Help I'm suicidal due to academic competition.

[UserHussein]

One thing in which I'm incredibly insecure over is my University, and specifically its low ranking.

I'm also insecure at my friends who were able to attend higher ranked Universities, score better on the SAT, etc..

I just don't understand how they were able to do it, and I wasn't. What do they have that I don't? Why were they able to do it?

My problem is that I just cannot pass exams. No matter how much time I dedicate to revising the material, reading the textbook, I just can't get the material to stick. I'm sick of anxiously waiting for the results of my examinations, only to have a D grade returned back to me, despite pulling an all nighter.

And because of this, they get to attend top research Universities, and I get to attend a shit tier school.

My school is so shit, we even have the high school desk which connects the table to the seat, in rooms that look exactly like high school rooms. We even have high school lockers. Meanwhile, they get the finest buildings, and the nicest facilities.

 

[Oncologynurz123]

It sounds like you have severe test anxiety, perhaps a bit dyslexic and over thinking. This isn't a reason to cbt. You can overcome this, I promise. Do u have a reading comprehension problem? That can be overcome as well. I've done it. I'm probably a lot older than you, but it can be done

 

[moondazed]

One thing in which I'm incredibly insecure over is my University, and specifically its low ranking.

I'm also insecure at my friends who were able to attend higher ranked Universities, score better on the SAT, etc..

I just don't understand how they were able to do it, and I wasn't. What do they have that I don't? Why were they able to do it?

My problem is that I just cannot pass exams. No matter how much time I dedicate to revising the material, reading the textbook, I just can't get the material to stick. I'm sick of anxiously waiting for the results of my examinations, only to have a D grade returned back to me, despite pulling an all nighter.

And because of this, they get to attend top research Universities, and I get to attend a shit tier school.

My school is so shit, we even have the high school desk which connects the table to the seat, in rooms that look exactly like high school rooms. We even have high school lockers. Meanwhile, they get the finest buildings, and the nicest facilities.

I returned to community college at 25 years old. All my HS friends who went had already graduated. As much as it feels like it, it really is not a competition. It's about YOU and growing.

High ranking universities are not much better than others, except for in terms of status and bragging rights. Some schools do definitely have better research programs but for real, Ivy League are actually trash.

Sometimes you just aren't ready for college, and that's totally okay. You may be feeling pressure from others to do it, but you don't have to. You can take a break then go back, and maybe you'll be more energized and have the wits to push through?

We all retain information differently, but a small piece of advice that you can choose to take or not: all nighters right before a test don't work. Cramming just drains your brain. Consistent long term studying in short intervals is how you get over that. Then you give yourself a break the day before the exam. I learned it the hard way myself.

Best of luck out there! I miss my college years just a bit, but they were hard, especially against my mental health.

 

[Spike Spiegel]

Not here to try and offer some cure all solution but I have multiple university degrees and stumbled many many times on that journey. Simple study method I used then passed along to my students who found it really successful was the strategy of a messy, notebook and a clean notebook. During class, lecture zoom whatever just take down information in what ever way is easiest. Bullet points, or short paragraphs, Ven diagrams whatever. Then in your own time in a separate notebook reread and copy down neatly all the important stuff, you kind of reteach your self the lesson this way and highlight parts of the class you may have missed. Then a few days before the exam go through the clean notebook and highlight the extra important stuff. By the time test day comes do some light skimming and you should be more than ready.

In terms of actual test taking, try and dabble a little with meditation both the night before and the morning of the exam.

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Lastly , while the environment helps it has no bearing on the knowledge taught at that school. I'd bet my savings that at every Ivy league collage there is at least one student who you are smarter than. There is too much emphasis placed on the collage experience anyway. IMO I would hold off on CTB planning in this situations. The one thing college is really good for is finding people who share similar feelings as you. I think there are others at that school who probably feel the same way.

 

[figurehead]

One thing in which I'm incredibly insecure over is my University, and specifically its low ranking.

I'm also insecure at my friends who were able to attend higher ranked Universities, score better on the SAT, etc..

