Am I On The Right Course?

[wantonhalo]

So I've been living in California and studying at Berkeley for a little over two months now. And recently, a lot of things have really made me question my attendance here. Basically, my academic performance in classes so far is decidedly lackluster. This is due mainly to laziness/procrastination. I am actually trying pretty hard to improve on this

Comments

[bnjy99]

I sort of feel the same way about my education sometimes... I hope you can figure things out. Good luck.

[winterene]

DUDE!!! DROP WHAT YOU ARE DOING RIGHT NOW AND GO TO GOOGLE NEWS AND SEARCH FOR STUDENT LOANS!!!

I'm serious. Based on everything I've been hearing for years, you could be screwing yourself for years, decades even, if you rack up a heavy student loan debt.

You need to ASSUME that once you graduate, you WILL NOT be able find a job that pays enough to settle that debt quickly.

Don't take my word for this. Research, research, research. There are plenty of graduates hurting right now and wishing they had made different choices.

[magratheazaphod]

for someone who just started college two months ago, you're not doing too badly at all! I don't mean to sound patronizing but I had no idea what the hell was going on for at least my first semester in college. College is hard. I only felt really comfortable there in my last couple of years.

That said, being around Berkeley is going to present you with an enormous number of opportunities that will not be available to you otherwise, period. These may not all be immediately apparent to you right now. However, if you think about the things you've written, they are indeed things that don't require you being in college - but the point of college is in many ways to present you with tons of new stuff and challenges and allowing you to grow as a result. You may enjoy tutoring math but I doubt it will lead to you experiencing the personal growth that you will over the next four years. College is an investment that will pay off manyfold.

In other words...keep your head up and stick with it. We're here if you want people to talk to.

[magratheazaphod]

also, take more fun classes! one of my favorite things of college was all the random fascinating classes I got to take. Many of them were among the best I took. It'll do a great job of balancing the pressure of your math classes. hell, go take some decals.

[cesarsalad]

Fun classes are definitely a fantastic idea. To give you an idea, these are some classes that I took at Caltech throughout my 4 years:
- Music Theory
- Beethoven (A whole trimester on him!)
- Opera
- Classical Guitar
- Screen printing (for shirts)
- All sorts of sports classes that I mostly sucked at - tennis, ping pong, soccer. I even joined the soccer team my freshman year.
- Spanish literature
- Number theory !
- A cool numerical physics class
- Computer graphics
Plus it helped that I enjoyed (most of) my EE classes.

[vinylchances]

Definitely know the feeling... doing lacklusterly in school, being more interested in other stuff. I guess the best advice is just to stick with it and power through. Yes, it's expensive, but in the long run, having a degree will earn that money back and then some. (I'm buried under a mountain of student loan debt right now with no regrets, so... yeah.)

All that other stuff you're interested in -- do it too! There's 24 hours in a day. Screw sleeping. Sleep when you graduate.