<p>I apologize in advance if this seems too self-indulgent. I am simply looking to vent and hoping to get some input/feedback from people, especially those who were ever in similar circumstances.</p>
<p>Basically, 3 years ago I dropped out of college. My college years were kind of a mirror of my high school years: during the first 2 years of high school I was a diligent honors student, but in the last 2 years I completely crashed and burned due to laziness and procrastination. I don't want to blame it on anyone but myself, even though I've always had problems with depression - after all, who doesn't have issues? The bottom line is that the number one problem was my laziness.</p>
<p>Besides 1 horrible semester, my overall college grades are fine. I wasn't dismissed or anything, I dropped out because I ended up hating my major and realizing that a degree in it would be useless anyway, not to mention I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life career-wise. So I simply didn't register the next semester, and the next, and the next. Before I knew it, it had been 3 years. If there has been any benefit from these past 3 years, it's the fact that I feel I have matured immensely during that time, and realized just how precious an education is to me (personally). More importantly, during this time I've done a lot of introspection and research and finally found out what career I would absolutely love to pursue. But now I am afraid it's too late and the doors have closed.</p>
<p>It's not just a simple case of silly prestige-chasing, nor me wanting to fill my time or delay growing up. I've legitimately suffered immense depression over my dropping out. I'll have some honeymoon periods where I'm carefree and happy, but then I'll experience weeks of absolute despondency where I pace back and forth for hours, suffer from panic attacks and find it almost impossible to sleep. When I'm awake, I usually feel absolutely shrouded in sorrow, guilt and shame over my past failures. </p>
<p>You'd think after all this I'd just return asap and end my misery, but there's something else. Over the years I've read countless articles and even books about the education bubble bursting and how there are far too many people in college who don't belong there, and how these people have dismal rates of success. While I don't agree 100 percent with these sources' claims, I think they bring up very good points. In general, the best predictor of an individual's future performance is their past performance, and only a small percentage of people manage to turn things around (in my case it was always an issue of effort/mindset and not lack of ability). Despite desperately wanting to return, and now having far more motivation as well as a clear career goal (which I lacked before), I am constantly plagued by feelings of inferiority, inadequacy and fear that I don't deserve to go back to school, and that I will be doomed by my past immaturity.</p>
<p>I realize that there are rare cases of success where people return to college after having dropped out. Can anyone who has been through this give me some advice on what you (or people you knew) did to assure success and not to repeat past bad habits?</p>