I'm going to drop out of college.

[Oneironaut]

Sorry for the long post, but there's a lot on my mind...

I've been here at college for three years, and if I wanted to continue I would only have to study one more year for my diploma. I've gotten excellent grades here (never below a B). I've been on the dean's list every semester and last semester I even got straight A's. So why am I dropping out?

First, you've got to understand a little about my situation. Three years ago I decided to go to college, but it wasn't really where I wanted to be. The only reason I did go was because my parents had always expected me to. I was (and still am) an intelligent person, and they didn't want to see a mind as bright as mine deprived of a college education. And since I don't like confrontation, I just went along with their expectations without even mentioning that I didn't want to.

For the past three years I've been living in the dorms, and I've been lucky enough to live without roommates every time due to my good grades. However, this time I forgot to open up a piece of mail and now it's too late to register for a room next semester. I'll either have to find an apartment near campus, or settle for what's left in the dorms after everybody who's allowed to register picks a room. One thing is for certain though: I will most likely have to move in with some random strangers, something I'm not too keen about since I'm a pretty introverted person and I go crazy if I don't get several hours of solitude every day. But that's not the only reason I don't want to come back next year. Before I learned that, I was having a hard time deciding whether or not I want to drop out. That was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

There are three reasons that people go to college: social reasons, intellectual reasons, and occupational reasons. After examining these three things and their relevance to my life, I've figured out that college isn't doing anything to make my life better.

1) The social reasons. People go to college because they want to hang out and party with people their own age. However, I don't have a social life here. I don't have one single friend. True, this is probably my fault for not going out and meeting people as often as I should, but I could go meet people anywhere. I don't need to be at college to do that. My mom seems to think moving in with random people is going to improve my social life, but I don't agree. I think I need to start meeting people and befriend the ones I like, not move in with a bunch of random strangers picked for me and try to see if I can tolerate living with them before I leave them forever.

2) The intellectual reasons. People go to college to study the things they're interested in. That's why I chose linguistics as my major. However, I don't feel intellectually stimulated and I most definitely don't enjoy learning here. Even when I take a course on a topic I'm interested in, the forced readings, tests, quizzes, and homework are more than enough to suck all the fun out of it and turn it into hellish, grueling work. I can't have fun doing something when I'm being coerced into doing it. Most of the information forced upon me is boring anyways, and I'll probably end up forgetting it once I'm not required to know it anymore. As for the few interesting things that I'm learning here, I could easily learn them on my own just by reading some books.

3) The occupational reasons. This is the only conceivable reason why I might want to spend another year here. A college diploma is supposed to get you a good job, right?

I know for certain that I'm not getting anything at all out of my education in linguistics. Besides the fact that I hate it, I'm not learning any practical information that can be used in any job that I can think of. Knowing the psychological, social and structural properties of human language isn't a profitable skill. You just can't get a job where you have to know this stuff (except for linguistics professor).

It is important to recognize the difference between linguistics and languages. Getting a linguistics diploma here doesn't require that you do any special study of foreign languages besides the basic general education requirements which I fulfilled before I even got to college. Linguistics is just an intellectual pursuit with hardly any real practical use. The foreign languages I'm learning, on the other hand, are a real practical skill. However, I feel I could learn them much better and faster on my own, if I didn't have to learn at the same pace as the rest of the class.

My only real marketable professional skill is my knack for foreign languages. There are only two things I can think of doing with that: teach foreign languages and translate. I don't want to teach, because that requires special extra training that I don't really want to go through; I want to get out into the world as soon as possible. However, I could see myself translating. But what does it take to make money translating? I've been reading material by professional translators about what it takes to get into translating seriously. There seems to be three things that people hiring translators look for: 1) a near-fluent command of the necessary languages, 2) good writing skills, and 3) experience in translating. A college degree isn't going to land you the job, and not having one isn't going to really influence anything so long as you can produce quality translations. I could easily be outdone by a natively bilingual high school dropout.

