<p>Here is my story: I was only given one option for college…my state school…as dad had said he would pay for it. Oh, well. But then I found my passion at that school. However, I did struggle…I think I had some low self-esteem issues. However, I knew that all I had to do was graduate and that became my goal. I graduated with a GPA 3.2. I did get into grad school (another state school). I struggled there too. And again I knew I just had to graduate. Well, I met my husband during grad school, finished my master’s and went on to research with some Yale professors. And as life goes, we moved several times following my husband’s career. But I landed some wonderful jobs in biotech (I managed several labs/traveled/was published). No one cared about my difficult college experiences…just that I was great at my job. There-in lies the key to success. Just believe in yourself.</p>
<p>I just have one thing to add to those who already posted. Grad school is not out of reach even with a less than stellar GPA. I know someone who dropped out with a string of WFs, worked a few years, then went back, took some grad courses and did well in them, then got into graduate school with a nice fellowship and TAship. Another friend commuted to 3th tier State U. for financial reasons and went to the Ivy League for her PhD. That sort of thing happens all the time. Don’t give up your dreams about college. Perhaps they will never be fulfilled at the undergraduate level, but if you got into those elite schools, you can get into graduate school.</p>
<p>My brother in law was a wonderful, brilliant guy who married my sister when they were both far too young. While working a couple of day and weekend jobs, he attended night school to get a CPA credential. This is what he needed to do at the time for his young family but it did not satisfy his own intellectual needs.</p>
<p>The marriage did not last. Years later he made time in his life to go back to school in the St. John’s College summer Great Books programs. It was a very satisfying experience for him.</p>
<p>I’m sorry to hear about an unhappy college experience, but there are ways to make up for it. For a woman especially, this is easier to do before marriage and children but even afterwards there are opportunities if you look for them. Many employers will pay for schooling. Some will send you abroad. I had a wonderful college experience but picked up multiple graduate degrees in diverse fields over the span of nearly 30 years. Some of my best academic experiences occurred after college.</p>
<p>Looking back on it my parents always harbored reservations about paying for big-ticket schools…of course, they never told me directly, and I had on blinders. I now believe they encouraged me to apply to selective colleges because they thought it would satisfy them - and perhaps to some extent satisfy me - to simply see that I COULD get in. Bragging rights without the price tag, if you will. </p>
<p>I don’t disparage state schools, but my state school was not the place for me. My school has a lot of really well respected departments and courses of study, but it has an infamously bad English program. Yes, there are great teachers in it, but it’s overcrowded and underfunded (bad if you are hoping for any kind of discussion-based classes). I believe people in other majors or even in my major but with a different “wish list” than myself are probably having a fantastic time.</p>
<p>I guess everyone is right, though. It won’t be the biggest disappointment of my life, and if it is, I would’ve lived a good one. At least I wasn’t about to be part of the first female class at Yale ;)! Maybe one day an equally cool opportunity will present itself to me, and that time I’ll be ready and in the right position to take it…perhaps because of how things panned out, and not just in spite of them.</p>
<p>But it is an uphill battle to change the way I feel about things, even if I know how to think about them in all the right ways. It does help immensely to hear parents’ advice and stories of their own lives…so thank you so much. And it does help to hear people say that they know how I feel. My parents of course have never acknowledged my feelings about this or apologized for anything, and while a part of me wishes they would, another says it’s petty to want that when they did so much else for me. I’d write to them and tell them how I feel, just to try to “get it out” once and for all, but I do think it would be very bratty and cruel and perhaps accomplish nothing but make them feel bad. So maybe letting it out here, to a different set of parents, will help somewhat.</p>
<p>Absolutely-- especially if you are not tied to your parents financially-- go out and get a job that is meaningful to you and related to your field of interest. You could join the Peacecorp, Americorp, work and perhaps learn a language abroad…enjoy the next two years doing something challenging and interesting and don’t worry about building a “career”…then when you reapply to graduate school, what you’ve done and how you matured will be all that matters in your essays- -not the gpa.</p>
<p>And with this and two semesters ahead-- gpa can increase markedly…and have you not considered one or even two independent study classes? You can have a directed reading with an interesting professor and sink your teeth into materials of interest. I also know that all schools offer “special topics” classes-- these are small and involve a professor leading a class on a cutting edge/current area of research interest-- you should seek those out…and how about a graduate level 500 class at Big-state U?</p>
<p>Best of luck…what is done is done- -get your degree and seek out the best classes you can while remaining.</p>
<p>I feel for you–I really do sympathze and don’t think you’re being bratty to feel disappointed. On the other hand, this is the situation you find yourself in, so it won’t hurt to try to make the best of it.</p>
<p>I wish your parents had been more open about how much they were willing to pay for college, but they weren’t. You can’t change that. It teaches you that financial issues are very difficult for your parents to discuss. I personally wouldn’t put a big guilt trip on them–I can think of FAR worse things a parent could do. And they are paying for your education at the state school, which is no small thing. Not graduating with debt leaves you more free to choose to do what you love after college, without worrying about paying off student loans.</p>
