<p>This is no troll and no random speculation. It is 2AM and I can't sleep even though I need to wake up in 3h to go to practice. </p>
<p>I'm the regular type-A HYP who for long only saw life in terms of GPA and awards. Now I realize that even though I have the GPA, the awards and HYP I don't even know what I want to do with my life. I also do not like my school. Because I was so competitive and studied non-stop from the start, I have very few friends, and I also think that it's not a good academic fit for me. At this point, I'm way too involved in the (very small) dept I thought I wanted to receive my concentration/major from (using both terms for the sake of anonymity) through winning awards and networking to express interest in another field and be taken seriously. Would you transfer out of HYP for these reasons? Have a clean slate and get to "know myself" or whatever. Be at a school where nobody knows me and I can take random classes, explore various interests and not be constantly competing with my peers. Should I just suck it up and wait until grad school? </p>
<p>I'm a regular poster here, but obviously I wouldn't want anybody to know that I'm considering this. I still would be really grateful if you guys could answer. I'm not really sure who to talk to about this. I'm pretty sure my parents would be extremely disappointed if I were to tell that I'd like to leave HYP.</p>
<p>I'm a sophomore. Please feel free to PM if you wish.</p>
<p>Arrow,
I am not familiar with your previous posts. (Sorry I did not look them up)
Yes, it is very late. Are you sure you are not just experiencing the midnight blues???</p>
<p>You seem to feel as if you are on a track and want off.
Can you take a leave of absence for a period (year, semester) and do something very different to get away, and possibly to learn what does interest you and to make some social connections? </p>
<p>Are any of your skills, studies and networking contacts translatable into a new area that might interest you that you could shift over to?</p>
<p>Financial considerations may also be important, of course. </p>
<p>Coud you take a 5th year undergrad to do a new major?</p>
<p>It’s three AM and I should really go to bed :p, but as a fellow college student I do see where you’re coming from: it’s almost expected that we pick an area of study early on, even from freshman year, and after that it can be a little hard to branch out, depending on what your original interest was. Love performersmom’s idea to take a gap year- may be a great way to explore some new interests!</p>
<p>OP, I’m going to second performersmom: if this feeling persists, take a year off. But IMO you shouldn’t do anything related to your field – no internships, no networking, no trying out possible new fields, no polishing the resume. Mentally get completely away from all things college and career. Do something really UNacademic during that time, like get a job in retail or something. If you’re HYP, then you’ve been on a crazily rigorous track for a very long time, and you need a break from the whole thing.</p>
<p>You know the agricultural concept of letting a field lie fallow? The land is not planted for a year, allowing the soil to rest, regenerate, and prepare for future productive seasons. If you lie fallow for a year, I bet things will begin to clarify for you.</p>
<p>I echo the other posters who say you need time off to do something different from your studies. It will help you clear your head and give you time to decide whether you really want tio change schools/majors. You might find the time off re-energizes you and gives you the realization that it is the right place for you.</p>
<p>If you decide to change, talke to advisors, mentors and parents. I am the parent of a HYP who is very self motivated. He throws himself into his studies and strives to do top notch work. We’ve told him from day one that he needs to balance studies with fun. He needs to love his major or change it. He needs to fit in his schooll or change it.</p>
<p>We told him that even though he’s going to HYP if he finds it isn’t the right place for him and he can’t be happy that he needs to move. I think this gives him the freedom to get comfortable where he is, knowing he isn’t “stuck” there if he doesn’t like it.</p>
<p>Best of luck with these difficult decisions.</p>
<p>Gap year COULD be a great idea–certainly better than the “suck it up and wait until grad school,” if as you say, you don’t even know what you want to do with your life. Grad school in what? Some grad programs can be even MORE competitive than HYP because there are such limited resources out there–lots of politicking and in-fighting. If you have the financial resources to take even a semester off, please consider it. Also, study abroad might give some context–especially if that was part of the original (academic, financial) plan.</p>
<p>If you really are stuck in a four-year, must complete on schedule rut, you might want to consider branching out in other ways. Find an off-campus outlet (job, volunteering, church/synagogue?) of some kind. Sports/excercise? Find a club that has NOTHING to do with your academic department, to give yourself a social/mental break. You’ve really only been there for 2 and a half semesters, so far, so you’re probably not as deeply embedded as you feel (2 in the morning will do that to you). Socially, if you’re at Harvard or Yale, your housing situation is kind of defined, but there are still hundreds of undergrads in your house/college–you can’t have met them all yet?! There are ways to turn this around without transferring. You don’t have to be completely defined by your academic department.</p>
<p>NOTE: My H had a similar experience 25 years ago, when the job market was somewhat different. He had a very intense academic life as an undergrad (HYP). Was able to parlay it to West Coast grad school where he let up on the reins just a little bit–enough to meet me, anyway (!)–so I know it is possible to change your spots in a new environment.</p>
<p>I probably could take some time off, but I don’t think I will because I’d like to get out of college as soon as possible and I’m also worried that I would loose my work ethic if I didn’t have to study at all for a semester. It has already been sliding down. Finding unrelated hobbies and meeting new people sounds great though, so I’ll try that. I will also complete transfer apps and see where I get in. Thanks.</p>
