How I Failed in School — The One Rule to Succeed that I Ignored
The story of my 3–4-year college education, the mistakes I made, and the one rule you have to live by to succeed in Academia.
I wrote 3–4 years because honestly, I’m not sure how long it was. It’s all kind of a blur.
Maybe you can relate to my experience and the one huge mistake I made.
I graduated from high school in the fall of 2016 and immediately joined an honors cohort in a university I respected, San Diego Christian College.
It was hard work, I had stayed up all night completing projects multiple times.
Presentations were due in the morning, and several papers besides. I remember sitting before a board of professors in an oral exam, failing to recall what I had studied, sweating profusely under their gaze, heart racing.
My Adventures at SDCC
It was during these trying times that my inability to manage the stress I was under emerged in the form of a condition, epilepsy.
I began having two or more seizures a day (now I have one only every other month or so), but I still managed to maintain a GPA of almost 3.8.
I studied English for a year at SDCC, then one day I was standing in Chapel (a session of worship and religious display held twice a week. Attendance: Mandatory) and I couldn’t get a song out of my head. Creep, by Radiohead.
As everyone sang worship songs and lifted their hands, I stood, hands by my side, posture slouched, mumbling under my breath.
But I’m a creep,
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here.
It hit me all at once. I had never even wanted to go to this school. I didn’t believe in any of it, I had chosen the path of least resistance, so in a way hadn’t chosen any path at all. I didn’t even share the beliefs of my peers.
My attitude towards the future was non-partial and utterly apathetic.
Herein lied my failure as an academic. Yes, I had worked hard, but there was one reason I knew I would never graduate.
I actually never wanted to.
That was my one huge mistake. I had never defined a goal that I actually truly wanted to achieve.
I had never stopped to ask myself what I dreamed of. I never once stopped to imagine my future, I was living day to day, and it showed.
I would wait until the last minute to do every single assignment, surviving with decent grades when I knew I could be thriving with only a little motivation.
I left SDCC. I started to look at school differently, I didn’t want a slip of paper, I wanted to learn, I wanted to be enriched. I wanted to be educated.
The idea of graduating with a degree became almost meaningless to me, even though I knew it was a mistake to undervalue such an achievement.
The Horrors of Community College
I further pursued my education at Grossmont community college in San Diego.
I started taking art classes that didn’t count towards my major, I started taking psychology classes simply because I enjoyed the subject.
As passionate as I became about the subjects of my study, it was still hard to stay invested. The students at community college didn’t really care much about the quality of their work, and neither did most of the Professors, unfortunately (but that was just my experience).
The smell of marijuana hung like a fog over every classroom. I will never forget the day I watched a student hunched up against a locker, looking both ways before doing a line of some illicit substance off the back of his hand, then stumbling into a classroom shortly after.
I remember my rock-history teacher, after confessing to the class that he had a gambling addiction, vengefully yelling in the face of a few students for momentarily leaving his 3-hour class to have a cigarette outside.
I’m not exaggerating, his face was literally 2 inches from theirs.
I was losing motivation fast.
My aimlessness was complemented well by the strange advice of the school counselors. I sought their help many times, I would ask them questions and they would sit and stare back at me. I was never sure who was supposed to be advising who. Sometimes they were stoned, sometimes me, sometimes the both of us.
I didn’t particularly enjoy the environment at the school and quickly lost the little motivation I had to succeed.
Looking Back
I dropped out last spring, and it was a decision I stand by.
Looking back now I’ve realized that I never once maintained a long term academic goal. I merely went to school because I didn’t have anything else to do. My passive mindset destined me for failure because without a goal, no goal remained but failure.
I’ve been a dreamer, I’ve been a lost boy, I’ve been a Peter Pan. You may say, at least Peter Pan knew how to fly, but he also never grew up.
It’s scary to tie yourself down to a future goal. It traps you, in a way. You create a standard by which to define your success. If your goal is set in your mind, then failing to accomplish that goal means you’re a failure (in that one way, of course), but inversely, succeeding means you’re a success.
I never defined my long term goals. The future to me was a monster to be feared. Not something that could be bargained with, or something to be excited about, but something that should be avoided.
I didn’t want to be tied to a standard of success, so instead, I chose no standard at all.
I didn’t want to be Captain Hook, those who resent the Peter Pans of the world, always on the run from that angrily ticking clock, drowning their every movement and decision in futility and hopelessness.
Perhaps there is something between Pan and Hook, perhaps you can be a dreamer with a goal, someone whose feet stay firmly planted to the ground, all while secretly maintaining the ability to fly.
All that being said, I don’t regret any part of my academic career. I’ve learned a lot by failing in the ways that I did.
I plan to return to school, to study psychology.
The One Rule
When I return, I know, I will live by one rule, to have a real, tangible goal and to pursue it.
If you don’t want to fail, ask yourself, why are you going to school? What does it mean to you? What does the future look like, in a year, or five, or ten?
Don’t be like me, a partially English, partially Psychology, partially Philosophy Major who never graduated.
Don’t be afraid to ask yourself, because you’ll have to eventually anyway. Trust me on that one.
Yours truly,
Michael