Your BF is 27 and you are 18, that is a big difference, is he a player? You were dating him when you were a high schooler. Are you are sure this is a monogamous thing? Most 27 yr old’s would advise you to finish school, what is he saying? Does your family know him? Are you sure you are not being coerced into a very weak position by an older man?
No, lol. He’s not a player. He’s only had two other girlfriends before me (one before his military service and one during). He doesn’t have the time to juggle a poly relationship.
I’ve introduced him several times to my parents. My mom is supportive but my dad is not. My dad even kicked him out of town on our 3rd date. The rest of my family does not know him.
I think he’ll be happy to have someone to cohabitate with even though he’s not out of the closet yet. Initially, he did want me to finish school, but after having discussions with him, he understood where I was coming from and said that he’ll support me through it. “It” referring to everything I’ve said before.
The biggest concern I have about this thread is that you are young. At some point in the future you are going to figure out what you want to do with your life. I strongly suspect that being a house-husband is not it. If what you want to do requires university, then you will be applying with a semester of F’s on your record. You are much better off with a semester of W’s on your record.
“BFs come and go”
This is my second biggest concern. To me the chance of this relationship lasting forever, or even for the rest of your life, seems quite low. This is based on two things (i) your age; (ii) the experience of a huge number of people in a huge number of relationships. I don’t see any problem with taking time off from school now and working. However, I think that you do not want to mess up your chances down the road.
“The reasoning behind this is that I’ll basically be behind all the other students by a whole year”
So what? Life is not a race. We are not all rushing to try to get to the end (or at least we shouldn’t be). There is no way to know whether job opportunities for new graduates is going to be better four years from now or five years from now or six years from now. You are more than 40 years behind me. This is not a problem either for you or for me.
In my experience students who have no idea why they are in university usually do not do very well. Students who take time off and come back knowing why they are there usually do quite well.
I think you’re swimming upstream asking for advice here. Most people on CC place a priority on education. You clearly do not, which is fine. College isn’t for everyone.
But if you’re reading the responses closely, they seem to have a theme, which is… prepare for the future. As easy as it is to simply live in the present, you still need to think hard about what your future COULD look like. For example, might you need to go to school eventually? Then start planning for that now, which means don’t flunk all your classes this semester.
You’re young and there’s plenty of time to figure your life out, or conversely, overcome any mistakes you may make. But you need to take some time to do serious soul searching. As I tell my kids, life is all about options. You want to give yourself as many options as possible because you’ll never know when something may change - whether it’s self-inflicted, or out of your control.
I dropped out of college, worked for a couple of years, went to secretarial school, went back to college, enrolled in and dropped out of graduate school and ultimately graduated from law school. Life is long and you can’t guess right now what you might want to do in a couple of years. It sounds as though buckling down and getting through the rest of the semester with credible grades might not be a realistic option. In that case, assuming you can withdraw now without ending up with a bunch of Fs, you really need to do that. The worst thing you can do is create a big mess by hanging around. Even leaving aside the financial costs and the issues relating to your boyfriend, doing that will be nothing but demoralizing for you and you will end up having to explain it if you ever want to go back to school in the future (sounds implausible now, I am sure, but take my word, things can change). Make a clean break and go to work. It will all work out in the end so long as you keep moving forward.
even though he’s not out of the closet yet.<<<<<<<<
Mmmm. Sounds like a cool story.
You don’t really want advice. You want to be told that your plans are okay. No one can reassure you of that. If you have to stay in school for the semester, because you can’t withdraw, get a refund for some of the tuition, and go home until you can move in with your boyfriend, then do what you can not to flunk out. Have a transcript full of low grades could haunt you in the future. But, that too is your choice. It’s an expensive choice, but a choice nonetheless. Good luck.
I don’t see a question in your post so I’m not really sure why you’ve posted.
It sounds like you’ve got it all figured out. Good luck. FWIW I feel bad about your parent’s money that you are wasting by using college as a way to buy time until you can execute your plan.
You sound a bit like my daughter. Except, after a month of college she realized it was not for her. She called us up, we talked it through, and she withdrew and came home. She began waitressing, and within a couple of months was able to move in with a friend. We were actually impressed with her maturity in dealing with the situation. She did it in such a way to not close any doors on her future. She didn’t alienate her parents. She didn’t create a semester of bad grades. She didn’t waste a bunch of money.
