Motivation for staying in school? Having a rough time...

[Desert_Fox]

Hey guys, im having a really rough time here in my first year at UC Santa Barbara. I am currently a pre-Economics & Accounting major, and i've just been so depressed since i've arrived here in July. My classes are for the most part not too difficult, but they have been so boring... Everyday I dread waking up to go to class because I hate what I do and find no enjoyment in being here.

I thought college was going to be this very exciting and fulfilling endeavour, but it has failed to show that yet. I have tried to make friends with hallmates and classmates, but it is strangely super cliquey here, and people are even more fake than my high school. While I say classes are not too difficult, its because I study before my exams and do decent on them. That also feels like a waste of time, because despite everyone telling me cheating in college was harshly punished, everyone around me copies eachother on the midterms and texts the answers around. Why work so hard when so many people just cheat and get the same or even better grade than me?

On top of that, I might not even get to do the Economics major because it is very competitive to get into. The way it is set up is so only top 30% of students in each pre-req class (there are 5 of them) can receive a B or higher. You need a 2.85 (straight B's) to be allowed into the major. In short, you need to be top 30% of every class to be an economics major. It really sucks because this is the only field im interested in (closest to business my school offers), but also the only one with strict weeder classes.

Lastly, and this is probably what annoys me the most... I come from a wealthy little town in the back country of San Diego. There are literally dozens of mega millionaires here who made their fortunes in real estate development, contracting, and construction. I have had the displeasure of meeting most of these people through my GF's uncle, a man who barely graduated from HS and sold his father's construction business for 100 million dollars. Through meeting his buddies, the general theme has been no college degree among any of them, and either they inherited their business or started it themselves. This uncle even once told me "A and B students always work for C students", along with "What do you say to the college graduate at your door? How much for the pizza?". It's shit like this that is so discouraging. If all these people are insanely well off and live like KINGS without much or any educational background, why do I need to waste 4 years doing something I dislike to barely make ends meat? Jealousy is a terrible but real thing unfortunately...

I probably sound like a whiner, but I just want advice on what I should do. I just wish I had a decent business idea or some other idea, because I dread what I do now and wish I had some other options.

[WWONG]

Do what I did. Drop out and buy 3 new BMWs. Why not.

[Q4P]

Just remember, school is school and it will always be there for you and you can always say you have a degree once you've finished and it will always give you something to fall back on. The people you speak of who became millionaires without degrees are exceptions not the rule; they are people who either A) were very lucky or B) had an amazing talent / were naturally gifted that they did not need an education. Not everyone is in the same boat but that is the sad reality. I never enjoyed College either but in the end I stuck through and graduated; have you considered transferring to a different school that you may enjoy more?

[Desert_Fox]

WWONG: Hmm, ill consider that. I mean the uncle's son dropped out of high school and so far has gotten his dad to buy him THREE houses. So obviously three cars wouldn't be that hard.

Quest: Im considering a transfer to either a private school next year or a Community College in the hope of later transfering to a better public school. I guess this problem of disliking college isnt helped by the fact ive never really enjoyed school. I feel like i'd be happier if I was working at a real job, but I will not be able to get a job I enjoy without a degree most likely...

[yakev724]

I think you should diversify and get involved in extracurriculars; meet more people. There are going to be students in all possible situations at any school, and finding those you can connect with and build meaningful relationships is up to you. You might have to go out of your way on occasion.

Don't constrain yourself to economics. I began set on finishing my physics degree in 5/6 semesters and getting out to go do research/graduate work. After being worked hard in my 3rd-4th semesters, I decided I didn't really enjoy it and began to look in other directions. But working hard those first few semesters gave me a ton of freedom with what I could do before I graduate to set myself up for the future.

If you get the chance, travel. Take a semester in europe/asia. Move to find work/classes over the summer.

From your post I feel like you're trying to justify avoiding hard work these next several years, which may even be understandable given your circumstances (of which I know nothing about). I recommend that you spend as much time as you can thinking about what you want to do with your life. Talk to those successful in their careers (preferably those that have worked hard to get to where they are), read books, network in areas you haven't before. Try to find inspiration in something and go with it. If you find that you enjoy it, great. If not, you learned something about yourself.

If you can correlate this to your classwork, it will pay off tremendously, even if you end up changing directions. I guess it does take some discipline.

