More about my situation.

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...Perhaps because I was denied it for so long, and it's been so forever out of reach for me - I idealized it unduly. What else has there been for me to hope for ?
















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I guess college must be a lot more of a paradise than high school. To me school means being confined to a desk and surrounded by others who can often be distracting and annoying. Outside of the classroom it's noisy crowded halls, cafeteria and playfield.

I enjoy a tranquil sunny days out on the lawn with a cool breeze blowing, on weekends and during summer vacation away from school. I don't comprehend the idea of school being some kind of dreamy utopia. To me it's always meant hard work in often unfavorable conditions. Which is why so many play hooky.[/quote]

Sorry but I don't get it. Being in a dorm doesn't sound like any kind of freedom and zero privacy. Plus I can imgine being 57 hanging out with teenage fratboys feeling strange and uncomfortable and incredibly out of place. There's very little about the college experience that appeals to me even now, not to mention 40 years from now.

I'm not sure about hoping for stuff being such a good thing, at least from my perspective. I mean there's always been so much I could pine after that's out of my reach. Playing sports. Driving a car. Lots of stuff. Maybe if I keep hoping hard enough and long enough just maybe someday.... nah. It's not going to happen. That's just reality. But I think I'm a lot better off than the C5 quadriplegic I know. His biggest accomplishment is being able to breath on his own without a ventilator.

There’s the real college experience...and then there’s the idealistic one.

When I was a teenager, I used to dream about sitting under a tree at a college campus, talking about intellectual topics with my girlfriend. This sort of thing does happen at times.

College campuses outside the city tend to be nice places. And most students are not fratboys, though they tend to be loud and might drink too much beer and still be into “peer pressure.” They are usually nicer than high school students, though. Usually more mature. And more tolerant of differences amongst people.

Overall, even in noncampus colleges, the overall experience is much better than high school—-though it’s still far from perfect.

I'm sure college is better than high school and a teen would look forward to moving out and all that. But that's a teen. Is it that middle age crisis thing where a guy in his 50s decides he wants to start a garage band or trick out a car etc?

Hi ASS-P,
I just spent the last 5 years studying and it nearly put me into an early grave.
I developed heart problems towards the end which nearly finished me off along with tight deadlines to finish written work.
I already had fibromyalgia and ME when I started the course but ended up with far more health problems by the end of it all.
I am now doing nothing and sat here with severe depression - the aftermath of it all.

I would suggest getting yourself stable before entering into any kind of education.
Get your health stable both physically and mentally. Have a home to feel safe in.

Then go down the route of free short internet courses to see if you can handle to workload and stress.

Plainjane gave you some excellent sources for courses online. I had a look myself and may do some in the future. But I also know I need to get myself back to the best kind of health I can be in. I am looking after myself and getting support for this and it sucks but it is what needs to be done.

I am happy to tell you more about my horrible experience at college if you want me to.

In ASS-P's case, it's not a "mid-life crisis."

He's in a rough situation. My feeling is that he wants to escape it for a few hours a day.

Oh okay that makes sense. I really just didn't and still kinda don't get the attraction entirely. To me college would just be working my butt off for the sake of getting a degree if I needed one. I hear a lot about huge college tuition loans that have to be paid off for years as well.

Last edited by EzraS on 07 Dec 2017, 12:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ha ha ha. NO, you would not. Take it from a fellow constant complainer who's tried shutting up, too!

The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

I can see being persistent paying off. But I don't see being miserable over something unattainable being worth the suffering. There's plenty I can't accomplish, no matter how much help was offered, so it's not like that's easy for me to say.

...I have a problem now. much more immediate than any projected going to uni - I need a storage space to send the things of my brother's that are mine now! I'm being pestered by my padents' lawyer back East to give an address to send them too.
Yes, this includes those discs, etc. I spoke of selling in the past - but I don't aim to do that
anymore, they're probably unsalable, really...I just want to keep them - and, mist of. I wa t to preserve the family pictures and memoribilia of his, they're my pictures and memoribilia, too, I wast to preserve them! Please .
I just need a place to have mg pre ious .memories sent to, so that they may be preserved . Please?