Because of that, we have been happily supportive of her in every way. Her saved tuition $ was invested in a small business for her, which she is working hard at. She still waitresses two nights week because she can now work at a high end restaurant and the money is very good (after a long time of working in lower end restaurants earning $30 a night). As her business revenues increase, she has cut her restaurant hours down.
I got some great advice when I was very young. “The harder you work when you are young, the less you have to work the rest of your life.” As I have aged and watched my cohorts who followed that advice, it has turned out to be very true. With an exception here or there, of course.
You will need to work a certain number of hours, in total, in your life. You can frontload that where you develop some in demand skills so you can easily find others who wish to pay you a lot per hour, or, you can choose to instead have a good balance between work and play now, and hence spread those work hours evenly over the rest of your life. But, you are not so special that you can avoid those hours of work.
Some people need to learn lessons the hard way, and that is fine. My daughter is one of those people, but she has been smart enough to use the lessons she’s learned to her advantage instead of repeating the same mistakes over and over. I hope the same for you.
Have fun being in a long term relationship, adopting a child, etc. with someone who is not yet out of the closet. And you- with no education, working food service.
Dear OP, I think you should reread this paragraph you wrote: “I am more than intellectually capable of handling college, the root of the problem is that I never grew up to learn the value of hard work, grit, and self-discipline. I never had to deal with it. I tend to be quite stubborn. When I hold onto a position, I rarely let go, especially when that involves potentially one of the most massive investments of my life.”
It is great to have that self perspective. Now, try to apply that to your future plans in terms of working part time, and moving in with your boyfriend. Both of these moves will take incredibly hard work, grit and self discipline. If you cannot even force yourself to go to class, even though you are intellectually capable and appear to be very concerned with the financial value (or lack of value) of your tuition, will you be able to force yourself to keep a job? Will you be able to make it through the inevitable hard work that comes with a cohabitating long term relationship, with the added difficulty of one partner hiding the relationship? What happens if either one of these things (job, relationship), fall apart? Will you wish you had stuck with college longer?
^ this. But why does someone 9 years your senior, that has a good job need help paying rent? He doesn’t is the point. Also once he comes out don’t think he’ll stay with you. Your setting up your life for failure and disappointment. 9 years is a large age gap for an immature 18 year old (Not a knock on you but what you posted and most 18 year olds are immature at this point).
Talk to your parents and counselor. Unenroll the correct way. Take the year off and see where life takes you. Working odd jobs to pay rent for someone that doesn’t need the help will get old fast. Good luck.
Adding to all the very good advice on this thread, my two cents is: try not to burn bridges and try not to unnecessarily limit your options in the near future.
I had my primary parent die when I was in college, and boy oh boy, did that ever change the options available to me for several key years in my youth.
It altered the trajectory of my life, for sure.
What you are talking about doing will also alter the trajectory of your life. I don’t have a crystal ball and I cannot say it will be a bad thing. IDK.
But I think it wise to cultivate a great relationship with your parents. If people are lucky, parents are an incredible resource for support — emotional, information, and financial.
If you are determined to leave college, do it in a way that does not burn bridges and leaves as many good options for your future self as possible.
You’re getting some awfully judge-y advice from the other posters here.
It’s clear from your letter that you’re not happy at school, are spinning your wheels, and wasting time and money. So leave. Leave in time to save as much money as possible.
Moving in with your boyfriend, who has a solid well-paying job, is a good plan, but relationships are never a sure thing, so you need a backup plan. Hopefully something better than moving back in with your parents and getting a job at McDonalds. You should consider joining the military, whether or not your relationship works out long-term. Your boyfriend can tell you all about that option. If you don’t want to leave him to go on active duty, you could join the Marines or some other branch as a reservist. Joining the Army as a PFC at 26 was the best decision I ever made.
There’s no reason to feel guilty about flunking or dropping out of college, but at some point in your life you’ll need to figure out what to do and then go do it. It will involve mastering a career skill, Marine or homemaker or whatever, it really doesn’t matter all that much, but you want to minimize the years of your life spent unemployed or in dead-end jobs. For now, take the time you need to figure out what’s best for you, regardless of other people’s expectations. GL to you.