<p>As someone said, it helps to know you have options and aren’t trapped. Fill out some transfer applications and see how you feel, but maybe don’t go overboard with them: it will only add stress.</p>
<p>I know many high achieving kids who suffer this “sophomore slump” and think about leaving, but they often make it through in better shape after a period of reevaluating things.</p>
<p>Since you want to finish as soon as you can (which is understandable), then maybe focus in the meantime, for this year, on making your current situation work better. You say you study hard and have few friends. That should not be hard to work on. Join some activities or organizations, or even talk to people more in the dining hall. Halloween is coming: have some fun. </p>
<p>Go out into the city or area around you and get out of the bubble, too.</p>
<p>By all means look into changing majors, or adding a minor. There is plenty of time left to embark on a new major/concentration, and many students do this as sophomores. Forget about that networking and awards and so on. Besides, if you are still worried about your resume, having achievements in more than one area will be fine. But the main thing is to study something you like. (Small departments are the most responsive at HYP though.)</p>
<p>You mention “practice.” Are you an athlete or musician?</p>
<p>If pressure from your parents is a problem, maybe a counselor can help with that, and even mediate a bit. Remember that 50% of HYP students see a counselor during their time at college (I have read somewhere) and avail yourself of those resources, but make sure it is a person who can see some positives in the changes you are going through. But it is also possible that you are starting to be depressed a bit, in a “normal” way, and counseling could help with that too.</p>
<p>Arrow03, I think some of your assumptions are wrong. You have only been at the college a little over a year. I can’t think of any reason to think that you are so embedded in a particular major that you can’t change. Do the awards that you have received compel you to remain in the same major for financial reasons? If not, I would think that another department would be happy to have a student who has had a change of interest. Figuring out where your true interests lie is part of what college is about–adults generally understand that. You would have to re-start the networking, but some of the most effective networking involves having friends, and it sounds as though you would benefit from spending time developing friendships, too.</p>
<p>When it comes to your desire to “not be constantly competing with my peers,” that one has an astonishingly easy solution: focus on your subject areas, and not on your relative standing. When you have found the right major, you should be sufficiently wrapped up in the subject itself to work on it for its own intrinsic interest (to you), and not to out-perform your fellow students. This can be done at HYP.</p>
<p>I can understand and sympathize with your desire to just get away from your current environment, but your alternative plans sound rather hazy to me. What exactly would you be looking for, in a different college? I wouldn’t recommend transferring unless you know the answer to that. Your idea of a clean slate and getting to know yourself “or whatever” does not sound like a good argument for any particular alternative.</p>
<p>A gap year, or gap semester, could conceivably be the answer, but it would need some clear planning, to have a chance to help you re-direct yourself and/or fill your needs that aren’t being met currently. Study abroad for a semester might be a good option, depending on the availability of a suitable program. You might think about study abroad for the summer, if that is feasible financially.</p>
<p>My single greatest regret from my college years at my HYP-peer institution is that I did not follow my instincts and take a year off. I was burned out. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. I had a better social life than you describe, but I really, truly didn’t belong there right then.</p>
<p>However, I stayed and I powered through because of the financial aid situation. At that time, leaving would have risked my aid package. Aid packages are designed differently now, so that should not be a problem for you. For an accurate reading, stop by the financial aid office and ask them about it. They get this question all the time, and they will be able to explain your options.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about losing your work ethic! If you have it, you have it. And, truth be told, work ethics usually get better with age. When you are ready to head back to college, you will be fine.</p>
<p>Lastly, if you aren’t sure about your life direction, just that you are generally unhappy right now, make an appointment with a counselor at the health center. The people there have experience helping students sort out their lives, and surely at your institution they must be expert at dealing with the kind of crisis that you are facing.</p>
<p>Please, please read this piece, from the head of Harvard admissions - on the Harvard admissions site. It describes the intense way in which many competitive students grew up, the crisis many feel once on campus, help available, and ideas for problem-solving, including time off. However, I think previous posts make a really good point that you are working under some misconceptions and can make some changes while staying where you are, if time off is not practical for you. Stop competing, start enjoying!</p>
<p>One sentence:</p>
<p>"It is common to encounter even the most successful students, who have won all the “prizes,” stepping back and wondering if it was all worth it.</p>
<p>I highly recommend taking time off. H for one recommends that incoming freshman take a gap year before they ever get there. Too many of them end up feeling just like you. I took a gap year, did I work a little less hard after that? Yes, but I still graduated with honors in a major very different (and much less academic) than the one I thought I would pursue as a high school senior. The experiences I had during my year off were a big part of that switch. I knew a number of people who took their time off either second semester sophomore year or between sophomore and junior year. They all came back reinvigorated. My sister-in-law actually went back to her home state and took a year’s worth of courses at the state university before she realized that she was wasting her opportunity to get a degree from H. </p>
