obsessed with achievement

I'm just writing this because I realize that, as I approach 40, I feel that I haven't achieved very much. I've been thinking about going back to college for many years and I know it's never going to happen. Well, I may take a class, but I'll never get a master's. Plus, I have to be frugal. I don't make much money. I don't like crowds (i.e. school) or driving.

I shouldn't be encouraged to go to school because it's only for the "achievement" or the "appearance of achieving" and "to feel good enough." I am doing job-wise what I absolutely love doing. I have been self-employed for the last six years and probably will never return to a "regular" job. It's like an obsession with me, though. My degree is in elementary education and I HATE that. I wanted to complete a liberal arts or humanities degree. I know I could have achieved more if I had been healthier emotionally when I was in college as a young adult. But I wasn't. I could have become a professor.

Ok, that's it for the regrets for me.

Right now, I should be concentrating on getting healthy. And that's what I'm going to do. I need to get my thyroid problem under control and get over this bronchitis. I should be resting

I got the MA so I could teach, but I've always wanted a doctorate, just so I could be pretentious as hell and make everyone call me "Dr." Don't really want to put the work into it, nothing in particular I'd enjoy specializing in, I just want the credential. So I kind of know how you feel.

Be glad you have a degree at all. Even a bachelor's opens lots of doors. It shows people you're able to commit to something and see it through. I brag about my undergrad GPA every chance I get (3.818, LOL), but you know what? Nobody gives a crap. No one has EVER asked to see my transcripts or demand to know my GPA. They just care that I can do the job.

If you're happy with what you're doing, why be sorry you aren't doing something else? I'm 39 too and I don't think I've achieved a friggin' thing, so I know how it feels -- like I should be A LOT farther along in life than I am. But, I started from way behind, thanks to this stupid thing called depression. Look at it this way -- at this rate, we'll peak when we're 70!

Try not to worry too much about it. There will always be people above you and below you. The trick is in being content with where you are.

Candy

Hi cms,

It sounds to me like you have achieved much. You've gotten a degree in Elem. Ed. and now you are self-employed and loving it. And you've done a lot more things that you haven't told us about. Those are things to be proud of.

But I know what you mean about being obsessed with achievement. I have always striven to over-achieve: in school, in my job, in church. I'm a perfectionist: all or nothing...that's me.

I've been thinking about taking some classes myself...maybe in psychology; but like you said, I need to get well first or at least reasonably well.

If you are on disability, sometimes state universities will give you a substantial reduction on tuition rates. Just check with the Disabilities Services office and they can tell you.

droopy

Thank you candy and droopy. I really do feel I received an excellent education at both my colleges. I started out as a piano major. I would have finished that but I had emotional problems back then and the school I was at wasn't conducive to good mental health. I guess I thought I could "hide" away from society as a kindergarten teacher. That sure wasn't true!

I have enjoyed a lot of differerent volunteer activities in the past and would like to do so again, once my health is better. I still take classes and I still have to have goals - realistic ones. It makes me feel better when I'm doing something.

Hi folks,

I've always been hooked up on the achievement thing, and it's usually pumped in from the outside, by family etc. My family used achievement as a club to beat my head with.

Happiness is the achievement that I want.

Candy knows that I have an MPhil. 10 years ago I walked away from a Phd. The work was all written up and presented, and I was in the Viva exam. The external examiner said that he wanted some changes, maybe three weeks work, and then it would pass.

At the time my depression was just starting to phase in, and I knew I couldn't make it. I told them, there was a flurry of emails and then silence.

I don't regret that decision for one moment, not one. I am the better for finally breaking the spell. It was the beginning of me finding a way forward, and letting some of those old patterns go. I too have a job that I love, but only part time, and I spend a lot of time quietly, doing my Buddhist practice, enjoying nature.

I feel that I have nothing to prove. Maybe if I'm hassled I'll get an old pattern kick in and I'll react a bit defensively, but when I'm alone I have nothing to prove. The biggest job was always dealing with the depression and anxiety, everything else was by the way.

cms, it sounds like you have done fine. There's no need to add pressure. Maybe you could do something that doesn't have any 'qualifications' attached, just for the fun of it.

