What do YOU think I should do??

Transfer Students
1

<p>Hi so I am a first year college student attending community college for general education right now and want to transfer to a state university to get a degree in software engineering. I plan to go to school in the silicon valley area so it should be really good for this degree, but I have run into a few problems as of now...</p>

<p>First for some background: I actually graduated from high school one year early, or something similar to that. I could not stand the reading/ memorizing/ writing learning of the public high school I went to my freshman and sophomore year, so I changed to a homeschool program junior year in hopes it would be better. It was not, and the workload was much heavier of reading and writing with less support. So, I went and took the CHSPE (California high school proficiency exam) and officially graduated from high school one year early.</p>

<p>After I did that, my parents immediately signed me up for community college, since I could not attend any other college and did not know really what I wanted to do. I decided, that since I had made my parents so worried about me from stopping high school, I should really put it all into college. It has been one semester and an intersession. My GPA is 3.3 overall, and I have taken some good classes so far (history, poli science, calculus I, english 1A, philosophy 65). I passed my first semester of college with decent grades and proved I am able to work hard and well to my parents. Continuing with their expectations of good future and hard work, I decided to try for a software engineering degree at San Jose state university.</p>

<p>And now here the second semester has come and I am taking 18 units, 5 classes. The courses are very rigorous (English 1c, Calculus II, Econ 1B, Consl 14, comsc 72) and I found that my interest in college is starting to resemble my interest in high school... Now I am starting to get health problems from being stressed and making everyone around me worry again. I do not know what to do now. </p>

<p>First for myself, I really want to get a job and work hard at that job and be a great person with creativity and skill without college, reading books and listening to lectures, for years. Then for my family, I want to do something that is reputable and will make them not worried when they think about me, I wish to do this through accomplishments in my job not a hard degree. For my extended family, in China, I want them to respect my immediate family and feel proud of us. </p>

<p>I do not know why exactly I feel so unhappy. I don't know what to do and am open to any option in the whole world that will help me achieve my minimum goals (I want all those things I listed above for sure). I feel maybe computer science isint for me (I don't like proving that "one rational number plus another one is always another rational number" in my comsc class), or maybe I just picked the wrong school (I need calculus I, calculus II, calculus III, differential equations, linear algebra, and comsc 72 discrete math as prerequisites to transfer) or maybe I am very idealistic and lazy and a failure like my parents say (achieving all my minimum requirement goals without school). I really don't know anymore and need to decide asap before the end of this week so I can start ailing my deteriorating health and maybe make some money for the family.</p>

<p>I live in a very competitive community. Many people my parents know are going to prestigious universities. One person is going to Berkley, our neighbor is going to Harvard... As for my parents themselves, one has a Phd in technology and physics, another has nursing and physics bachlors. They also have started up two small businesses themselves, and they want the best opportunities for me and my sister. I am stuck in a jam. I don't want to go to school anymore. I want to work hard and be successful in my own way. Tommorow I have to decide if I am going to drop or not. I wish to be a very good worker for the world making everyone and myself happier everyday.</p>

2

<p>It sounds like you have a lot of expectations from family and peers and that you are not ready to go to college yet. It is certainly possible that if you take a leave and work for a while, you will decide that the only way you can achieve your goals is to get a college degree. At that point in time, your studies won’t seem so pointless and you will do much better, stress-wise. The question is how you can convince your family that you need to take a break for school for a while. You are still young as you say you finished high school a year early so you might want to approach your family with the notion that you need some time to mature and that working for a period of time will reinvigorate you for your studies. It is a difficult discussion to have. As a parent as well as a university professor, I know that it would be difficult for me to hear it form my children. However, if you can have this discussion once you have a job in hand it might be a bit easier. My guess is that your parents are worried that you would simply be hanging around the house and not looking seriously for a job. If you have a job in hand, that concern would be alleviated.</p>

3

<p>First, one of your problems is that you are taking too many units for one semester and that is unnecessary.</p>

<p>Second is that you seem to have no patience or tenacity. You seem to want things but not want to invest the time to make yourself prepared to get the things you want. You want a good job and to work hard, but you will not work hard in school and get a degree that will make you more employable, and that implies that you don’t really want to work hard. There is something missing here. Maybe some naivety is all. or maturity problem. </p>

<p>Do not be distracted by other people and what college they go to. CS people at SJSU do quite well. In a few years it will not matter what school you graduated from, if you are good at your job. Doing CS work is not likely something you are familiar with, but people good at it are usually good at math and puzzles and logic. If you like that then you may like the work. You aren’t really far enough along to be useful to anyone in CS. If you got a bit farther along, it might be possible to work and take p/t classes. Some people are self taught in CS but that is rarer and rarer. You need the math and foundational underpinnings. And you have shown that you don’t self educate well so I don’t think that is a good option for you.</p>

<p>I think you should finish the semester so you have at least one step further done. Drop or withdraw from one or two classes and finish the rest.</p>