Something's Wrong

[Rennn]

I just started college, but the pressure's killing me. It's not even that hard right now, but all the courses have some terrible requirement, like "If you don't turn in one assignment, you automatically fail". I don't plan on not turning in an assignment, but it's horrifying that one lapse of memory could ruin everything. I have a terrible memory (I keep very detailed text documents on a laptop now), and every other week I end up depressed. In high school I could get enough done while depressed that I'd get D's for that week, and once the depression passed I'd get A's for long enough to bring my grade back up. Now that's not going to work, but my depression isn't any easier to cope with, if it's even depression. I don't know anymore. Now it feels more like agoraphobia or social anxiety or something like that. I really don't know.

 

Ofc, taking 16 credits per semester I only have time for a part-time job so I have to live with my parents. That'd be okay, except more and more I feel like I need to get help with whatever mental problem I have. I've talked to them, and if I fail a single class I'll be kicked out. I can't split rent with someone else, because I absolutely can't talk to people. I put off getting a haircut for like four months because I didn't want to deal with the talking aspect of it. It's painful to try to work on assignments when everything in my head is screaming that I'll fail everything, and I don't have time for therapy or something like that. My doctor just keeps prescribing the same thing that I've been taking for a year, which doesn't help. Ofc I'm still taking it, but this is getting really sickening and he never considers changing the prescription when I say that it's not working.

 

I don't know what the **** I'm going to do.

[brokenergy]

Have you ever considered getting a second opinion and letting your family and friends know about your condition? Most social phobias require intense therapy with friends and family.

[Halororor]

Definitely sounds like some form of depression. If your doctor doesn't want to change your prescription, make him change it. I've had mild epilepsy since the age of 4, and about a year ago my doctor changed my medication. The new meds caused me to develop strong social anxiety, I always felt like I was in a state of confusion, it caused my grades to slip and it thinned out my hair something fierce. Spoke to my doctor about it, and he said I should just stick it out, which I initially did. A few months later nothing seemed to be improving, so I asked him to change meds and he didn't want to. so then I told him I have a right to say when I'm not happy with my medication and if he didn't want to change it I would simply stop taking it, and if I started having any seizures because of that it would be on him. That finally got him to change it.

 

So, in short, what goes into your body is up to you. If you're not happy with your prescribed drug, then your doctor shouldn't be keeping you on it.

 

On another note, as for your academic situation, I'm in much the same boat. Can't afford to fail even a single subject this semester as it would result in my expulsion from the university. The pressure can get tough, but just hang in there. Some days it can get so bad that I simply feel like giving up and dropping it all, but luckily I haven't (yet). As long as you do your part, you'll pull through.

Edited September 11, 2012 by Halororor

[Vagrant0]

In my own experience, courses which have a tight work requirement like that are either one of the following;

 

1). Few assignments, but most of them take more than one week to complete so you usually get repeated reminders in class as long as you show up on time and every day.

 

2). Specialized coursework, where assignment A needs to be completed before you can even start on assignment B, where progression through the coursework is monitored closely to ensure that you understand everything.

 

3). Prerequisite courses where the teacher uses homework as a means of getting an idea of what material is understood well enough by the class to move on through the subject, and often a similar situation to #2 conceptually.

 

 

Most teachers WANT to see the students in their class succeed. Not only are most paid directly proportionate to the number of students they retain, but there are relatively few people who go into teaching just to cause grief. Many teachers may accept assignments which are late within a reasonable period of time, it just usually means that you would have to work even harder to complete that assignment and catch up. Unlike Highschool, if you get too far behind in a college class, there isn't much you can do about it since the end result is not grades, but how well you actually understand the material, and if you're missing out on a large section of material, you cannot honestly be certified for all the content related to that class.

 

This is probably why almost half of college freshmen fail the first few semisters... Highschool works like an escalator where as long as you don't hop off you're going to end up on top, while college works like a ladder... where you are only going up if you put in decided effort towards climbing.

 

Only in the higher levels of education do you really encounter professors who are jackasses that only assign work to beat down and weed out anyone who is not wholly committed to that subject... And in some cases, those people are fulfilling an important role since it challenges students to do better than they thought possible. Arguably some of this group may take things to an extreme, but most of what they're doing at that level is objectively defined, and impossible challenge is a good thing since that is what some people are faced with on a daily basis.