Currently, my translating skills aren't nearly good enough to translate for money. My best foreign language is French and I still have difficulty conversing in it. I am far from being near-fluent. This isn't going to change as long as I live in an English-speaking society. My skills just aren't going to be applicable until I can move to another country and learn to speak a foreign language really well. The sooner I get out of college, the sooner this can happen.

As for other jobs, the US Department of Labor says that by 2010, two-thirds of the projected job openings will require only on-the-job training. As for the remaining third, most of them are going to require some sort of specialized college education like medicine, teaching or business.

Also, the jobs that require a college diploma are higher-level jobs which require more effort. But I'm happy not having a lot of money and staying at the bottom of the corporate ladder, since I don't have a lot of needs. I'd like to live a frugal life and be happy where I am instead of wasting my time in the rat race constantly chasing more money and material possessions. I don't really want a high paying job since getting a lot of money and accumulating a lot of shit just isn't one of my life goals. I'd much rather be a truck driver or a mailman than a rich but stressed out university professor or business manager. I don't think that having more money or a higher level job will actually make me happier; psychologists have shown that people have the same average level of happiness no matter what income they earn. At least as a truck driver or mailman I would have my brain to myself for the day.

Dropping out is going to be the easy part. I just have no reason to stay here. I hate it here, and I'm not getting anything out of this place. The hard part will be telling my parents. They think having a college diploma is really important, especially for people as bright as myself. They also seem to have some fantasy that I'm going to become the next Bill Gates (not realizing that Gates himself is a college dropout). But I just don't want a lot of money.

It's going to break their hearts, and there's not much I can do about that. This is my decision to make and I'm going to do what I think is going to make me happiest. I just need to find a good way to break the news to them. Any suggestions?

Oneironaut Reviewed by Oneironaut on 04-02-2006. I'm going to drop out of college. Sorry for the long post, but there's a lot on my mind... I've been here at college for three years, and if I wanted to continue I would only have to study one more year for my diploma. I've gotten excellent grades here (never below a B). I've been on the dean's list every semester and last semester I even got straight A's. So why am I dropping out? First, you've got to understand a little about my situation. Three years ago I decided to go to college, but it wasn't really where I wanted Rating: 5

[kiwi]

I have given this a bit of thought and all I can come up with is the fact that it is only 1 more year of you life!!!!! Even if you feel like you are there for all the wrong reasons you really owe it to yourself to see it though to the end. Do you really want to look back on your life in a few years and say"What If"? Start as you mean to finish, cos with most things in life you get 1 shot.:thumbsup:

[Oneironaut]

I have given this a bit of thought and all I can come up with is the fact that it is only 1 more year of you life!!!!! Even if you feel like you are there for all the wrong reasons you really owe it to yourself to see it though to the end. Do you really want to look back on your life in a few years and say"What If"? Start as you mean to finish, cos with most things in life you get 1 shot.:thumbsup:

With all things you only get one shot. I can't change the past, and no matter what I decide to do I'll be able to wonder what might have been. But I don't dwell on things like that. I can't predict what would have happened, and I can't predict the future. What if I die one year from today? I don't want to have spent the last year of my life where I don't want to be. What if I stay and my life is miserable because I didn't do something or meet someone that I would have had I dropped out?

What I do know is whether or not I stay, I'm not going to get a high paying job. And if I do leave, I'll be able to save a lot of money that I would otherwise pay on a year of learning things I hate to learn in a place I hate to be.

[SyR1S]

Dude stay in, its only 1 year of your life i mean, it wont hinder u at all just to stay one more year, you can only gain from that. As for socailizing, moving in with a random person most likely will grant you more friends, meeting random people is how u get friends. Start going out to all the parties people have (if your wanted there) bring some nice chron and share it with everyone and talk and make friends and then when ur done college, you can relax and atleast you will have SOME more options.

[SomeGuy]

Yeah think about it this way...YOu dont really loose much if you stay another year..
if you drop out...2 years of your life will have been wasted plus you dont have a college diploma..ehich looks nice on all job aps no matter what its in..
Stay another year man...

