While working as an intern at the business management office, I made the decision to go to college. With finalizing that choice, I seem to battle with myself to find a major and stick with it to ride this college train until I graduate. I’ve done the whole college application process before and didn’t follow through, there was always something pulling me back. There was something that made me not want to go beyond the application.
It took a seven year break after high school to decide to be thrusted into the community college life. If it wasn’t for the small handful of people I’ve come across with some true ambition I don’t think I would’ve made it through the semester. School in general never felt like a safe place or somewhere that I felt like I could thrive. In high school I was the teen with more bullies than friends and skipped school more often than not.
At the time of my experience, my school was on the top 10 lists of worse schools in New York City. The education system can fail you sometimes if you’re not into some rich elite private school drowning in thousands of dollars in debt. The bullying and personal issues caused a suicide of on of the friends I made during my very first year of high school. While some people were sympathetic and showed a genuine sadness of her passing, others made harsh remarks about her death and some even tried to destroy the small memorial of her that was posted up at school.
It’s safe to say that those actions, along with the relentless bullying that I received there made me want to retreat and I found every reason in the book to not show up to school. I’d only show up to take a test, bring in some homework and make my prompt exit.
In my high school there were some pivotal things that slowly made me want to never do any sort of schooling again in my life.
- Students would taunt or throw things at a teacher who was a bit older in this life to the point where she had genuine fear of standing up to teach the class anything.
- A teacher whose eyes seemed to be directed at my boobs for part of the class.
- One of the teachers got stranded somewhere out on a trip and proceeded to email the students in the class for money to get back home.
- Students were so bad that we got kicked out of a school trip to the zoo of all places.
- During the grieving process of the death of my friend, someone in class stated that they were glad she was dead because she finally gotten to do the one thing she truly wanted. It absolutely blew my mind that some people could be so cruel.
Things continuously escalated until I had my breaking point of almost being assaulted sexually in the staircase before class. To see that person on the day to day basis felt like I could never find peace. Due to that and other problems I picked my poison of choice and began to drink heavily. I would take whatever alcohol I could until a numbness settled over me. I was constantly skipping school until I spoke up and got transferred out my last few months of my senior year in high school. With the new school I had fewer problems but I didn’t know anyone and so I refused to attend my high school graduation.
I say all of this to put the point across the extreme negative mindset and experiences I had tied to being in school, to learning new things, meeting people etc. It puts a damper on your senses, doesn’t make you want more than this and so I wasn’t exactly running to sign up for college when I graduated at the age of 17. I took my time, I applied for a shit ton of jobs that I didn’t get and ultimately felt like the biggest failure of my life.
Everything felt like it came later to me and even now at the age of 25, I struggled with everything. Although I’m enrolled in college now, Im in no way shape or form have any clue what direction I’m being pulled in. This led me to become a liberal arts major, completely undecided and still searching for where I truly fit in so I don’t end up doing things that I hate. The transition has been rough, writing essays, presentations and doing things extremely out of my comfort zone has been less than to be desired.
My stomach was in knots during every single one of my presentations but I did it, the biggest struggle was surviving my math class but I did it. It took lots of work, youtube videos, practicing at work with a co worker, having a classmate help during our downtime at our main campus and even a family friend that’s an architect who is a complete math whiz. All of those supporting factors worked as a key ingredients to passing my classes and maintaining my 3.4 gpa.
College life isn’t for everyone, I certainly didn’t think I’d see the day where I was enrolled and had the strength, discipline and drive to follow through with it but here I am kicking ass. Working part time and experiencing college life part time has led to keeping me a very busy woman and I hope that I find somewhere that I belong.
It took a very long time for me to want more for myself, I feel like a lot of times I settled for things and the biggest change has been wanting more. To challenge myself to want more than just barely surviving, barely functioning. There’s so much more that I want to attain and it won’t be handed to me. I have to fight, claw and push my mentality further than its ever been. I choose the people I let into my life wisely and I’m ever so grateful for the few individuals who has made a positive impact on me.
I don’t know if I will continue on the path of college life but here I am doing my best and that’s all a person can do.