I just don't understand how they were able to do it, and I wasn't. What do they have that I don't? Why were they able to do it?

My problem is that I just cannot pass exams. No matter how much time I dedicate to revising the material, reading the textbook, I just can't get the material to stick. I'm sick of anxiously waiting for the results of my examinations, only to have a D grade returned back to me, despite pulling an all nighter.

And because of this, they get to attend top research Universities, and I get to attend a shit tier school.

My school is so shit, we even have the high school desk which connects the table to the seat, in rooms that look exactly like high school rooms. We even have high school lockers. Meanwhile, they get the finest buildings, and the nicest facilities.

Hello. Well, I'm probably old enough to be your mother, at least. But please don't think I'm being condescending. First, what oncologynurse said is very valid. You'll find people with all kinds of bizarre reason to ctb and if that's what your reason is, but this is a bad world, there'll be much worse and valid reasons for that... I'm probably everything you hate. Since my early teens I wanted to be an academic. And since my teens people are sure I'm not going to make it. I'm bipolar and stubborn and somehow I made it to a post-doc. I lived in England then and the same kind of insanity happens amongst universities. There'll be always someone who is better, probably nastier than you. I came home and was treated like shit by people I knew and thought were proud of me. It's never enough.

But I couldn't stand academia and had to jump out cos it was driving me to death. I still have severe hangups about it and whenever I'm depressed that's the first thing to come up. I might one day die by my own hand anyway, but with hindsight, I'm very glad it wasn't for that. It's not worth it.

 

[Done_Surviving]

Listen, all my life I've had ADHD and/but my parents really wanted a "successful kid". They would sit with me to make me try to do my homework and study and whenever I would get distracted or not remember something, they would call me everything on the list from stupid to poop-head. I developed severe anxiety, it got to the point that the school had to call my mom and actually tell her to stop pressuring me about my grades because I was having a lot of breakdowns at school, and to just deal with the fact that I was simply never going to be academically successful. To this point, my mom said that's when she realized she simply didn't have the daughter she had wanted.

Lo and behold, they were right. I swear to whatever god you believe in that I tried my fucking best at school, but I never got to be "Avobe Avarage". And it broke me, the failure, the disappointment from the teachers and my parents. It broke me to the point that by high school I had traded all my hobbies and social life for school and tutors and I had a mental breakdown that put me in the hospital. And even after that, I didn't learn my lesson and still broke my brain for 8's and 7's and an unsuspecting 9 now and again. Then I got to college, and I made the wrong ass decision of trying to be an engineer to impress my parents and made them proud. And let me tell you if I was suicidal before I was a walking corpse while I was attending those stupid classes. I was having meltdowns every single day and started cutting myself twice as much than I did in high school. Until one day I said you know what. Fuck it. Fuck it I don't want to do this, and told my parents, "Listen I'm sorry I fucked up, but either this career is gonna kill me or I'm gonna kill myself" (nicer words of course) And decided to drop everything and start studying animation. And OMG I just can't express enough, how much good that change made for me. I was finally enjoying the thing that I was learning, I was finally feeling comfortable and happy to go to school. And without even trying I started to get the highest grades I've ever had in my whole life. Of course, it didn't fix everything, I'm still here, still having major depressive episodes and impostor's syndrome makes me feel like I'm worthless and talentless.

But that's neither here, nor there. The moral of the story is. FUCK YOUR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE, GO AND STUDY WHATEVER YOU WANNA STUDY! It won't fix everything, it won't make the anxiety and the feeling that you're not good enough go away completely. But it will at least let you enjoy yourself a little for the time being. It will let you have fun in class and actually get invested. And if you fail a class, then you fail a class. It might cost money, so what in this day and age even breathing costs money. Believe me, I've failed plenty of classes before, and I've been yelled at because my parents paid my tuition. But after a couple of days, it all goes back to normal. FUCK WHATEVER AN STUPID NUMBER ON YOUR REPORT CARD SAYS, YOU ARE TRYING YOUR BEST! AND YOUR BEST IS ALL YOU CAN GIVE! <3