[Oneironaut]

Dude stay in, its only 1 year of your life i mean, it wont hinder u at all just to stay one more year, you can only gain from that.

What is there to gain? I think I could gain more by getting out into the world and living my life how I want to live it, not spending most of my time studying things I don't like studying for a diploma I don't think is going to help me.

As for socailizing, moving in with a random person most likely will grant you more friends, meeting random people is how u get friends.

Yeah, meeting them. Not moving in with them. I've heard too many horror stories about horrible roommates. I'm ready to meet people, but I don't want to move in with some random people. There are few people I think I could really tolerate living with.

Start going out to all the parties people have (if your wanted there) bring some nice chron and share it with everyone and talk and make friends and then when ur done college, you can relax and atleast you will have SOME more options.

I can do all that without going to college. And I don't think finishing college is going to give me the kind of options I want. I can't think of a single job I would enjoy that this diploma could get for me.

[nevaquit01]

Dude, I used to be just like you. Except about a year and a half into my college life I got OUT of my dorm room and dealt with the extreme awkwardness of meeting people and I love it now. I have only one year left myself and I am sad its going to be over. Use this last year as one last shot. Get out, meet people, try new things. What do you have to lose? each day is a new chance to change your life for the better. I know theres people on your campus that like to chill and smoke a few bowls. Find them, you'll be glad you did. Don't give up. one more year and you'll have a degree (even if you don't use it) and you may even learn somethign more important than what they teach in class, something about yourself. College is a time to do more than just party and be wild. Its learning who you are. I'm on year 6 and I still think a few more years would do me good. The longer I'm here the more I learn about myself and others. It can only help you to touph it out one more year.

[Aristotle]

There are definately introverted people, but perhaps you're taking this social thing a bit too far. Maybe you just didn't click in high school and by the time you got to college, had no social experience at all? So you're making excuses by saying things like "I need hours of solitude to be sane," to justify your excuses for not wanting to get more social. You just went from being 100% introverted in the beginning of your speech, but by the end you were saying things like "I know I just need to get out and meet people," in which you're only procrastinating.

If you move in with someone else it FORCES you to get more social. My bro was a loser and didn't even go to his Senior Prom, but he's a junior in college right now, moved into a house and parties every weekend. As introverted as they came when he was in high school.

It's definately not too late to start, especially at your age. For Christs Sake, you want to be a TRANSLATOR, one of the first jobs I would think of that requires social and communicational skills. Also, you said yourself it was going to be hard to break into be a translator. You couldn't land a job or even find your own clients in such a competitive business without having confidence.

And as Kiwi said, you owe it to yourself to finish this last year. You worked hard all through grade school, high school and now college, and I'm assuming you had little or no fun through your entire education being as introverted as you are. You're going to throw all of that hard work away just because you want to start translating Spanish for immigration border patrol, making 20 grand a year? Sounds stupid to me.

And no degree is useless, either. Every single college and University in America wouldn't offer large linguistics programs if the degree proved no good.

[VoidLivesOn]

Chances are your roomate would be a complete ditz and stand for everything your against.Someone who leads your sort of lifestyle usually dosn't have a huge basket of friends to pick from.

But if I were you I would suck it up and finish that last year of college.

[Oneironaut]

Yeah think about it this way...YOu dont really loose much if you stay another year..
if you drop out...2 years of your life will have been wasted plus you dont have a college diploma..ehich looks nice on all job aps no matter what its in..
Stay another year man...

I've already wasted 3 years. There's nothing I can do about that. But I want to get out into the world and start living my life the way I want to live it. I'm tired of being stuck here spending most of my day doing schoolwork or recovering from schoolwork. I'm tired of relegating my happiness to some imaginary future where all my present pain and misery will somehow pay off.

The only thing this diploma can do for me is get me a higher level, higher paying job. I don't want the stress and responsibility of a higher level job, and I can't see how having more crap is going to make me happier. I'd rather save some money and start taking control of my life now.