Dropping out

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Hello I am new to this site I have been diagnosed with AS how ever the resulting diagnose was misplaced and so I now have been struggling to find a happy medium with my school I aplogize if i sound full of my self this is not a cry for attention this is a cry for advice, I have made it know that I wish to leave college and start living out of my car, I can't not find the hope that I was told to feel in the academic setting, there is a pervasive notion that I am not capable. The question I have posed is not for you to try to convince me to continue with school rather I wish to gather as much infromation as possible.
My question is will I find happiness if I chose to cut all ties and run? I at this moment find the idea of removing all social ties and obligations which for the moment all I have is a date with a girl, to be utterly calming with the propespt of turing my obsession into my life with out ever felling rejection.

Welcome to WrongPlanet.

I was keenly interested in philosophy in my mid-20s and thought, if I could just concentrate more on it . . . Well, some of the social interaction, as messy as it is, actually makes for better philosophy/intellectual/poetry whatever.

You know, almost my prefered setting, would be intellectual work first part of the day and then light social in evening. I even thought of a laughing buddhist resort, where people eat breakfast quietly, and later on during the day it's entirely normal to write, walk, write, walk . . . but in the evening there's light social like ping pong and board games available, and maybe political activism from time to time. Anyway, to the best of my knowledge, there is no place like this, at least not formally. (and yeah, I found the college dorm pretty doggone disappointing in a number of ways)

Last edited by AardvarkGoodSwimmer on 14 Sep 2010, 5:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

College is overrated and too expensive for what it gives back. This is especially true for many worthless majors.

Its alright to leave.......as long as you have some other plan to support yourself with a job/career.


It seems to me like you have no plan and "cutting and running" will probably lead you to ending up on the street eventually.

Dropping out is a decision that some people make, but I always remind anyone that tells me that they are thinking about it to consider the following: 1) statistically, most people who quit don't come back, and I can name 5 examples in my own life off the top of my head alone; they all said that they were just going to take a semester off, years later most of them are still trapped in the same place. 2) In the event that you do go back, it's not going to be any different, you will just pick up where you left off, and you will also have to deal with the awesomely awkward fact of being the older dude in the classroom. Yes age does denote better judgement for most people, but every person that I have ever met in this scenario has always strongly regretted leaving in the first place.

Regarding whether or not you will find any happiness, that is a question only you yourself can answer. But I suspect that the fact that you went as far as to ask for the advice of strangers on an internet discussion site says that you probably already know the answer. After all, you know your life better then anyone else, if you are not in a college setting, then where will you be? What will you be doing to pass the time? How will you support yourself? You already know what the answer is, if you think about it.

As far as personal advice from my own life goes: I've been in a few similar crises myself during the 4+ years that labored away at a community college. I coped with it differently every-time, but the two ways that I would say helped the most was 1) slowing down and taking 2 classes at a time for a semester or two, and 2), dumping all of my previous plans and taking a random assortment of classes that I thought sounded interesting. The last one came about after I had this realization that I hated what I was majoring in and that I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. That happened a year ago to be exact, and during that time I took an intro course that introduced me to my major (Sociology) and I discovered that I had a massive flaming passion for it. Today, I'm going to a major university upstate, and I'm only taking advanced Sociology and Psych classes that all pertain to what I want to study. All of my classes are filled entirely with Social Science majors like myself that are studying the same thing. Life is good. Moving to a new town and starting fresh has been hard, but I had a few friends that came up with me, so coping with that has been easy.

Ultimately what you do with your life is up to you, but a good thing to keep in mind is that your views on life will change drastically as you age, and the 40 year old version of yourself would look at this situation very differently from the way that you are seeing it now.

I would say, and really just making a guess, that James has picked up on the fact that it's a busted semester (a professor just going through the motions, another class that is regimented when it could be so much more, fellow students who aren't interested in the topic at all and seemingly unable to have an intellectual conversation or not even sufficiently interested to the point of even making an effort<---these are things that bother me) Maybe different things bother James, but I would guess that he doesn't have a single solitary class he's looking forward to this semester, not enough to make up for the drudgery classes.

Now, the most logical thing in the world, well, let's get some new classes, and I like your advice of mixing it up----but there's hardly a college out there which you let you add a new class Sept 14, and that's probably a shame.

Don't feel any shame in dropping out of college. It is a pretty terrible experience. However, you should have a plan if you're going to drop... As bad as college can be, being homeless is much worse.

Indeed, as far this semester goes, the best choice in this scenario would be to withdraw before the deadlines to avoid the gpa burn, and start afresh in the spring.

Aardvark and I both kind of alluded to this, but I'll put it out in bold James. College gets much better after you get through your general eds! 100 level classes suck, with very few exceptions. But by your second half of your sophomore year things do start to get more interesting, and easier in a weird way. While the workload of 300 and 400 level classes are much bigger then what you do in the early years, they are easier to get through because you are taking classes that are only relevant to whatever you are majoring in. Seriously, if you can get through the first two years of crappy gen eds, its a fun ride from there on out.

Thank you all for the responses I have taken your words under advisement, as I learned from Bertrand Russell the best tool in science is a second opion on the data. I feel that with treatment I might find the venturer into the academic arena more bearable.