I can't do group learning. (I hate college.)
I don't know why. It's probably just leftovers from my youth affecting my mental state today. Maybe I need some CBT to tell me it's not "logical" or whatever and to just change my way of thinking to affect my feelings because that's how it all works and if I only try hard enough I can lift cars off children and walk over hot coals by putting my mind over my feelings.
I don't know, I always feel humiliated when I learn in group settings. I'm not a fast learner at all. Seriously, I'm not. I'm always doing worst in every single class I go in. I have this social anxiety of learning in groups, probably because of all the group things I did as a kid I failed at, like sports, for example. It feels horrible. Being worse than everyone else.
Paradoxically, I'm good at lots of stuff, to the point people are regularly impressed at what I can do and what I know. I can cook well. I can skate. I'm relatively athletic. I can repair cars. I can repair bicycles. I can do home improvement stuff. I have lots and lots of skills, that I mostly taught myself. Well obviously I learned from other people as I don't live in a vacuum, but I never went to classes for them. All these things have the commonality of me just doing them self paced and only "competing" against myself. I mean obviously there's the benchmark of other people's things, but I'm not literally directly competing or graded against them like I am in a class.
Skating now I even have a coach, but if I don't accomplish something she wants me to do, she's disappointed, but it's not the end of the world if it doesn't happen. There's no report card where she gives me an F or an A. I can self pace, work around things, schedule my lessons differently, etc. I mean there are literal skating federation tests where I will be graded, but again, I pick and choose when I test, there's no deadlines where I must accomplish ____ by ____. I can go into a test with 100% certainty (or at least over 90%) that I'll pass, there's no surprise questions, etc, just "you gotta be able to do _____ eventually."
So now I'm left picking up my own mistakes of doing something because I wanted to look "normal" and not have old f*****s b***h at me and ask me what I'm doing with my life and tell me I'll be homeless if I don't straighten up or whatever. I might fail the classes. More than likely I will. Because I didn't show up out of anxiety and less than ideal circumstances. Going off half cocked. It wasn't something I actually believed in doing, nor had motivation or desire to do, nor really even thought I could do.
But I did it anyway to try to impress others. Now nobody's impressed and I'll probably have a $700 bill. Well, $700 life lesson. Just like when you lend someone $20 and they don't pay it back, as they say, you spent $20 to find out their character. Welp, I'll probably be out $700 to find out mine. I should have known my true character. I hated school so much as a kid they almost locked me up for not going (truancy charges...) It was idiotic for me to think as an adult that'd change much. But some things did change as an adult, so I figured maybe that would, too. But it didn't. I still hate school just as much.
With the $700 life lesson, I mean I guess in perspective that's not too bad compared to some of my friends who've spent $20-30K to figure out they hate or can't do something, either with real college or trade school. Just out of the misguided directions of "what are you doing with your life?" type admonishments from people, or expectations from their parents or whatever. Still sucks, but I guess it's the same as me ending up spending 2 grand or so of my parent's money on cars that I worked on and usually spent more time repairing than driving. That's at least cheaper than the recommended way of learning you hate something, spend $20K at trade school. This time it likely will be me having to pay the $700, but I dunno. To me it's almost a relief that's all it'll take to get rid of the "friend" school is.
Oh well, should have done what I actually wanted to do. Not go to school. Go take a CLEP test every so often, get 3 credits per test spending $120-150 per test and only 3 hours testing. But I didn't do that. Technically college was "free" because of the federal money. Even monetarily, I figured for the gas I'd spend going back and forth to class, even with everything being "free" it'd still be the same amount of money in gas as a CLEP test costs. So it was a BS idea to go to college anyway. But I wanted to be like everyone else.
I know I'll just get called a p**** in this thread for somehow breaking down over going to community college. And you're probably right. And to toughen up, and even though for your "good" class you've probably missed half your classes and your bad class like 90%, there's still hope or whatever. Yeah OK.
Ah well, better go look for another job. $700 life lesson to pay off.
If you really want to pass your classes and succeed at this, there's possibly help available.
Many community colleges offer counseling and tutoring services, and if you make them aware of your disability there might even be more services and acommodations available to you.
Just a thought.
By the way, I don't think you're a p**** for not being able to tough it out.
Some things are just too difficult for some people, and that's just the way it is.
I don't judge people because of that, especially since I've experienced that myself.
You seem to have the right attitude, and that's what's really important.
So, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on.
I'm sure you'll find your niche eventually if you want to. ![]()
andrewlavigne
Snowy Owl
Joined: 9 Oct 2013
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 125
Location: Fredericton, NB/Halifax, NS
Your school almost certainly has resources for people with learning disabilities/differences. My university calls it the Accessibility Centre, and it allows you to have a note taker in your classes, take tests in a private setting with a reader, get deadline extensions and such. Schools have these resources and you can avail yourself of them and make things easier on you.
Is there no possibility to "push through" in a certain way, so that college isnt totally lost to you? I was as well bad about groups and couldnt hardly learn anything during lessons, and missed school often. But I simply focused on managing the tests with good results, so that was more important for me, then homework or being in school. If I had a test, I learned, not caring for the rest of school, and because of the test results I managed school. (Not with good marks: Homework 4-5, Attention during lessons 4-5 and tests 1-2 resulted in a 3-4 in most subjects, but that was sufficient for managing school. ^^) As well in groups projects, I tried to get a part of the work that could be done separately, but still was necessary for the group work.)
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