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[Xantalos]

Have you ever posted from a Kindle before? It took me 5 minutes to type this out. My respect for people who Kindlepost has risen a lot.

[Vector]

I'm bad at goodbyes.  I usually just walk away without saying anything.

Bye, college pals.  We'll probably never meet again.

[Solifuge]

Have you ever posted from a Kindle before? It took me 5 minutes to type this out. My respect for people who Kindlepost has risen a lot.

I was posting using a wiimote and a hacked wii for a bit, so I can kinda relate.

I'm bad at goodbyes.  I usually just walk away without saying anything.

Bye, college pals.  We'll probably never meet again.

I hate goodbyes. Mine tend to be all antsy and hug-intensive.

If there's classmates and buddies you want to keep in touch with, is it too late to get contact info? If nothing else, you never know when old contacts are going to come in handy. I wouldn't have the circle of friends I have today, or even this apartment, if I hadn't kept in touch with a buddy I shared a Non-Western Lit class with. We don't have tons in common, but I'm glad I didn't let him drift away.

[Vector]

I have contact info, but this is the end of this chapter of my life.  I'm moving home tomorrow, finishing and submitting a paper electronically, and then graduation #1 is on Saturday.  Have another 15 pager to write, then departmental graduation on Tuesday.

I'm done, I guess.


EDIT: If college nearly killed me, how am I going to handle the rest of my life?

[Solifuge]

You're going to handle it well, because your college experience was a crucible. Through it, you've become a far stronger, more resilient, and more capable person.

I can't wear my Guru Hat for this, because I've never stood where you stand right now... but I can extrapolate and generalize like a motherfucker. Right now is a good time to take all the things you've learned- all the parts of yourself that you've spent decades building and scrapping and rebuilding and refining- and play around with them, learning how to assemble them into different things. You can see if you have the parts to write short stories, or research numerical relationships, or review restaurants abroad, or whatever. Then, in seeing what you can build out of all these parts you've forged so far, you'll then get a better idea of the new parts you'll want to forge for yourself in the future, and the old parts you'll want to further refine.

I don't know if life really breaks up into neat chapters that are ever just Over. They bleed into one another. Life is this mutable thing, where we meander back and forth between times when we are learning and refining our skills, and times when we're experimenting and doing things with them. You're just wrapping up a particularly intense refining process. Now you get to see what you came out of it with.

It's a good time. A bit of a scary time, probably, but a good time.

[SalmonGod]

EDIT: If college nearly killed me, how am I going to handle the rest of my life?

College nearly kills most people who take it seriously, and continue to handle whatever comes next.  Whatever you do from here isn't likely to be so strenuous.

[Vector]

. . . I still can't believe I nearly died for this.  There has to be something more than this.

I'm sorry.  I can't stop thinking that.  I nearly died for this. 

I want a haircut, and I want to be in a room that's not filthy, and I want a close relationship with someone who loves me, and I want friends who are in roughly the same geographical area, and I want a sunhat that fits a little bit better on my enormous head and a job that doesn't feel disgusting and immoral, and I want to go camping, and I want to feel safe again.

I'm being petulant because I'm in a lot of pain, and as has been usual for the past few weeks I have no ability to process it.  I keep realizing that I nearly died because my current energy expenditure is actually actively damaging.  And there's nothing I can do about it--nothing worth doing.  I just have to do another week.

I really need this to be over with.  I need it to be over.  It's going to be over, but I need it to be over.

College nearly kills most people who take it seriously, and continue to handle whatever comes next.  Whatever you do from here isn't likely to be so strenuous.

Including finding a job and college Round 2: Fight!! ?

[Skyrunner]

EDIT: If college nearly killed me, how am I going to handle the rest of my life?

College nearly kills most people who take it seriously, and continue to handle whatever comes next.  Whatever you do from here isn't likely to be so strenuous.

Uhoh. D:

[MetalSlimeHunt]

EDIT: If college nearly killed me, how am I going to handle the rest of my life?

College nearly kills most people who take it seriously, and continue to handle whatever comes next.  Whatever you do from here isn't likely to be so strenuous.

Uhoh. D:

Over this first year of college I have embraced one principle that makes it much more viable, and that is the realization that anxiety does not increase your proficiency, only effort does. Put your worries in the back of your head and work. Yeah, yeah, future shit, but that's future shit. This is not the future, despite what tech newsfeeds might have you believe.

And even if your efforts are not enough, so what? Your value as a human being is not determined by your grades or your career, despite what badly trained educators and conservative politicians might have you believe, respectively.

Live and fight, but do not worry. Worrying is a self-fulfilling prophecy most of the time, and a path into mediocrity.

[SalmonGod]

College nearly kills most people who take it seriously, and continue to handle whatever comes next.  Whatever you do from here isn't likely to be so strenuous.

Including finding a job and college Round 2: Fight!! ?

Well... I can't say anything about College: Round 2, if that's what you're considering.

But employment doesn't require the same kind of energy expenditure that higher education does.  Sure, it depends a lot on what type of work you get into and how you approach it.  But in general, a job doesn't require you to constantly push into new intellectual boundaries, and allows you to pretend it doesn't exist as soon as you're off the clock.  You can still be a career-obsessed workaholic (and you'll likely need to be in short bursts here and there), but that's optional.  A bad job can still be a horrible experience, but that's usually because it's emotionally draining and eats away at you over time, not because it's finals week and you have to write 50 pages worth of material that you're not sure you understand and then take 3 exams after three consecutive nights without sleep.

[Vector]

Yeah, I'll be going to graduate school in about two years or so.  The two years are to gain skills so I won't nearly die in quite the same way next time.

[Simmura McCrea]

Well, I've failed a module, and hence the year. Unless I can fix and finish this game, then wrote the report on it, in less than 5 hours.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I've been trying to fix it for a week with no progress. No hope.

EDIT: Yeeeeep. Fucked.

[Tiruin]

EDIT: If college nearly killed me, how am I going to handle the rest of my life?

College nearly kills most people who take it seriously, and continue to handle whatever comes next.  Whatever you do from here isn't likely to be so strenuous.

...I take college seriously.

Err...:S

[Scoops Novel]

How did you drive yourself through it?

[Truean]

EDIT: If college nearly killed me, how am I going to handle the rest of my life?

College nearly kills most people who take it seriously, and continue to handle whatever comes next.  Whatever you do from here isn't likely to be so strenuous.

For me, you get through it by knowing you got through worse than whatever is coming next. Those things that nearly killed you: did not. There are certain times when it's ok and desirable to feel superior to people, because you've earned it. Vector, you have a degree in mathamatics. Most people can't make proper change for $12. This and several other reasons about you are why you are loved here. 

I absolutely know where you are coming from right now, because I've been there a few times. College, law school, certificate programs, licenses, etc. Life's like this: you end up somewhere doing something and hopefully you meet somebody else in that position you can talk to. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't, but by law of large numbers, eventually it will. With each time you do it, it gets a little easier, because you did it before, and even if the last time was a mistake, you learn from that too. It's all about forward motion.

Yes, it is exhausting. That's why you have to pace and take care of yourself. Forward motion is not about a sprint, but rather a graduatual thing. Sadly, people think that once they hit a certain milestone, their life will magically work. I fell for that too.

Develop skills that will help you deal with a continuing stream of events that we call life. That's how you win and you're getting better at it.