This is just sad...

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I'm in my third year of university. In my first year I made some aquaintances but lost them since I failed some courses and switched programs. Now I rarely talk to anyone and I have no social life in university. I can't take this anymore! I have a feeling that, psychologically speaking, somethings gonna blow sooner or later (no worries, I have no urges to hurt anyone, this post should not be of concern in that aspect). I might end up having a break down in public or lose my temper or something and AT MOST be taken away by people for pscychiatric assessment.

I'm in my seventh year of university and don't have a social life, either.

It really hurts because, as grad students, we're always being told about how we should treasure our grad school friendships and how these will be our friends for life and we will see them at academic conferences and how important it is to have lots of friends in our field because we'll only get jobs by networking with others. And I think, "well damn. I don't have any friends so does that mean I might as well kiss my hopes of a career goodbye?"

Just last week all the grad students in one of my classes were out in the hall during break and others started talking about how they should all go on a road trip together during Spring Break and they went over to a map and started planning where to go. I saw how they were all like some kind of special club and even going to go vacation together and there I was, sitting all alone and knowing that I would be spending Spring Break on my couch watching movies alone.

I'm getting used to the idea that I will never have friends but it still pisses me off that not having friends might mean I don't get to have a career and I'm just wasting my time in school.

Well, the "fallback job" I've been thinking about if I can't finish grad school or can't find placement in my field if I do finish grad school is night watchman. They make more money than minimum wage and there's minimal human contact. You come in to the factory or whatever at the end of the late shift and pretty much sit at a desk and read all night and about once an hour you have to make the rounds to make sure nothing's on fire or otherwise malfunctioning and then you go back to your book. It sounds like a pretty good job to me - keep to myself, read books or knit, get a little walking in for variety, an dmake more than a McJob.

Another option if you don't make it through school is janitorial. Yeah, you have to scrub toilets which is gross but you pretty much work alone and everyone ignores you and, depending on where you work, you get paid decent.

I may well be doing either of those jobs if what I'm working toward doesn't pan out for me. I'm always trying to think of jobs that don't require much human contact because I think that's the biggest thing that has always screwed me up in jobs in the past is people don't like to be around me so I get fired because no one is comfortable with me there.

i had a lovely career before i went to university. night shift computer operator (midnight - 8am). loved it - nobody else in the building, except maybe the janitors. quiet, paid out the whazoo. (i finally made comparable salary in adjusted dollars about 5 years ago, after a 4 year BA, 3 year masters, and two years of a phd program ...and 15 years working.) made much more money without the degrees (had to start leaving them off my resumes when applying for jobs, as they "disqualified" me and, although i enjoyed studying, it didn't get me where they all told me it would.

and i'll be paying back the loans for the rest of my life.

given that, i'm not the best person to be giving advice. the best thing i learned in university and graduate school was how to type 85 wpm.

omg - i just did an inflation calculator at http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

and i'm still about $2,000 a year short of where i was in 1985 without "education", converting to today's dollars.

that's just damned depressing.

Sorry about that. No human contact is bliss for me so I tend to think from that perspective. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

I am in college again. I thought that maybe I would find more people that thought like myself, but I am still looking. I actually am realizing how truly different I think from others. I am with you Jc6chan that sometimes I feel it would be nice to make more friends or have a little more of a social life.

Never say never - the great college friendship thing is swamp gas, not true even for the social people in my field who are busier kicking one another off the ladder than networking.

But there ARE similars out there, and the one sitting alone at the table over from whdere you are sitting alone doing lunch before the afternoon session of the conference starts may turn out to be best friend ever.

Not easy to see them, but they are rustling in the bushes.