I’m in my late 30s and this is about my 11th year of undergraduate studies.
My first degree was in Mathematics. That took 5 years and I didn’t get a good GPA.
After that I joined the Army and had a career I loved. However, some bad luck with my unit assignment and Sequestration forced me out before I could prove myself. I tried getting professional employment after that. Failed. Tried getting into Federal Law Enforcement. Was rejected. I tried being a high school math teacher, but teachers have contempt for veterans in general and my low GPA gave them just the excuse they needed to throw my resume out.
So I went for Petroleum Engineering. I still had a spotty GPA. Then when Exxon Mobile showed up looking for 2 interns out of a class of 100 I realized you need to be the straight A student to actually get the job. Besides I can see how the political winds are blowing and the majority of Americans clearly want guys like me funneled into designing windmills, self determination be damned.
So now I’m going for Mechanical Engineering. It isn’t in my top 10 for preferred careers but it doesn’t require family connections to get one’s foot in the door and it’s existence doesn’t depend on the political climate. I could tolerate it if I were in industry.
The problem is getting there. I despise college. I hate the lack of structure for deliverables. I hate sitting through lectures. I have contempt for the professors. I’m old enough to be my classmates’ dad and I don’t want to talk to them. I hate not having a social life or a family. And I constantly wonder who the hell I’m doing this for because it isn’t what I want and “my community” can go hell. And it just doesn’t ever end.
The VA isn’t going to help me. If they wanted to help me they would’ve found a way for me to use the degree I already have to get a job rather than to send me back to college for another degree. All they care about is funneling money to the education system. One semester I had spotty attendance so they messed with my finances. I haven’t tried it yet, but I can only assume if I tried to drop out, they’d be sending armed jackboots to my apartment who are “concerned about my mental health” to “encourage” me to “give it another go”.
BTW, yes I’ve sought out mental health services. No, they haven’t been able to solve my problem since my problem my situation.
So, I can’t go backward, have to go forward. And well, the problem is third year engineering classes are hard to begin with and the professors want to weed out students who don’t really want to be there (like me) out of a sense of professional duty. If I tried talking to them about easing up on the curriculum a bit, would they help or dial the pain up to 11?
I’ve managed to squeak past Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer, and the jury is currently out on whether I got a D+ or C- in Thermodynamics II. But I’ve also just failed two other classes.
The biggest problem is the panic attacks. I get them every time I try to sit down to study or do homework and it takes me 1-2 hours to calm down enough to start putting pen to paper. And they come back after a while. So when I slot 10 hours to do something, about 4 goes to being productive and the other 6 is just pure wasted time and energy into useless rage.
I’m also doing a part time job on the weekends because when you’re at my level of desperate you don’t quit jobs no matter how little they pay or how inconvenient they are towards your long term goals.
I guess the question I want to ask is if there are any ex-nationals from some East-bloc authoritarian government that picked your career out for you and expected you to be happy about it - How did you push through the course material?