Special ed ruined my life.

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Long-time lurker, first time poster, so here goes....

I was in all special ed all through elementary school all the way until the beginning of high school. In sophomore year, I was finally moved into more standard classes, but even after that I was never placed in any accelerated, honors, or AP courses, and was still in a resource room at the end of the day. My parents thought I had issues and I had to be placed in smaller class settings, and I could never fight myself out of it until high school when I finally realized what condition I have and I want to try to succeed in life. Many people who have my condition have a higher than normal intelligence and can be placed in AP courses and succeed, and here I am the odd one out who needed constant reiteration and one-on-one assistance to succeed high school, with a 3.84 GPA (which I worked my ASS for). It was special ed that has caused me to still be in college, at 25 almost 26 years old, because I had to take a lot of pre-college level courses before being able to get into my major courses, and that I had to start out part-time or else I'd have a terrible meltdown going right from special ed/college prep courses to a 5 course college load. I can't fit in with almost anyone. You either have the nerds or the jocks. I'm not incredibly smart like a nerd, but also am not into the party or hip scene like jocks were, so I've been basically an outsider almost all my life which has gotten me nowhere. I worry that I'll never make it... I finally graduate with a bachelors in radio/TV/film broadcasting in 2 years, but I'm still uncertain as to what I want to do. In the meantime, I try to involve myself with extra-curricular activities at my college that relate to my major, which I enjoy.. just have uncertainty that I can carry these skills onto the real world.

I know most people reading this probably don't care, but I just needed to get this out of my head. Carry on...

Since you seem to be a late bloomer, perhaps taking a few extra years to get your degree may not be so bad. Once you graduate it is typically harder to maintain social skills as many of us become more isolated once out of school. This is true even if you get a job, as your possible social circle gets much smaller. You should take advantage of your last years in college to hone your social skills as much as you can.

Dude, don't compare your first chapter to someone else's ninth chapter: meaning, everybody makes different milestones in life at different rates, otherwise comparing yourself to other people just makes you more miserable. I'm in a similar situation: I was pissed off at "the System" for forcing me into Special Ed classes, but I proved them wrong my senior year and took two AP courses and Physics, so I proved them wrong.

As a successful college grad (school success, but not yet career success) you need to get rid of the whole jocks, nerds, labels on people. People are just people -- individuals that happen to have talents in some areas. If someone were to categorize me just by looking at me, they would say I'm a nerd girl & never know anything else about me. They would never guess I am good at construction, I own a tractor (but not a lesbian), recently learned how to cut down small trees, can read & code [Java, C++, C#, PHP, JavaScript, ASP.NET w/C#, HTML] languages, & know how to ride cruiser motorcycles. I'm not good at speaking or long conversations, but do care about others even though I don't verbally express it. I have a hard time sitting still inside (look like I'm tweaking out & withdrawing from drugs, even though I've never done any illegal substances or drink alcohol) -- outside I'm a lot more steady. If you met me outside you would think I was normal, but inside you'd think I'm a drug addict or a low functioning autistic.

Get to know individuals, rather than just assuming you couldn't get along with someone based on 1 talent they happen to have -- people are a lot more complex than that.