[Saigon]

One thing is for sure, you don't sound like you know exactly what you want to do yet. That was the same with me, my whole part-time/full-time work while going to school was related to sales/management. I majored in finance to fall back on as a backup and initially wanted to become an investment banker/financial advisor of some sort. After seeing the starting salaries compared to what I was making before while attending to school, it didn't seem like something I wanted to do by starting back up. Right now I'm doing something totally different to finance, Pharmaceutical Sales. I didn't know I wanted to continue sales, but after looking at what I was making and what I was potentially going to make going into the financial industry, it just didn't make sense with my background.

Anyways, the point is, have you had any part-time/full-time work experience? Working part-time/full-time during school is good for finding yourself and who you truely are. If you enjoyed your part-time/full-time work you should continue it with passion and move forward from there. At least that helped for me. When I was 18 I wanted to do I.T. work and had my first job at geeksquad bestbuy lol, after doing that a couple months I knew exactly that was not my thing!

[just4kickz]

haha why did you choose UCSB? i was about to go there... or Irvine a while ago...

A and B students working for C students? doesn't happen that often. if you look at successful people, its usually not only their grades but also their "go-getting" self motivated personality types.

as far as staying in school or dropping out goes, i guess it really depends on what you want. there are plenty of people with your similar background, raised privileged who do not go to college. many of them don't succeed, but some of them do. going to college when you don't know what you want in life, means college might not be the right thing for you at the moment. if you can get a job right now, and it's a job you think you might enjoy... do it. if later on, you discover you want to do something else, you can always return to school. but you should know that as you age, going back to school becomes harder (family, other financial responsibilities, etc).

on the other hand, if you want to just finish school now, i'd tell you to find a major that you are passionate about and invest your time in that plus do some extracurriculars like a job or volunteering. for the majority of people, its the experiences that matter the most and not necessarily the grades (assuming you don't want to do grad/professional school). but just to forewarn you, if you don't have the experiences or the academic background, it could be hard to find certain jobs--which is something that i'm dealing with now.

edit: +1 on study abroad... the UC system has a great network of abroad studies. i never did because i was too busy trying to get my class load done, but if i could... i would have done something in south america..

[matthewk]

HTFU... Seriously...

1. Work hard for yourself, be proud of that. What everyone else does by cheating will haunt them later when their bosses or their shareholders expect them to apply the skills they claim to have.

2. Focus on learning, friends will come. If friends don't come it's likely there's something wrong with you. Work on that. If friends still don't come f#ck it, find some cool girl to hook up with and focus on making A's

3.

On top of that, I might not even get to do the Economics major because it is very competitive to get into. The way it is set up is so only top 30% of students in each pre-req class (there are 5 of them) can receive a B or higher. You need a 2.85 (straight B's) to be allowed into the major. In short, you need to be top 30% of every class to be an economics major. It really sucks because this is the only field im interested in (closest to business my school offers), but also the only one with strict weeder classes.

--- You said classes were easy.. So get A's and the quoted won't matter right? If you can't get A's then this major isn't really for you and those that are in the class will be happy you didn't make it since you'd only slow them down. Perhaps custodial arts are more in line with your skillset. Seriously I am messing with you, but it's not that hard, study, stop worrying what's going on with the people in your hall.

4.Those people who say

A and B students work for C students

are not the majority. In fact for each of them there are millions of people that aren't so fortunate. I could go on for hours about this, I've been on both sides of this paradigm, but you will never escape that for 99.9999999% of the population pedigree, credentials along with hard work makes a difference.

5. UCSB isn't exactly a hard, nor clicky school, I am still baffled by your struggles here. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and focus on being top of your class.

6.

"What do you say to the college graduate at your door? How much for the pizza?"

This is too funny. Bet if you did a study you'd find that the majority of pizza delivery persons have no degree. AND, the truth is that past their arrogance, everyone of those people you've spoken with that spews this type of rhetoric likely has felt inferior to others because of their lack of formal education. Truth is that your GF's uncle who barely graduated from HS hated that he couldn't do simple regressions to forecast his business, and likely, unless he was the rare exception, could not differentiate between a cash-flow, income, and financial position statements. These types of people typically suffer from huge losses when they have to hire people to make up for their incompetence.

7. You do sound like a whiner.

8. Sure it blows having to go to school when there are those that have those 1 in a million ideas that make them rich. But, truth is for all those dreamers there are only a handful that make any money. And those that don't are typically those I am asking how much for my pizza.

[yakev724]

Originally Posted by matthewk

What everyone else does by cheating will haunt them later when their bosses or their shareholders expect them to apply the skills they claim to have.