<p>My parents couldn’t afford more than a state school because I had other siblings in college. That was just the reality–they weren’t bad parents because of their financial situation. I was lucky, however, that my parents told me upfront that I could go to any state school I wished and they would pay for everything, so I knew what I had to work with in regard to money from the beginning.</p>
<p>I also think CC can be very skewed toward Ivy league/small prestigious LACs. My gut feel is that there is more emphasis on Ivies on the East Coast than in the Midwest and West.The truth is that millions of college students go to state schools every year, and manage to get jobs and live happy lives. The choice of where to go to college is an important one–but it is not the most important one in your life–I’d say that deciding what you want to do with your life is far more important, as is picking a life partner.</p>
<p>One dirty secret that colleges certainly aren’t going to tell you was confided to me by the CEO of the company I was working for. He said that the smartest students don’t necessarily make the best/most successful employees. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don’t have the right social skills.</p>
<p>Also, unless you want to work for an extremely prestigious consulting firm, law firm, etc. where you went to school usually isn’t an important factor after your first job–and maybe not even then. I didn’t even know where lots of my workmates went to college–how people performed on the job was most important.</p>
<p>It sounds easy to say, “Try to forget ‘If I’d only known.’” But, I’d strongly recommend trying to do that. It took me 30+ years to learn–it’s incredibly hard. Everyone, whether they admit it or not, has made decisions they regretted–sometimes major decisions. The only thing you can do is pull up your socks and say, “What have I learned from this and what should I do differently in the future.” Counseling could possibly help, at least to get you through this present crisis.</p>
<p>Your life isn’t ruined. Another little dirty secret that colleges aren’t going to tell you is that college is not necessarily nirvana. Sure, many students love their college years. Other people (like me) got through college, but there were other issues going on in my life that kept me from being as happy as I would have liked to have been. Plus, I found that although I am very smart, college is not the best way for me to learn. I learn better by doing, and by having to learn something to teach it to others. Although they may not admit it, I’d guess that thousands of your fellow students aren’t living in nirvana, either.</p>
<p>Sometimes it’s only by having experiences that we don’t enjoy that we learn what is important to us. You’ve learned a lot about yourself already and what is important to you.
For me, for example, I hated living in the dorm. Even though I had a great roommate, I needed more personal space than there was in a double room in a noisy dorm, and I hated sharing a bathroom. However the school I attended didn’t offer single rooms to undergraduates. And, I knew my parents couldn’t afford to pay for me to have a single room, even in an apartment with others. But, as soon as I was financially independent, I made sure that my living arrangements allowed me enough personal space.</p>
<p>College is 4 years. The rest of your life is 50-60-70 years. Figure out what you can learn from the decisions you’ve made so far. Try as best you can to figure out what you really want out of life after college (although, I’ll warn you, that may change many times as the years go on–and that’s okay). Then, figure out how you can get the most out of your present situation to use in helping you to get to the next step.</p>
<p>There are lots of advantages of big schools–lots of choices of courses, majors. Lots of activities, performances going on. Personally, I would have felt stifled in a small school. I hated high school because I felt like my classmates had preconceived ideas of what I was like. At a large university, there were mostly different people in each of my classes, so I was working from a “clean slate,” and I could be whatever I want to be.</p>
<p>Good luck. Sometimes starting out with things being difficult is an advantage. When you hit tough times later (which happens to EVERYONE in some way or another), you’ll have some perspective, and experience of how to deal with it.</p>
<p>Harvard is nice, but it can’t guarantee you a job you love, or a life partner who cares for you–those are the things that are REALLY important, and Harvard graduates mess up on them just like other people do.
But, first, I’d echo what many others have said and do your best to get your grades as high as possible–if you can’t make 3.5, just do the best you can. The better your grades, the more opportunities open to you after college.</p>
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<p>This is a very mature attitude and will serve you very well. As you have found out, life is not fair and people we love can sometimes let us down. But the way forward is rarely found through trying to work out the past so much as it is learning to let go and move forward. Forgiveness is something you will have to define and apply for yourself but letting go is always a gift to yourself. </p>
<p>If you’ve learned how to process, move on and inspire yourself to greater things, then you are way ahead of a whole lot of students at the most elite universities and, really, adults of all ages. I didn’t tackle this stuff until my 30s and I wish I’d started much, much earlier. It’s been such a freeing thing to learn how to do.</p>
<p>I wish you the best of luck but I really don’t think you’re going to need too much luck.</p>
<p>*
I’d write to them and tell them how I feel, just to try to “get it out” once and for all,*</p>
<p>Well, you can “kind of” do this…</p>
<p>Write out exactly how you feel…how you feel wronged…how it has affected your college years…write pages and pages if you have to…</p>
<p>Then…take the paper and burn it… </p>
<p>It will be therapeutic…I promise! </p>
<p>:)</p>