opposed to suitability for any particular field or work. If you really wanna do one particular thing, plan on the postgraduate education.
I may not even want to go. Does that even matter? Yes of course it matters what you want. It’s literally your choice for possibly the first time in your life and it 100% matters what you want. You talked about wanting to be able to contribute and be useful. There’s a bunch of ways to go with this, but 1. Go talk to a therapist about it. They’ll be able to help you figure out who you wanna be helpful to and what you wanna contribute to. If you can’t see a private one, call your county health department and tell them you wanna see a therapist. Often there’s a low cost/no cost option. 2. You’re gonna be useful and contribute no matter what. Even if you don’t want to, part of being ejected into the world of survival in late capitalism means someone will press you into service as a cog in their great machine. You’ll be made useful to something.
Have you considered a community college at all? They're fucking awesome. They have people there who can help you figure out what classes to take so that in two years you can transfer to a four year university and save like two years of living costs and tuition and shit.
Not to mention lots of people at a CC are usually working class folks from all kinds of backgrounds. So lots of big universities keep spots open for transfer students cause they tend to be a good demographic to select from to bump up their diversity numbers.
Even if this whole application process doesn't work out, THE PEOPLE'S COLLEGE will always have your back! :ussr-cry:
The process is super daunting. As a 16 or 17-year-old you're told that you have to plan and research and execute a decision that no one has taught you to do, and make it a year in advance, and that the following 4 years of your life (and perhaps everything after that) depends on it. It's a filter and a barrier to class mobility, for sure.
The standard 4-year university is a great place if you know exactly what you want to do with yourself. Some liberal arts colleges are good for people with familial wealth, or scholarships, or at least some idea of where they're going. At age 17 it's completely normal to not know where you're going. But you do want to be building experiences.
As others have said, community college is a great option. You can knock out all of the "core" classes that all majors require, you can take classes to explore your interests and potential on the cheap, it's a better cross-section of society than the status-obsession and career climbing/jockeying that you often see at universities. Once you put a few semesters in at CC, you can transfer pretty easily. Some people speed-run college and others take 5-7 years.
The idea of "if I don't get it done now then I might as well not do it at all" is anathema to you. The world remains the world, and there are many ways to grow in experience and wisdom, many ways not to.
If you feel like traveling, go travel. If you find volunteer opportunities, that's a great thing go do. If you feel the need to work, then work. Many things you might feel lukewarm about may end up being strengths that you discover through experience. The only wrong course of action is not doing anything, or doing something over and over again that's getting you nowhere and not making you feel good.
If your parents kinda want the prestige of their kid going to university and not, like, a vocational college, and your having a roof over your head is contingent on that...
Um, academically, what clicks with you? You should view uni as a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. What do you enjoy doing? What do can you do really easily that other people cannot? If you are not good at maths, you're probably going to have a rough time with engineering, computer science, or the other sciences (even psychology). Not to say that the university should result in a decent paying job, it's just a lot of time and money just to make your parents proud. If you don't like writing essays, um.... idk, in my computer science degree I had to write two essays, both of them in third year. Politics and psychology had a lot of essays.
That being said, if your performance anxiety is fucking with your ability to finish assignments that you are fully capable of doing on time, university is going to be pretty rough. The assignments tend to be bigger and worth more of your grade than school assignments. The "real world" outside of academia is often more lenient.
"Making something of yourself" is aspirational middle class bullshit. Most people just have jobs.