Yep, wanted to mention this. Once you realize why you're in school and value what you get out of it, what anyone else does 'just to get a degree' becomes irrelevant. You need to realize the value in learning the skills first, and pulling in good grades second. In harder classes one is impossible without the other, and you'll find that there are very few cheaters in that environment.

[Greenkirby21]

cheer up buddy. While the cheaters may be winning for now, it will be ok once you drive up to mcdonalds and say hi to them in your new Lamborghini

at least, thats what I tell myself >_>

[CollinsE90]

Drop out, you'll never make it through college if you hate Gen Eds. It's easy because you're taking high school classes right now, it only gets harder and you sound terribly lazy.

[Brey335i]

If you think college is hard or boring you're in the wrong major. Once you pick the right major for you, then you'll actually find the lectures more interesting and you'll begin to do very well. That's how it worked for me.

[BMWinNorthdakota]

Originally Posted by CollinsE90

Drop out, you'll never make it through college if you hate Gen Eds. It's easy because you're taking high school classes right now, it only gets harder and you sound terribly lazy.

this

[driersheets]

hahahahahahahaha

[fokus45]

Stay in school! It might suck right now, but in a few years you will be glad you did. I wish every day tbat I would have.

[///M Dream]

Just keep on pressing on man. It sucks i know i just received my bachelors, and now prepping for law school. Without education you wont get anywhere unless your lucky, or got some talent in some spec of life. Think of it in 4 years youll be living comfortably and will be happy you finished.

[MDCTFTW]

you don't realize how much you learn from school until after the fact. stay in school.

[Gearcraft]

think of the things that you love doing and you are good at.

think about where you can get paid doing these and who will pay you.

invest your education in that field. maybe try to create your own little niche in the market.

if you know yourself, your talent, and your capacity, make use of them and don't do something else that is entirely new when you are already good at one thing.

this is how i approached my education. lots of my family are in the field of nursing (your typical pinoy). been drawing and enjoyed it since i was a kid so i pushed for architecture instead of nursing. i hate the studio work cause i don't get to sleep much. thought of quitting halfway through but continued.

here's the other thing... i also love playing music, live sound, and recording so im gonna bridge the two interest and specialize in music related architecture.... something like that.... hopefully it works... we'll see... i am now on my final year in architecture and proposing a recording studio for my senior project.

looking forward to getting out of school and doing actual work. im glad i pushed through. hope this helps and you figure out the things that will make you enjoy going to school.

[vioaltec]

if your crazy smart like Steve Jobs, you can quit school and be succesfull. If not, join a faternity or something. College is amazing, dont pass it up.

[CollinsE90]

You guys are missing the point, graduating college doesn't mean guaranteed success. It takes the "thing" that those people(e.g Bill Gates, Steve Jobs) have/had to become successful. Hard nosed, strong work ethic, love for what you do, common sense, and in their case being a genius. They became successful without a degree because they didn't need one, but if they could have went back they would have.

OP you need to work on yourself, because if you drop out now and try to make it on your own it'll be much harder than sitting in Comp101 driving an E93 335 on dads money. Real world (albeit I've only experienced some), is a lot harder than college, you just don't have anything to compare college to. A lot of freshmen have that view because they're ignorant to the world.

[TimZ]

Originally Posted by CollinsE90

You guys are missing the point, graduating college doesn't mean guaranteed success. It takes the "thing" that those people(e.g Bill Gates, Steve Jobs) have/had to become successful. Hard nosed, strong work ethic, love for what you do, and common sense. They became successful without a degree because they didn't need one, but if they could have went back they would have.

OP you need to work on yourself, because if you drop out now and try to make it on your own it'll be much harder than sitting in Comp101 driving an E93 335 on dads money. Real world (albeit I've only experienced some), is a lot harder than college, you just don't have anything to compare college to. A lot of freshmen have that view because they're ignorant to the world.

This is very true.
Graduating college isn't something that will make you rich. It's more of a learning and preparation kind of thing. You go to college to learn how to do what you want to do.
If you know of an idea that will get you rich then follow it. That's the only way you will make a lot of money. You need to know what you want to do with your life. I know what I want to do with mine and that's why I picked my current path. I'm currently a civil engineering major, planning on having a minor in construction management or sustainable urban designs (I keep forgetting the name that's not the full name). Once I graduate I plan on expanding my fathers current construction company with the additional knowledge I gained. If that doesn't work out I always have a back up plan of working for some company lol.
But the point is that you NEED to decide what you want to do and plan out how you want to do it. That's your only motivation

[just4kickz]

i finished school a year ago and now i'm trying to get back in haha. the real world kinda sucks