Cheers everyone, Myzen,

Hello cms39 --

I am going to weigh in on two sides of the issue here. On the one hand, I agree with those who advise that you celebrate your very real achievements. So many of us want a job we LOVE, would love to be captains of our economic fate. So you have achieved something wonderful in that.

Nor is your degree in education anything to dismiss lightly. The skills involved in educating are highly transferable to other areas of life, and I am sure that you apply them in your business and personal life, perhaps without even realizing that you have integrated this knowledge so seamlessly into your life.

I also would say that it is easy to buy into the educational process as a place to get kudos. The goals are clear-cut, the feedback is constant in the form of grades. It's harder to know when we are doing well in other areas of our life. We have to remain alert for customers/clients who thank us, the friends and family who smile. Instead of positive feedback being built into the system, we have to be like bees who gather that nectar of positive reinforcement for ourselves.

Having said all the reasons why it is not necessary to seek out further education as a source of positive reinforcement, I also must say that completing my degrees when I was in my 40s has been rewarding --though not in the ways I thought it would be.

My career as a professor did not work out. I did not get tenure, was fired, lost my health due to the intense stress of the politics of the tenure review process at my school. My beloved had pushed me hard to fulfill his dreams of being Mr. Dr. Professor -- When I couldn't make his dreams for me come true, he dumped me.

I would not tout the professoriate as a profession that one should aspire to. I've known some people who are "built for it." I suspect that the very qualities that make you an entrepreneurial success would not be valued in the professoriate, just as I found that some of my strongest skills -- intellectual creativity and broad-based curiosity -- are not valued in a profession that prizes disciplinarity within narrow ranges of knowledge.

However, I learned things from my studies that I believe have made me a better person. I learned tolerance for my students who struggled to succeed. Everyone in journalism thinks very quickly -- there are multiple daily deadlines after all. My world was one of quick-thinking people. I had to learn ways of helping those who do not process quickly and easily, and patience and respect for them. That is a good thing.

I took courses that enabled me to better understand persuasive communication and public democratic processes, which required deepening my knowledge of history.

I became more conversant with the struggles of minorities, and how the world looks from their perspective. I took courses that enhanced my understanding of global politics, so that I ended feeling like a "citizen of the world."

The colleagial nature of research forced me to be less defensive about my ideas, more willing to benefit from a free exchange of ideas and information.

And all of this, has, in turn, opened up other kinds of employment opportunities that were closed to me before. As I come out of the very long depression that followed losing my job and beloved and home, etc., I am just beginning to become aware of some of these opportunities.

I used to complain to my friends that I'd be 47 when I finished my degrees. To a person they responded, "You are going to be 47 anyway, with or without the degree. Your choice."

I did have financial aid, and I was unemployed, so finishing school was the best economic choice for me at the time, so my case is different from yours, in that respect.

If you want an education so that people will pin a gold star on you, that's not an altogether bad thing, either. I wanted the positive feedback and a better job, but the good things about my education don't have much to do with either of those. The fringe benefits may be there, even if you are not thinking of them.

I wouldn't suggest that you put pressure on yourself to get this education, and sacrifice the things that are working in your life to get it.

But if you want it, it may be worth taking a course here and there as a transient student (not enrolled for a degree) and seeing if you want to take it any further. And investigating, as others suggested, programs that may make it affordable.

Whatever you decide will be just right for you. And you can go back to school at any age. If you decide "not now," perhaps 5 or 10 years from now, the time will be right.

Good luck with your decision.

Hey Myzen, you're probably right about that professor thing. My interests are all over the map! And there are so many academics spending years in school and then finally decide to get out and have difficulty figuring out what else they can do. (I read The Chronicle in Higher Ed quite a bit). LOL

I actually just get obsessive over my credentials. I have tons of music credits, but not a music degree (eg B.Mus). But I'm a musician. The college I transferred to never acknowledged my music major. But I know I have it (plus another major). And the kids I teach don't really care. They just think I'm really patient and play music very well. Plus I'm fun.

I DO still take classes - usually not for college credit though. I have some other interests I'd like to pursue though - perhaps in the future.

I have an editing business too - but I'm putting that on hold for a while. I need to take care of myself.

Hi cms, Candy, Wants2Fly, Droopy,

It is a long time since I met a bunch of such like-minded, and like-experienced people. It is indeed a great pleasure to be involved here.

