Ask HN: I don't think I can finish college

Here's how I cope:

Focus on the now. Here you are. Here is the desk you sit at. Here is the keyboard in front of you. All these thoughts that rush endlessly through your head are simply thoughts. They belong to you, but they are not you. You are more than your thoughts. You are a human being.

You can do anything you put your mind to, but you can only do one thing at any one time. It doesn't matter which one you choose. You have permission to do any one of the things you want to do.

I find that the best things for me are those that require my brain to shift to the unspeaking side. The one that can't articulate anything. It watches, it moves. It knows, and it can't express itself in abstract ways. Drawing, doodling, making clay figures.

I don't know if that helps you, but I sincerely hope it does. I don't know if you pray, or if you are receptive to the idea, but I shall pray for you.

Whatever you choose to do, try not to worry about it. Worry doesn't add a single day to your life, and it robs you of the now.

Life is what you make of it, you choose what you want to do in it. If college isn't for you, then just go get a software job somewhere. Lots of places will hire you without a degree, it just requires you to prove yourself a little more through past projects or past experience.

Why is finishing college such an important goal for you, and if it really was important to you, then you would find a way to finish it.

It sounds like you just need to figure out somethings and get your priorities straight. Put your mental and physical well being above everything else and get your shit together. :)

You have to think about what completing the task at hand will provide you in the future and use that to further your progress as you go. So if completing your degree brings you a job, or more money, think about how you will use that in the future.

It's very important to understand what causes your issues. This will be the part of the answer. Seems that depression is the main problem here, while anxiety, isolation, panic attacks, lack of discipline and motivation are its side effects. Understand what causes your depression and what do you need to improve your state. Ask for help or go to a doctor if you can't figure it out by yourself. Work on removing things that make you depressed from your life. Anyway, health and happiness are more important assets than formal education, and there is no tragedy if you will not finish the college.

It is difficult to say what is the most appropriate solution for a person like you only because I cannot seem to get an accurate read on who you are. But I will share some advice that I ran on in school. Your mileage may vary based on your ability to follow through.

1. Flunking or dropping, lack of discipline and motivation, anxiety, depression, isolation is a sign of of mental instability and needs severe amount of therapy to fix. And since most therapy is like shooting in the dark and hoping you get a hit, I don't rely on it. I just let it work if it can. And if it cannot, oh well. It is okay to finish the race limping on one leg if the other one does not work.

2. The best way to get through mental instability is by focusing, and my way of focusing is via anger. The healthier way of focusing is looking at the world in a positive light and knowing anything is possible.

3. Get past your shortcomings. In fact, enjoy your shortcomings. College is an avalanche of challenge, and its biggest gift is that your weaknesses and shortcomings become revealed to you. (Imagine how bad life would be if you accidently thought you were amazing at everything, simply because you were never challenged.)

4. College is about growing on top of the challenges, learning through the stress, and bonding with community. College is about giving back as much as it is about receiving. College is about having a commmon struggle. Don't be aloof to it all.

5. A blind person finishes college in one way. A deaf person finishes college in another way. A blind-deaf person finishes college a third way. Likewise, a smart person, social person, nice person, and angry person each have a unique way of finishing college, and there is no right way or wrong way of doing it. I remember Aesop's fable of the sun and wind at this point. Everyone has strengths. College is about finding those strengths and learning to use those strengths. (Every superhero has their own strengths and they each need to leverage it creatively to win.) Don't think that you being this or that way cannot succeed in college. A person like you must succeed or college needs to transform itself to the correct way where a person like you is not deprived of the opportunity at accomplishing it.

6. There have been times where I too felt that I was too different or weird to do well. I was not. I was perfectly capable. Often times, the assignments I was given was too weird or different. I never thought too much of it, and I realized (in college) I should never ever let it define or qualify who I was.

Unless you have some alternative better opportunity then finishing even at just a passing level will probably be worth it in the long run than dropping out completely. At least you will have finished! You know you can do well as you have done well before but everything boils down to whether or not you can perform despite your feelings of anxiety, depression, panic, boredom etc. There is a formal therapy that has been developed around this idea called ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). The founder of it, Stephen Hayes, wrote a practical book on it titled "Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life" which is worth reading. Russ Harris is also a pretty active writer in this area and has several books on the subject. Procrastination-wise Timothy Pychyl's book "Solving the Procrastination Puzzle" is probably the best book on current methods of overcoming procrastination tendencies. Both of these people are professors and actively do research on their respective fields of study to scientifically validate their ideas. Coincidentally enough I just came across a podcast http://www.myownworstenemy.org that interviewed both of these people in the latest two episodes. Worth a listen. I wish I had these tools when I was struggling with these problems 20 years ago (and still do, I don't think the struggle will ever go away) but I managed to get through and do OK and I believe you can too.