<p>I am a 21 year old senior, I am president of my sorority, a Dean's List student, and I have received a fully paid for trip to attend the convention of my sorority and for a program called LeaderShape. Even though it seems like I have a lot going for me at school, I hate college. I am so bored with the education system and I have no clue what I want to do. I have changed my major every year, and now I won't be graduating for a while. On top of that, I have a fiance, and I am ready to start my life with him. I would like to quit school right now and start my life with him, and in a few years when I am sure of what I want, then maybe I will go back and pursue it. I need some advice on how to tell my sisters, my advisors, and other officials that I want to leave school?</p>
<p>Please don’t drop out. If you do not think you can stand to finish the major you have now then look and see, with the classes you have already taken, what major could get you the diploma the quickest. Does your university have a general studies major? You have too much invested in both time and money to not get a degree. Also you mentioned you have a fianc</p>
<p>Among the many questions on your plate, the responsibility you feel as Sorority Pres and the grooming they are doing with you for leadership is gnawing at you. Have you considered resigning the role to let another take your place? I would imagine that you hold the office b/c your sisters deemed you as worthy of leadership and emulation. But that can be a burden as well. I suggest you, along with some trusted advisers, evaluate what’s really important to you and your life. If the sorority role, without being a hypocrite, is worth it, then stay in that role. If dropping the presidency in order to get a degree in a reasonable amt of time is important, then go that route. This is the one, at the surface, I would recommend. The best thing you can do as sister and as a current president is to show them an example of achieving your degree – even if it means resigning as pres.</p>
<p>What you don’t want in your marriage is regrets to creep in later, and even future “blaming” your hubby for your incomplete college career. Restarting college is a HUGE undertaking – especially if you might have a child or two in tow.</p>
<p>There are huge advantages to finishing your degree now, rather than postponing it, especially since you plan to get married.</p>
<p>Married couples tend to take on responsibilities with startling speed – mortgages, children, perhaps starting a business. They also tend to move from place to place for the benefit of one person’s career or the other. You could easily find yourself in a situation, a few years down the road, where you have too many other things going on to make it possible for you to go back to school or where there’s no appropriate college in the vicinity where you could complete your degree. </p>
<p>Obviously you realize that there are jobs you can get without a college degree – and some of them are reasonably good ones. But in many lines of work, you will soon hit a ceiling that you can’t crack through without a bachelor’s degree. This happened to a young man I know. After he dropped out of college, he became a full-time employee at the supermarket chain where he had been working part-time. He quickly rose to a supervisory position – quite a good job. But he couldn’t rise any further because he didn’t have a degree. You don’t want this sort of thing to happen to you.</p>
<p>If you are really that unsure and unhappy, perhaps consider a brief LOA. But don’t drop out. Keep the door open and finish that degree. It is so much harder to do down the road, and it sounds like you have a wonderful scholarship, grades and supports in your sorority sisters. Can you meet with a counselor and see if perhaps there are some other underlying mood or adjustment issues you can address? God luck, and hang in there!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If you do not return to school in the fall what is your plan (other than being with your fiance)?</p>
<p>Do you have a job lined up?</p>
<p>How do you plan to support yourself?</p>
<p>Do you have student loan debt? If yes, what is your plan for paying it off?</p>
<p>Has your fiance finished college? If he is still in college does he have a plan to go back in the fall?</p>
<p>Have you discussed this decision with your parents? Are they supportive of your decision?</p>
<p>If you stayed, how much longer would it take for you to complete the degree?</p>
<p>If you are going to take a long time to graduate, and are not sure what you want to study, I think there are three ways to go:</p>
<p>1) Look at your courses so far, meet with an advisor, and finish in whatever major you can finish fastest. It does not really matter, in many cases, what an undergrad degree is in. Many jobs just want a BA, period. And possibly drop the sorority leadership and convention to take more courses if need be.</p>
<p>2) Take a leave of absence and return when you feel you can finish in an area of true interest, or that is relevant to work you want to do. If you return to the same school, your grades and transcript are preserved. There is a danger you will never return.</p>
