stuck to the roof of my mouth with a staple

[grayargyle]

i dont even want to go to college anymore. and i cant even explain it, or the problem, cos i know if did, nobody would understand me at all, everyone would think i was a fucked up spoiled brat. i don't know what to do, i really don't.

Comments

[nickyhopkins]

I was browsing through livejournals a couple of weeks back & added yours because I liked your writing. My name's Randy & I'm a fleet manager for a trucking company who recently graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in Creative Writing and who is applying to graduate school and starting a magazine and writing a novel...all while trying to get six to eight hours of sleep a night. I hope you don't mind that I added you...

Hopefully not imposing too much, I didn't want to go to college after I graduated from high school. I was from an industrial town, and none of my friends were going because they couldn't afford it. Without going into specifics, I was bright enough and lucky enough to be able to eek my way in, and I moved four hours away to attend a university. At first I didn't think it was fair for me to be able to go while all of my smart and completely capable friends didn't, and I missed them terribly. I saw how happy they were working at pizza shops or blood donation centers or malls, and I envied them, because they didn't seem to have the stress that I did. And I hated my first semester of college, but what got me through was the thought that I was doing it for them, because they couldn't go. I was taking advantage of an opportunity that not everyone gets.

Over the five years since then, things really have changed. I loved college, and I found it to be the best time of my life. I saw my friends' lives become harder---they couldn't play in punk or emo bands in their parents' basements anymore, and they slowly started going to community college or getting poorly paying jobs with long hours or getting pregnant... And I lost touch with most of them. It's sad, but it happens, and I try not to think about it.

It's very late, and I'm very tired, but the best unsolicited advice I can give you is to take an advantage when it comes your way. In the past four years I've been around the world and seen things and done things that I never could have done were it not for deciding to leave home and set out. While it's sometimes romantic and beautiful to cast everything away and go on an epic journey to find one's self, it's nice to have safety net, which is what I think college provided me, and the countless people I've met and loved while there.