<p>So in your shoes, I’d look into getting counseling, look into gap year programs or things to do, maybe a junior year abroad would be enough of a change of scene, changing majors or adding a minor, getting involved in other different campus activities.</p>
<p>Arrow, unless you can determine exactly what’s wrong and how you can change how YOU relate to what’s wrong, transferring is unlikely to fix the issues. There is no school in which you can just take “random classes”; every school, even those with the most flexible curriculum has major/concentration requirements. Generally, you must declare that major/concentration by the end of your sophomore year. Since you’re already a sophomore, and may not be able to transfer before junior year, you’ll have to complete at least some of your requirements right where you are. How will you explore the schools you may want to transfer to, to make sure that not only don’t they have the issues you’re describing, but that “fit” you? And the transfer application process has its own unique stresses. If you’re lonely where you are, there’s no guarantee that you won’t be lonely where you end up.</p>
<p>I agree with previous posters that a year off so you can figure out exactly what’s going on and exactly where you should be might be your best bet. Taking another year to finish college is not the end of the world.</p>
<p>You’d still making progress toward graduation, but in a different setting with different people. You’d have a chance to travel and take coursework out of your area of study. Look into programs your college is affiliated with but doesn’t necessarily run themselves.</p>
<p>No study abroad, no gap year, no time off, but find a trusted/caring faculty member (or someone else) for a philosophical conversation (more chats, books, courses). I don’t believe that you cannot find that help at HYP. Leaving won’t help.</p>
<p>Most students do not have a clear idea of what they want to do. If you are not happy with your current major, why not explore other majors at your current school. By transferring out of HYP to a different school, you are not going to more majors, more opportunities. Even at a large university like Cornell, A&S would still have similar course offerings and curriculum as HYP. As far as social life, you are just a sophomore, you still have time to make new friends. By moving to a different school is not going to change that much.</p>
<p>I like study abroad as a breather. You are not alone. Lots of high school kids think of the actual act of getting into college as the brass ring and with all the media hype and parental hype of HYP, kids think that is the ultimate goal. As far as determining a major as a freshman, I think kids don’t know what they want to be until they’ve actually experienced the broad array of possibilities that college opens up that they may have not been exposed to in high school. Most colleges don’t have you “declare” until sophomore year. Take a break and figure out what it is that you feel is missing, then plug the hole. It may ultimately be you and not the college so take the time to figure that out.</p>
<p>It is not a crime to finish in the middle of the pack at HYP, or even, heaven forbid, in the bottom half of the class. You are among many of the best and brightest and are so yourself. If you desire to compete for No.1, then fine, but you do not have to. Only one person in your class will be first. That does not make everyone else a “loser” though Americans like to think and talk that way, and many parents seem to think so. </p>
<p>My stepfather used to put that kind of pressure on me back in the day - winners and losers and nobody cares about No. 2, etc. While being “the best” is an honor worth recognizing, it is impossible for everyone to reach that goal. I resolved to do my best and stop worrying about being the best, and to let the chips fall. However, my stepfather was right, and I am now a derelict street person. That was an attempt at humor, something that is good to experience frequently as the pressure mounts. Laughter may not be the best medicine, but can be pretty effective in managing tough times.</p>
<p>Doing your best is still a very high standard that still requires a lot of drive to try fulfill - but it is more manageable than a quixotic quest to be the best. And, for one person in every class, doing their best will put them in the position of being “the best.” Changing your focus to an internal standard that you have some control over rather than an external standard that you cannot control is not necessarily giving up that quest if you deem it important and potentially attainable.</p>
<p>Seeking counseling is not a sign of weakness, it is using available resources wisely. In a sense you are already doing that by posting here for feedback, but there are probably better resources on campus - no disrespect to any fellow posters intended. You are clearly a remarkable young person who should be proud of what you have done so far. Counseling may help you gain perspective on what you have done and what you wish to do. </p>
<p>The time off advice is also quite sound. I regret going straight through college and then law school and then the work world with no break. I am advising my kids not to go straight through without breaks from the grind to experience the world (on the cheap).</p>
<p>Good essay at that link, although I hate the fact that “guilt-trip” is now a verb according to Harvard admissions office staff. </p>
<p>OP: as a sophomore you are not at a disadvantage not knowing exactly what you want to do with your life. I’d suggest exploring other majors and definitely, junior year abroad - more fun and more enlightening than I ever thought possible to squeeze into 8-10 months.</p>
That was an attempt at humor, something that is good to experience frequently as the pressure mounts. Laughter may not be the best medicine, but can be pretty effective in managing tough times.</p>