<p>3) Leave school and decide in the future how to finish. There are many adult learner programs or continuing ed programs or regular undergrad programs that require 30-45 credits be taken with that school. So you could transfer what you have and then finish. These programs include on campus, online and “low residency” (you go to school 5-8 days, once per semester, then work independently w/an advisor while home). You would lose the GPA from the school you are at right now, but could always get a transcript from there to include with your final transcript if needed.</p>
<p>I will tell you that there are arguments for all of these, but if you are feeling a strong pull toward joining your fiance, what does that mean exactly? Do you want to get married? Have kids? What work will you do? Is he finished with school and working? Is he far away?</p>
<p>My life has gone fine without a degree. Until my husband had a stroke. I have kids and no degree to help me become a breadwinner, and although I have gotten into colleges recently to finish, it is hard with the needs of my kids, and my health too, now that I am older. I know my kids are intent on finishing no matter what, as they watch me struggle with consequences of decisions made 40 years ago! That said, I personally am always open to alternative paths. But I worry that the immediate problem for you is that you want to be with your fiance. That is a lot of pressure on the relationship and may backfire over the long term. Good luck!</p>
<p>Note that the responses are from older women who have lived a little. Voices of experience. Please listen.</p>
<p>My sister planned to become a nurse, got engaged, school got hard, and marriage was her exit strategy. She’s been underemployed her entire life, and her dh, who had no college, was let go from his job after 20-plus years and is working as a part-time security guard. I know it’s diffcult to project out 20, 30, 40 years down the road, but you obviously have a lot going for you. Power through this last year. At this point, it doesn’t matter what your degree is in. Just get it. Please.</p>
<p>It can be tough when you feel stuck between worlds, and it is not uncommon for seniors. Finish your degree now, when you have the time to focus on it. Set yourself up for success among your peers. If divorce, death, higher than expected bills come along, you want to be able to compete on a level-playing field.
Take this last year to enjoy your friends, and your sisters. You don’t need to be President to do that. Plenty of seniors move away from leadership in their final year. You can still be involved without the day-to-day drama.
Start planning for the next stage of your life at the Career Center. If you are going to work (because weddings are not cheap), start using your connections to line up real job opportunities.</p>
<p>Good advice above. And please, PLEASE don’t make the mistake of using your fiance as your “exit strategy.” Don’t put yourself in the position of being financially dependent upon him. You can never know for sure what the future holds; countless women have taken that route and been left high and dry with nothing but regrets for their poor judgment in not preparing themselves to be self sufficient. Maybe you’ll marry and your husband will be a millionaire and “take care of you” while you run the family and home. Or…he will die and leave you with debts and no way to pay them, or he will divorce you and find someone else, or…or…or. There is tremendous value in the inner confidence of knowing that if worse comes to worst, you can put food on the table and a roof over your head. Get your degree. If you find a passion later, your degree will not be a waste and might even be a springboard. Don’t ever turn down the opportunity to get a college degree when you have it in your hand.</p>
<p>I don’t understand, from this thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/1345996-dropping-out-college.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/1345996-dropping-out-college.html</a>, you obviously know the better decision is to finish your degree. Why not follow your own advice? Everyone who’s posted here is absolutely right. I’ve seen women in my parents’ generation deal with this very thing, and the ones without college degrees suffer the most.</p>
<p>You can’t just restart your education somewhere else someday. </p>
<p>Even if there is course synergy, most schools will limit transfer to around 60 credits. (When DH transferred, he had 140 credits collected from various schools / majors. Only 70 were accepted at our engineering college. We refer to his education as “the 11 year plan”.) </p>
<p>I know it’s unpopular for youth to seek advice of older folks. But you were smart enough to do so, and I applaud that. Try hard to listen to our theme and find a way to finish the degree. You will do your fiance the favor of being able to forever share financial responsibilities. My degree has always been useful, but when DH was unemployed for a year it was critically useful.</p>
<p>I am curious, what does fiance think of this?</p>