My guess is that we just can't open up in the 3d world about such close to the heart issues. I'm always defensive, pretending that I'm OK, I could get an olympic gold in pretending that I'm OK!

Also it is really good to have a shared goal, which I think is to deal with the symptoms of our illnesses and hopefully come out the other side.

Having some fellow travellers has really lightened my load.

Thanks folks,

Myzen

Myzen -- You tapped a chord in me with the pretending to be OK thing. When I am worst is when I am most likely to do my best to put a good face on things. I don't fool many people -- but I do manage to make myself so unapproachable and cold that I intimidate those who might sincerely want to offer comfort or help.

I am told that right now my lesson is to ask others for help. It seems to be working better to do so -- at least for the moment -- than my other approach of pretense.

I, too, have found a tribe of people who really understand and have helped me thru repetitive messages that I needed to hear this summer. Had I been thrown in a group, such as the one CandyBear is now dealing with, with so many discordant personalities and problems, I doubt that it would have been as helpful as the forums.

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I'm just writing this because I realize that, as I approach 40, I feel that I haven't achieved very much. I've been thinking about going back to college for many years and I know it's never going to happen. Well, I may take a class, but I'll never get a master's. Plus, I have to be frugal. I don't make much money. I don't like crowds (i.e. school) or driving.

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Hey there CMS39 (now I understand your moniker!) Today I turn 40. Ew! I'm my mother's age now and my daughter is my age, because I'm really 19. I just stopped there. Only the body is 40.

Here are my major accomplishments in life (seriously):
<ul type="square">[*] not getting convicted of a crime or put in jail[*] not actually killing anyone I've secretly stalked and/or plotted to kill[*] not actually committing suicide[*] raising 3 kids, one mentally handicapped [*] coping entirely on my own with a huge garden of blooming madness for 21 years[*] carving out my own career in web design & development, autodidactically, from scratch[*] never losing my ability to touch other people significantly through my writing[/list]
I'm not "successful" as the world deems success. I work freelance from home right now cause I can't navigate the complicated human social structure of lies, fawning, etc. I haven't any energy for that nor any means of parsing socially-acceptable and mandatory untruths. I barely pay my bills and live in a townhouse -- can't even afford a real home. My destiny was breached and abrogated by deicidal usurpers and I will never have my life back. Oh well, happy birthday to me. If you're happy with your accomplishments, screw what the world thinks. You'll never be happy trying to please THEM or THEIR corrupted ideas. I think you should stick with what you are doing -- too few people can say they "love" what they do for a living. Honor that!

~Mal

Happy birthday, Mal.

CMS, can I join this club too? I feel like I've spent way too much time as an underachiever. Something like 25 years of wallowing, before I started to wake up and wonder where my life went. I don't want to go back to 19 - that was a bad year, but I'm stuck at 29 I guess. Well, I'm not sure that was a much better year. 9 was when it should have become obvious that my world crashed in around me. Yeah, part of me is still stuck somewhere around there, and didn't grow up.

At this point, I am under tremendous pressure to achieve something. For the last year and a half, the idea of going to graduate school has been what I have held onto. I took an extra year of classes, getting straight A's. Now I'm working 2 jobs for experience. Didn't get in last year, and can't imagine what my life would be like right now if I had. My T now recommended that I wait before applying again because she says I would get pounded, because my interpersonal skills need some work. That incompetent child part that never grew up, 'ya know? I can see her point, but on the other hand, I don't know what's going to happen if I let go of that objective. Meanwhile, I have two jobs and I'm trying to be perfect at both of them. I can't say no when I get called in. (Thanks Angela for talking me into calling them back last night and take back my agreement to work graveshift on no notice when I had my other job to work in the morning!) And when I'm there, I volunteer for everything and basically do all the work. I have to be the responsible one. In a couple of years maybe I could work my way to the top, but I don't want to still be here in a couple of years. And then there's all my other stuff - learning languages and reading a ton, and homeschooling, and I still have notions of getting my fiber processing business going and maybe letting the kids learn to do it. But I feel the clock ticking, and I hate that I've wasted so much time, and have so little to show for it, and I worry that I'm going to be too old to do anything worthwhile.