Ezra, I understand your position, too!

I am one of "those" people who have adopted the strong opinion that if a person chooses to give up, or quit, on a goal, they should be allowed to. It's my personal opinion that not everyone can achieve whatever they want, and it can often do more damage than good to insist that a person keep trying, based on the premise that "you can achieve whatever you set your mind to." I don't believe that at all! Not every person can achieve any goal.

However . . . I think that it should be left up to the individual to decide what is "unattainable", which goals should be given up on, how much misery is worth enduring, and whether the suffering is worth the reward.

If ASS-P has wanted to try college since he was a youth, then it's up to him if he still wants to try.

If institutions around him prevented him from trying, his misery will improve only when he's permitted to try. If that means that he requires assistance, then that doesn't mean it's unattainable. It means there's an additional hurdle that needs to be considered for him.

Historically, ASS-P's experience of being denied an education, and being institutionalized and marginalized instead, have been very, very common experiences among people with disabilities. Lots of us experienced similar circumstances.

If you've never been told that you were being "fast tracked" at school (in effect that meant they were passing you on to the next grade not because you learned the material, but because it was better for them statistically), if you were never told that you were receiving a "summer school education", if you were allowed to attend classes, rather than constantly being pulled out and placed in a hallway, or a closet, or an institution, sometimes for "offenses" as small as pencil tapping, then you should consider yourself extremely lucky, and a beneficiary of the new laws and protections afforded to people with disabilities, which were hard won!

These days, younger people with disabilities have been afforded the legal chance at receiving an education, and so it may be extremely difficult to understand having a longing for that experience, to the point of seeming obsession. However, if the world would just offer elder people with disabilities the support that they never received growing up, and still are denied in adulthood, then at the very least ASS-P would be able to try college, and then decide for himself if it's worth the suffering. We are still here, we got ignored our whole lives, and it continues into our adulthood.

It might seem annoying that we won't drop it, but from our perspective, it can seem kind of annoying that the world refuses to address the problem, and the only solution offered is that we should shut up about it. Right now, ASS-P's self determination was stolen from him, educationally speaking, and it seems that despite three decades of voicing his wishes, he's still ignored, or worse.

If someone was poking you in the eye, and you complained about it for three decades, and there was no resolution, you would likely get more vocal about that, not less.

There is a chance, even if ASS-P was given the exact help and assistance that he thinks is required for him to achieve his goals, he would either fail, or decide that college isn't for him because of all of the jocks, after all, and he would quit. That is a possibility! But I don't think this is about sticking with a goal for ASS-P. It's about being allowed the self determination to even try, and how that was stolen from him, and that error hasn't been remedied.

I think it's fine, and even healthy, to give up on a goal if that's what you decide. But if someone else decides it for you, the suffering can be unending, especially if you're an adult.

That's stealing. And an education is one of the most valuable things in the world.

Are you seriously asking semi strangers on a public internet forum to offer up space in their garage/home/apartment/condo to store your crap for in indefinite (since I see no change in your situation any time soon) period?

Plainjane, stealing what? Nobody here is preventing ass p from going to college.

When I posted realistic concerns about how he would get around campus he just blows it off and never posts an adequate reply. By his admission, it can take him ten minutes just to get up from a seated position. In school I did have a lecture class, after which I had to get to a lab within 10 minutes, but the buildings were way across campus from each other. I was fast and fit then and it was a near jog to get myself there on time. Where would he store his things? How would he get projects and reading and studies done? Contrary to what he thinks, that is all on him. He has the absurd notion that social workers or other government and or institutional employees can and should do everything for him and that its just some conspiracy to keep him like he is.

...DW obviously greatly dislikes me, and wil putl out an inaccurate interpretation of things that I say.
He has done that above, and I may restrain myself from getting in the sandbox and hurling back at him.
I am, briefly, asking for help in - possibly in setting things up with a third party - of doing something immediately now with these items, which include pictures
/memorabilia of my family - Something which I have copies of for many YEARS . Please, help me ...

If not that, then what exactly are you asking? How do you think people 2000 miles away (like I am) can help?