Doing Poorly in School

I'm having a hard time in school and I'm afraid.

I don't know what I can do with my life. School is just a way for me to put it off. I used to be able to get As before my life got out of hand and was diagnosed with depression but now I am struggling to even pass courses.

I have failed a course already, but it was just a "half" course. I think I'm about to fail a different course (a "full" course) and I'm not sure what I can do now. It's an intro course to a major I want to pursue (because I am vaguely interested in it) and although I have gotten Cs in higher level courses in that major, I'm just all around worried about my schooling.

I also feel like this hurts my identity somewhat, since I don't feel like I have many accomplishments outside of doing well in school, other than things I have been told all my life will not help me in real life.

??? I feel so confused about my life. Even with medication and therapy I barely feel like I can hold my life together, and I feel like I am going nowhere fast, and that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I don't want to live at home for the rest of my life, nor do I want to have to struggle for food and shelter for years on end.

I guess you could say that I feel like I have failed, even though I have yet to fail my course. I have failed before...but I've turned 21 and I'm far behind my peers in lots of ways. Why can't I get my act together?

Good luck, yo

I have just come back from my exam, and I think with some luck I can scrape a 50 in the course.

I have spoken to a friend and my friend suggests I speak with accessibility services, and see if my depression, anxiety and inability to deal with stress can be accommodated.

Definitely speak to accessibility services. Let them know your condition. Most colleges and universities here will make some allowances. You might not always be able to get deadline extensions (the colleges I've applied to have all told me it depends on the instructor but that it's very rare to get actual deadline extensions) but that when it comes to exams they can almost always make special arrangements.

"I don't know what I can do with my life. School is just a way for me to put it off. I used to be able to get As before my life got out of hand and was diagnosed with depression but now I am struggling to even pass courses." quote davos

Whoa, slow down you have a lot of stress here and you are talking yourself down into doomsville. You are only 21, you have lots of time to get yourself together yet, no need to paint a gloomy picture for yourself. It is actually pretty normal to have a lot of stress at your age, I know I dealt with it and I have met many who also struggled with it, believe me you are definitely "not alone".

I remember my daughter was first going to be a spanish teacher, then a math teacher, but she ended up a math major and has a job that is not a teacher and she earns "more" than teachers earn. Geez, my husband went to college to be a special ed teacher and ended up owning a restaurant for a while then got out of that and has his own business doing something completely different. My nephew went to college and "struggled" but finally graduated and he didn't know what he wanted and finally ended up selling cars and is doing excellent in that field as a sales manager. He always loved cars but never really thought about doing what he does now. He could have done it without a college education too.

You know, college teaches us how to learn. It is different from high school because it's not as intimate and there is a lot more freedom with it. It really isn't until someone graduates and gets out in the world a bit until they really find their way. If you struggle in a subject, then you need to find a tutor, my daughter did that with calculus. Now my daughter tells me that she doesn't even remember all the stuff she "memorized" in college. We don't actually "use" all we learn or "memorize" so we can somehow "pass a test" in college or even high school for that matter.

Ok, so you think you got 50% on a test, well that means you "learned" 50% of what you were trying to learn. That is a glass half full and you did learn something. I think that maybe you are just pushing too hard, stressing too much, and no one really "learns" when they are "stressed out" somehow. Well, at 21 it is a time in our lives where we simply cannot see the forest through the trees. Well, truth is our brain isn't even fully matured until at least age 25 and even then the majority don't get it together until their early 30's. So, believe me, you have time, so try to calm down if you can and don't let yourself get to being "hard" on yourself.

Have you researched what kind of jobs are actually "out there" now? There are fields that do have job openings that can't be filled because not many know to go into those fields.

I took my parents out to dinner one night and met a really nice waiter and he was 23 and went to a technical school for plumbing. He worked in the field and decided he didn't like it because he preferred working around people more. Soooo, at 23 he is deciding to go back to school and do something that has to do with "working around people". So, you are not the only one that doesn't quite know what you want to do in life. Often that comes as we actually "live our lives" and at 21, you are just beginning that part, just only a bud really. Way too early to "put self in gutter" for life.

What happens when you ask your computer to do too many things at once? Well, same with the human brain, it needs to "think" and to have the time to "process" each request.

OE