2025.09.07

Musings on my life as an adult

Coming at you around 30 minutes after withdrawing from university <3

I graduated high school in 2017. I was a pretty unstable person at that point. I mean, who isn't when they're graduating high school? Like everyone else, I was aggressively pressured to go to college right after high school.

The American education system, and society in general, does a good job at pressuring teenagers to have their lives figured out right then and there. Hey, if you've handled high school well enough, the easiest option is to immediately go to college. If you have parents that have the means to financially support you (and love you), you might even be able to have a taste of living independently, with training wheels.

My situation, at that point, was a little interesting. I had one parent that could not financially support me even if she wanted to. In fact, she wasn't able to financially support me by the time I turned 8 years old. Regardless, she told me that not even the community college would accept me because my grades were that bad.

My other parent, and his wife, really really wanted me to go to college right after high school. My father started college when I was in first grade, and graduated with his bachelor's degree when I was in eighth grade. He regretted missing out on "The College Experience," so of course that meant I shouldn't miss out on it. And then his wife told me all the fun she had in her sorority at UF. So, of course, that meant that I desired such "fun."

The hilarious thing was that, although those two had the money to support how they want my life to go, they made sure I knew that they would not be. I was on my own.

We all had this grand plan, thoughout high school, that I would move to the city my father lives in, go to community college there, and eventually transfer to the university there and study computer science. Computer science. lol. lmao, even.

For obvious reasons, and other reasons I won't get into, that did not pan out. I ran back home with my tail between my legs, and somewhat intended to go to community college back home. That also did not happen.

What did happen was 5 years went by, a lot of experience being a Full Time Working Adult, countless mental breakdowns, and discovering who I am (mostly). That's all plenty of stories for another day.

I was going to go more in-depth about my experiences with post-secondary education, but really, my point is that I've been taking classes full time, on top of working full time at a Real Job, for about three years.

And today, I had to withdraw. There are many reasons why (my blog post today was initially going to be about the BS involved with some of my classes this semester), but the primary reason was money. The university failed to give me any information about the full tuition waiver I was awarded. I had originally transferred in the spring, and that apparently counted as a year.

I'm trying really hard not to call myself a failure or dwell on how long I've been working my ass off. I'm not sure when I'll return. I don't think it'll be next semester.

Not a happy post today... If you, for whatever reason, read this and want to know more about my Experiences (perhaps you are in a similar predicament I was once in), shoot me an email at coolguy@xyls.net.