It’s a long and disappointing story. I’ve dug myself a pretty deep hole in school and it’s getting to the point now where each semester looks bleaker.
I was originally in the Crim program. But I made a mistake. I took two distance education courses that I had no business taking. The courses themselves were fine. It’s the fact that they were distance that screwed me over because I know now that I simply do not have that level of discipline that others do.
As a result of this, my GPA tanked and I had to forfeit my major declaration. I’ve taken all of my electives. I’ve taken all lower division CRIM requirements (and all of the non-required ones like Youth and Law, Introduction to Policing, etc). But my GPA is still too low and I won’t be able to get into the upper division ones that I need.
To make a headache worse, my course registration was fairly early. Again, all the courses I want have several GPA pre-requisites involved. They don’t factor in the grades from this semester until well after exams are over. Because of this, chances are I won’t be able to get a seat in the courses since they’ll already be full.
This means I have to take a few meaningless courses for fun or for interest. Naturally, there is the threat that it could drop my GPA. I don’t have much choice in that matter. I suppose I could take some time off and try and find a job somewhere. Don’t think that would fly very well here either.
You see, I’ve also reached the point where my cash reserves are dry. I’ll need to apply for a student loan to continue financing for school. The problem with that is that one of the criteria be that I remain a full time student.
During the summer, one of the distance education courses I took required me to head down to BC’s supreme court and make several court observations. After being there for several hours, I observed that this might not be the field I wanted to get involved in. I witnessed defense lawyers using every trick in the book to prevent gangsters and rapists. I watched innocent people get caught by prosecutors. Sure it pays well, but I started to wonder if this is an occupation where I’d be able to go to sleep at night. And I slowly came to the realization that no, this isn’t what I wanted.
Summary
I have to take courses I don’t need, to qualify for money I don’t have, to pay for a discipline that I don’t know if I’m even interested in anymore.
What do I do?
I’m a little depressed about it (not medically or anything). Right now, it just feels like my life sucks. It’d be reassuring to hear someone say “don’t worry, everything’s going to turn out okay”. But House would say “you don’t know that. Things might not turn okay. They might get worse.” And he’d be right.
When I kill large scale Dragons in WoW or oversized yeti’s and armies of Dwarves, if my team failed that night, we’d talk it over and identify what went wrong. Who wasn’t doing their job? Who was caught out of position? What were we doing wrong? We’d identify problems and come up with solutions. If it didn’t work, it was back to the drawing board. And we’d keep going until the Dragon was nothing more than a carcass at our feet with his treasures in our possession.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t have any answers. I don’t have any solutions. If there’s one thing that drives me up the wall, it’s being placed in a situation where I’m not sure if I can directly influence an outcome.
If not Crim, then what?
If there’s one hobby I really enjoyed, it’s always been writing. It’s awesome to get paid to write about video games. It just doesn’t feel like work at all. I wish I had gone into communications or journalism instead. In order to get in, the GPA requirement is 2.75. I’m barely floating above 2.1. That course of action is then ruled out.
In an effort to help myself, I’ve turned to caffeine to help boost my energy and awakeness. The past few weeks I’ve been extremely tired and sleepy. Sometimes, I wouldn’t have any coffee at home. Or I’d be late getting to school and wouldn’t be able to get coffee.
Caffeine pills
So I resorted to caffeine pills again. They don’t have the calories that coffee does and it has a caffeine that’s equivalent to 1 cup of coffee. Of course, some of my friends happen to take objection. I don’t get it. It’s not like I’m abusing it by taking more than the recommended amount. It was just one pill when I woke up, and one pill later on in the evening. I needed the energy to sustain the level of reading and studying I was doing. I had a paper due last Tuesday and of all the academic papers I’ve written in the past, this was one where I was most proud of. I have an exam coming up on Monday. I studied with my group for 4 hours on Wednesday and an additional 5 hours today. I’ve never felt more prepared.
In any case, I’ve decided to stop using them for now at her request. I cave in too easily to friends at times.
If I don’t do well in this next exam, I don’t know what I’m going to do. The prof made a deal with us where if the class average increased by at least 2%, she’d award us an additional 2% on top of that. That’s almost a full letter grade of an increase when combined.
Time to go back to studying.
Oh wait. I won’t be able to stay awake anymore.
Stick to your Project-description: “One Student’s Quest for Academic Success”. You want academic success, go and get it. Who cares if you are interested now? Interest will come when you dive in.