Take a break?

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School has always been my life. Its where I get my purpose and all my self esteem. Its not healthy, but I use every single homework and test grade as a prediction of my future. If I make a good grade, I'll be able to get into a good grad school, get a good job, and have a happy, successful life. If I do poorly, I am convinced that my life is worthless. Black and white thinking.

I've been going through some very personal issues that happened in my past with my doctor and doing so has forced me to relive it all and I can't stop myself from going through it over and over again. Its causing me so much distress I've been missing a lot of school and its all I can do to get out of bed and go to class...and thats WITH my meds.

I've dropped out of college twice on account of being overwhelmed and I can just feel it happening again. My fear is that taking a break from school will only worsen my depression because I will lose my sense of purpose in life. I also wonder if I might be able to distract myself with school work if I just keep pushing through. Should I take a semester off or just rough it out and risk doing damage to my GPA?

i feel that way too. about school being my "purpose" to some extent. i love school its more structured and i love learning and being around people. and having to learn how to live with others and everything.

i was forced to go home last semester because of problems that resulted mostly from the meds i was on. i was trying to do anything to stay in school. i am still in the same fight, all i want is to stay in school after having to leave, i hated it i was so miserably depressed when i was at home i felt like i had last everything that was important. and i had been very depressed while i was at school things like self injury and suicidal thought were everyday stuff for me then. with one really bad episode that i still havent gotten over.

this semester i came back i had to come back to all the memories of everything that had happened last semester. ive had to learn to cope with those things to try to get through this semester. sometimes i push though as much work as i can and if its a particularly difficult day i might not get anything done. but i start to feel depressed or those memories come back i go to the library or somewhere where there are other people doing school work and try to refocus myself. if i can get through enough work to get me through the next day of classes or even if i havent sometimes i just give myself an hour or so to just go cry and think about all those bad memories and basically have a pity party then i go to sleep. and hopefully when i wake up those feelings are gone and i can move on a little bit more make it through a few more classes or another day.

i hope some of this helps

I do not know the US school system but is it all or nothing for you in terms of classes, isn`t it possible to lets say take half a semester worth of classes instead of going at it fulltime?

Both posts sounds awfully like me I can identify alot with it, when I studied at university I had three periods that I was in a worse state, two of those periods I did not actively study but during the last I did, though I progressed painfully slow but it was still the better choice for me because I had some structure and purpose that I could relate to for a prolonged period of time.

I am not totally recuperated (spelling) yet still being tired.

Oh...these posts make my heart hurt because in the past two years, I have endured so much of what you all have gone through.

Fairly recently, I started a topic called, "Leaving school does not make me worthless!" I didn't have many problems at the community college, but the past two years (at two different universities) have been filled with struggles both school-related and non-school-related. I have also made lots of posts about those problems as well.

To the OP: I finally decided to take some time away from school to recover from everything and think about my own needs as opposed to what everyone else expects. I don't know if this recovery period is going to take one semester or two or three. I do know that trying a part-time status (8 credit hours) this current semester still did not work for me, so if I do return, I will definitely be taking one course at a time from now on. I simply require too much recovery time from being around people and from any anxiety issues/panic attacks/outright meltdowns that may occur. It's difficult to get homework/studying done on top of life's other responsibilities when one loses two or three hours each day trying to get calmed down enough to resume functioning properly.

For a long time, in fact up until the end of last semester, I defined my self-worth by my grades. It was this past fall when the reason finally dawned on me. My childhood was filled with bullying at school and abuse at home, and the only times I can ever recall anyone getting off my back and showing love or praise was when I brought home a good report card, test score, etc. At the age of six or seven, I was already the stereotypical straight-A nervous wreck perfectionist. I wish I could have back all the time I wasted over the years redoing and redoing assignments in order to make them perfect.

Anyhow, I'm still keeping one class this term. I think potential employers (and possibly schools, if you go back) would think it looked weird if I suddenly dropped completely out of college halfway through a semester. I just feel that's important, at least in my situation.

Now this is a huge thing I am learning right now: Over and over again in my readings, I keep running into the idea that WHO WE ARE IS WAY MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT WE DO. (All caps intentional.) This appears to be a central teaching not only in many religions, but also in many secular guides to overcoming depression and feelings of worthlessness. It is also the polar opposite of the message society holds sacred. A doctor/lawyer/pro athlete is worth more than a janitor/fast-food worker/phone-answerer, who in turn is worth more than a stay-at-home mom, retiree, volunteer, or one who is just plain unemployed. This idea includes placing degree-seeking students on pedestals. I have come to believe that this sort of thinking is pure poison. However, it's really hard to ignore what society relentlessly beats into our heads from birth.

Sure, we need to make money to get food, shelter, clothing, and other things, and for that, most of us need jobs, and for that, most of us need educations. But we can't do any of that if we don't take/make the time to put self-care mechanisms in place (multiply this by about 10 for people with AS, anxiety disorders, etc.). And the very first mechanism is to learn that we have intrinsic value that is not defined by what we are doing. You may have heard the phrase, "We are human be-ings, not human do-ings."

Having a purpose is fantastic, but like so many things, it can become toxic if you worry about it too much. I can't be the best "me" I can be if I'm a neurotic mess who is spending much of the day curled up in a ball in bed, so I am trying to get my inner life into some sort of order. For me, this includes taking time off school to lick my wounds and heal up. I am not even going to try to worry about my next move until I am sufficiently emotionally healed up to do so. If I rush this process, I'm going to end up right back in the same miserable predicament (complete with trips to the hospital due to either self-injury or stress-related illnesses).

Anyhow, know that I am sending good thoughts to all who are struggling with this (including myself).

Take a break if you think you need a break, find some elective class you have a relative interest in and just do that one class to keep your enrollment and take it easy for a semester. When I was first starting college I had the wonderful notion of doing all my GE the first year to get it over with. It was a great idea in theory but just cause me to burnout at an exponential rate, I was very much like you in the fact that school was my life at that point and not being in school would have been horrible. Long story short I started failing classes and such to the point where I actually got kicked out for low GPA, took an extended break now I work 30hr and take a full load all with relative ease comparatively.

College is a balancing act you need to know when you can push yourself and when you throttle back too keep your sanity, Next year I'm most likely only be doing the bare min for full time enrollment but I know the classes I'm taking will require lots of extra work outside of class so stacking on that extra class will just cause me to fall behind. The big pressure I believe that everyone has is the whole "4 year thing" not a lot of people realize that no one cares how long it takes you to get your degree or your certs. You don't have to finish in 4 years, hell most my friends with degrees took 5-6 years to get them, my first one took 5.5 years.

There is no reason to push yourself to the brink of meltdown or farther especially when it will do you no good and most likely more harm then good. Trust me on this one cleaning up a college transcript is 10x more work then explaining you took a light load one semester to keep your sanity and your head straight.