<p>My boyfriend would like for me to not work once we’re married (but would also support me doing so if I wished), and is the kind of guy that cringes at the thought of letting me spend my money on bills that he could be paying. It’s just ingrained in him that he is supposed to provide for me. But it is still a BIG, BIG, BIG deal to him that if something happens to his job, or to him, that we know I have an education and can go out and put food on the table for our family. That is important, and if we didn’t have that it would really be a horrible pressure on him. I believe I owe it to him to give him that relief, of knowing that he does not have to be alone in supporting our household. It never gets any easier to go to school than it is right now when you don’t have the responsibilities of a spouse and family. I hope you reconsider. It is worth it.</p>
<p>Of course you can restart your education somewhere else someday, and that is a viable option. The majority of college students are adult, non-traditional students, and many schools take 75 or 90 transfer credits, sometimes leaving only 10 courses for the major to finish.</p>
<p>I would add that it might be good to talk with a counselor for a few sessions. There may be more to the picture than you are willing to put online, which is understandable. If you are depressed, for instance, you may make decisions that you regret.</p>
<p>But I do want to emphasize that many, many people leave school without graduating and do fine. You are close to graduating and the sensible thing is to finish, if you can do it in a year or a year and a half. But it won’t be a disaster to leave and finish later, either, after some life and work experience. And it can even be alright not to finish at all.</p>
<p>You could also train at a community college for something practical (x-ray tech., vet tech., office technology, nursing, real estate) or train on the job for something and end up with steady work. College is not the only answer.</p>
<p>We don’t know the whole story and you don’t have to post it either.</p>
<p>Sailing away to ‘real life’ with the love of your life may look appealing right now, but fast forward with a family, probably located far away from any support system, and having to depend on hubby or family to pay for college is not a proposition I’d like to deal with.</p>
<p>Even if you find a college and continue, and even find work and go to college part time or full time, it ain’t fun. Try to work, go to college, and have a baby in the middle of the semester (embarrassing class announcements anyone?) is not as fun as it sounds.</p>
<p>Find a program that allows you to graduate in a year or so, then think about marriage. Many colleges are not very happy to accept transfer credits 5 years or older so keep that in mind as well.</p>
<p>Go to Leadershape. From what I understand about that program, part of the focus of it is helping students find their passion and fashion a path to what they want to do. </p>
<p>My other piece of advice is to find one adult at school who knows you and to whom you can talk, unreservedly, about your options, your fears and what you see as your options. It sounds to me like you could use a sounding board.</p>
<p>I am not necessarily in favor of this young woman leaving, but I do want to offer accurate information. Many, many (most?) colleges accept credits that are more than 5 years old, even more than 50 years old. An exception is science classes for fields in which the science is needed.</p>
<p>The Us I know of who take transfer credits DO have a time limit on how recently they were earned. One of my neighbors had hers expire, so to this date, she has never completed her degree & it has limited her job options. Before assuming that you could leave & complete the degree “later,” I’d inquire at the schools you’re most likely (at this point) to want to go to for completing your degree and ASK them how long your existing credits would count toward getting a degree.</p>
<p>That said, I join the chorus, urging you complete the degree now, while you have the financial & emotional support at your U. Hopefully LeaderShape will be helpful for you too. Good luck!</p>
<p>I just can’t express to you how much more difficult it will be to go back to college and finish your degree, after you have a baby in tow. Doing anything for yourself at that time - actually for many years, once you start a family - becomes monumentally difficult without 1000% support from your partner, and even then.</p>
<p>If you are adult enough to get married, you are adult enough to finish what you started and get your degree. And the fact that you can’t think of how to make this plan sound good to your family tells me you know it’s not a good idea.</p>
<p>My S withdrew from college a year short of graduation. Life got complicated, and it took him 6 years to find his way back to completing his degree. His resume now has a gap that will have to be explained at every interview–if he gets called at all. Meanwhile, the amount of money he’s lost by being underemployed for that period is substantial. He kicks himself every day for allowing this to happen. Don’t do it.</p>